Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kirk Lowery <klowery AT whi.wts.edu>]

Tigran Aivazian wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Mar 2005, Dave Washburn wrote:
>
> > On Thursday 17 March 2005 12:54, wattswestmaas wrote:
> >
> > > Hallo, Could someone perhaps offer some ideas as to why the 'mem'
> > > in the word for: 'increase' is written this way? Thankyou, Chris.
> >
> >
> > Based on the Qere correction by the Masoretes, it looks like a
> > simple scribal error.
> >
> > Incidentally, if anybody uses the free Westminster Leningrad Codex
> >  module, the Qere here has an error in it.  Rather than showing the
> > final mem, it shows exactly the same form as the Qere, but with a
> > different accent.  If somebody from that project is on this list,
> > that's an FYI.  If you can tell me how to fix it in my copy (I'm
> > using GnomeSword with the Ezra SIL font) that would be a Very Good
> > Thing (TM).
>
>
> I have checked the actual facsimile of L and also the reasonably
> latest (4.3) Westminster Leningrad Codex source and confirm that,
> indeed, WLC doesn't match B19A at Isa 9:6 wrt final mem.
>
> The PDF version of WLC is still at v4.2 at the moment but I hope to
> find some time to move it to 4.3 soon.
>
> I can't remember if the Michigan encoding actually allows such things
>  like "m<EOW>" i.e. to force a final mem in the middle of the word.
> If it doesn't, then I will manually fix this for Isa 9:6 when I
> upload 4.3 version of WLC-B19A.pdf to www.bibles.org.uk.

Speaking as the maintainer of WLC, the Michigan encoding system does not 
distinguish between medial and final mem, kaf, etc. So there is no way 
to force a final mem anywhere. There is, however, a "bracket note", 
i.e., "]m" which flags the qere, signaling the problem in Isa 9:6.

As for fixing the problem in GnomeSword, I'm afraid you're going to have 
to either report the issue to the module maintainer, or else go into the 
module and edit it directly. The module is, if I recall correctly, in 
UTF-8 (Unicode), and so the maintainer used some sort of Michigan->UTF-8 
conversion program.

Blessings,

Kirk
--
Kirk E. Lowery, PhD
Director, Westminster Hebrew Institute
Adjunct Professor of Old Testament
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia
--
"Good boy, Dex!"
   -- Joseph "Sky Captain" Sullivan