Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 7/10/06, Shoshanna Walker wrote:

> I'm sorry, I don't understand, or forgot from high school, the
> terminology of linguists.
>
> Revowel what?  I can't change Torah or revowel it.

I don't think "revowel" is a technical term.  :-)  Rashi provided an
alternative vocalization for the word "bara)".  So we see that it's
perfectly legitimate to do so even in the context of Jewish
traditional scholarship.

le&a+an is an infinitive (this *is* a technical term).  Infinitives,
like all other parts of speech, have set forms in which they
can appear, and only so many possible ways they can be
vocalized, depending on the noun form ("binyan").
Qamats-Qamats-Nothing is not one of them.

> satan here is used as part of a phrase  ba'derech
> le'satan lo - how do you justify taking it out of the phrase?

> How would "ba'derech" fit into your phrase - "for an adversary to him"?

Look at the JPS translation here:
http://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0422.htm#22
"baderekh" is the words just before this phrase, "in the way".

Yitzhak Sapir
http://toldot.blogspot.com