Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

On 9/28/06, Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote:

> TODAH (a noun from Y.D.H)
> TORAH (a noun from Y.R.H)
> TXINA (a noun from X.N.N)
> T'ENA ("fig")

Joshua Fox identifes the word T)ENAH as deriving from PS *ti)n(-at), a qitl 
noun
form.  Other similar words include PS *bi)r "well", PS *dhi)b "wolf", PS 
*thi)r
"flesh", PS *ri)m "wild ox".  In all these, the Hebrew or Canaanite apparently
moved the glottal stop before the vowel creating b)ir, dh)ib, th)ir,
r)im.  Then,
my guess is that because already at a time when case endings were still
used, many cases of open syllable *i became e, these words became b)er,
dh)eb, th)er, r)em, and t)en(at).

Yitzhak Sapir