Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

On 9/29/06, Harold Holmyard wrote:

> > The prefix ka- in this verse takes a qamats, suggesting it can't be
> > read as "As a
> > lion".  There are variants with a patach, but as it stands the standard 
> reading
> > also has its problems (though probably less than the reading k)r = dig, 
> which
> > ignore just the vowels, but also the aleph).
>
> HH: The aleph may not be such a problem. Conrad
> Gren writes:
>
> Ancient Hebrew sometimes has a fuller (plené)
> spelling than what exists in today's Hebrew text.
> This included adding alephs to assist in
> vocalization, before the vowel pointing system.

It is a very very very rare occurence in MT spelling.  While DSS spellings do
show some manuscripts where the alef is used for marking vowels, the main
variant usually brought -- the one that read K)RW -- does not use such
spelling in other words so there is no reason to assume it is used here.
The DSS that do use the alef as a vowel use it consistently throughout.
LXX and other Christian translations are very problematic to use because
it was probably no later than the 1st or 2nd century CE that this passage
began to be interpreted as pierced.  The question, of course, is whether
it was interpreted so outside of Christian circles.  For that, most LXX
manuscripts and fragments, and obviously all Christian translations, are not
useful. Ps 40:7 is problematic to use mainly because the particular phrase is
used in a context where it is clear that for textual reasons it should be at
least displaced to some other portion of the psalm.  The example brought
in of k)r/ky)r, may also not just be a textual variant or defective
spelling, but
may be a poetic device.  Of course, the k- of k)r in that parallelism probably
is "like" and not part of the root, but it still should be studied and
not simply
marked off as a textually defective spelling.

Yitzhak Sapir