Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

On 6/12/07, Pere Porta wrote:
> Dear listers,
>
> Does any of you know if in biblical Hebrew a word ending -TIY can/may be
> something different from a 1st person singular of the past tense?
>
> Pere Porta

Yes, it can also denote in rare cases 2nd person singular feminine.
It is likely
that throughout the First Temple period and probably later, the final vowel of
this form, as also the pronoun, was -i.  Thus, instead of Biblical/Tiberian
Hebrew "?at", Ancient Hebrew had "?atti".  I am unsure of the accuracy of
wikipedia, but wikipedia also notes that Samaritan Hebrew maintained this
form.  While the pronoun "?atti" survives in certain cases only in Kathiv (as 
in
2 Kings 4:23), the feminine form survives.  This is the main interpretation 
for
$qmty in Judges 5:7.  Another possible case (quoted by Maimon Cohen) is
Jer 2:20 (for both $brty and ntqty).  This vowel also appears in 1 Sam 19:17,
and Songs 4:9 where it appears before the suffixed pronoun -ny.  Cohen's
notes on this come at p. 117-118 in "The Kethib and Qeri System in the
Biblical Text," a book published this year in Hebrew.  It is my opinion that 
the
orthography didn't preserve this vowel in most cases just like it
didn't similarly
note -h for masculine second person singular.

Yitzhak Sapir