Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Steinberg <david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com>]

> Joulon_Murakoa p. 213 states

That's Jouon and Muraoka...

> >
> > "The active future is *YAQU:M ... The Jussive originally had the 
short u
> > (reduced state), eg. *YAQUM which usually became YAQOM..."

I am not sure what the full quote here is, but I think perhaps the 
discussion
is about general medial-waw verbs and not specifically qwm, even if qwm
is used as the paradigm and is one of those that did not become "yaqom".

Yitzhak Sapir

You may be right. But if so, it is a strange way of doing things since 
there are a few examples of verbs which follow the expected pattern eg. 
MUT jussive in Nu. 23:10.

We have two basic problems here-

1. The Biblical Hebrew corpus is so small, and restricted in topics etc. 
that many expressions that certainly existed in spoken and written 
pre-exilic Hebrew are not found in our corpus - see Barr's discussion of 
this issue in Comparative Philology and the Old Testament'; and,

2. The pointing of eg. YMWT as yamu:t in many cases may express and 
exegetical-theological view that future death was certain rejecting the 
alternative - to be pointed as yamot - that it was merely desired.



David Steinberg