Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Hello Jim,

I think I did not clarify myself enough.  It's not that "A Hebrew ssade in the
Bronze Age was an emphatic, whereas a Hebrew sin was not, so the more
logical choice for the Hebrew spelling of the first letter in Tyre,
other things
being equal, would have been a ssade, not a sin."  Even if all other things
were not equal, even if you had a CUR Mountain of evidence piled against
spelling with a Sade and spelling a Sade seems the most illogical thing to
do, if the pronunciation was emphatic, it would be spelled with a Sade.
All other things being completely unequal, you'd still have a Sade.  You
would need a language without the emphatic at all to use a non-emphatic
letter.  But Hebrew had the emphatic.  So it wouldn't use a non-emphatic
letter like Shin or Sin.

Now, you have a point that in the Bible the pronunciation of 'Tyre' CR is
with a holam (COR) whereas the pronunciation of 'Rock' CWR is with a
shuruk (CUR).  It just so happens that both of them are long.  This is
because all stressed vowels in Tiberian Hebrew are long, and in the
words COR and CUR there is only one syllable to stress.  But this is
not just about Tiberian Hebrew.  We have transcriptions of the name
in Greek, and there we see it SWR-, with an omega.  The omega tells
us the city's name was with a long o: sound.  We also have the
orthography of the Bible.  In the Biblical orthography, it's not necessary
to use W to mark long or short u sounds.  However, very likely, the
regular use of the waw indicates that in the time of the Biblical
orthography (Persian period or later) the vowel was long.  Before the
Persian period, the vowel was long but was not marked with a waw.
We see this in the Siloam inscription, for example.

So throughout the period, including both the Bronze and Iron ages,
the city's name was probably pronounced COR with a long O.  Just
any regular rock or even a divine rock was pronounced CUR with a
long U.  Until the Persian period, both were written CR.  In the
Biblical spelling, we have a W in CUR to indicate the long U.   Also,
the whole point of orthography is to convey pronunciation.  While
the Biblical era speakers did not use a complete system of vowels,
they still wanted to distinguish the two words in writing.  This is
another very reasonable reason why the waw was used in CUR 'rock'
and not used in COR the Phoenician city to distinguish the two in
orthography.

Now, CAR 'foe' was still spelled without a waw.  There is a limit to
how much you can distinguish the words apart in the matres lectionis
system of Hebrew orthography used in the Bible.  There's nothing
special to read behind it.  They were spelled the same, but were
pronounced differently.  The Biblical authors had no problem with it.
In fact, it might even have been a different kind of Sade (the
emphatic [l~] rather than the emphatic [ts]/[th]).  It all depends
whether Hebrew kept emphatic [l~] distinct the way it kept
non-emphatic [l~] distinct in this period.

So to sum up: Before the Persian period, the words CR 'Tyre',
CR 'rock', and CR 'foe' were all spelled the same.  Very likely,
during and after the Persian period, CR 'Tyre' and CR 'rock'
may have been pronounced slightly differently, CO:R vs CU:R.
This may also reflect the vowels of the pre-Persian period, but
we don't know for sure because they were spelled exactly the
same.

In the Akkadian transcription of the name Surru (with an emphatic
S), we have no indication of o vs. u.  We also have a double r.
As far as the vowel is concerned, it tells us very little.  Akkadian
had no way to represent o so it used u to represent it.  We
also have no information regarding length here.  The scribe may
have chosen to use CUR-RI rather than CU-UR-RI simply for
convenience.  We may have information here regarding the
original root being CRR.  The root (using cognates in Arabic
and Syriac) was reasonably CRR.  HALOT adduces these
cognates on p. 1052-1053 in the entry I COR.

Lameen's Arabic transcription and other websites tell you
nothing about the vocalization.  They use two vowels simply
to indicate a long u: vowel in Arabic, and using different
conventions 'uu' vs 'ou' to do it.  This tells you nothing
regarding the vocalization of the Bible.

Even if CR 'Tyre' with an o: superficially looks the same as
CR 'foe' pronounced with an a: and possibly an altogether
different first consonant, it is not insulting to use both. If you
read Hebrew, you know there are many many words that are
spelled similarly and have different pronunciations.  In fact,
it is more insulting to misspell the name.  Just like writing
Gim or Kim instead of Jim would be insulting and annoying,
even if Kim is a beautiful name with wonderful connotations.

Yitzhak Sapir