Biblical Hebrew Forum

[DrJDPrice AT aol.com]

David Hamuel asked:
<<
I have an interesting question on  accents and a poetic reading.
`al divrati ??-????? in Psalm 110:4 has a long  tradition of being read
as a poetic preposition with the yud being a poetic  embellishment
and not the personal pronoun 'my'. The LXX does not have  'my'
here, and Rashi, Ibn-Ezra, and QimHi all point out that the  phrase
`al divrati should be interpreted as if it read `al divrat.

My  question concerns the MT accents. They have a revia` mugrash
on this phrase,  which is a major disjunctive in the psalms (eme"t)
system of te`amim. I am  thinking that this accent suggests that
the MT interpreted `al-divrati as "on  my word, O Melchitsedek".
Does anyone have some nice counterexamples for  revia` mugrash
that would support the traditional reading within the confines  of the
MT?
>>

 
According to the laws of accentuation in the poetical books, for musical  
reasons, Rebia Mugrash (or its equivalent) must stand on the first or second  
word before Silluq regardless of the grammatical environment. There are a 
few  well defined exceptions that do not affect this verse. Rebia Mugrash 
frequently  occurs on a construct form (as generally accented in this case), 
so 
it has  little to contribute to the exegesis of this passage. Randall Buth 
is correct in  saying that Rebia Mugrash is not a major disjunctive, at 
least as far as  exegesis is concerned.
James D. Price


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