Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 11:07 PM, Steve Miller wrote:

>> No.  The problem is that the syntax doesn't work.  מבקשי could only be
>> singular if י is the suffixed pronoun "my/me" -- "the one who seeks
>> me."
>> If you do that you get the same problem in syntax in trying to combine
>> מבקשי with פניך as you do for דרשו with מבקשי.  Suffixed pronouns in
>> Hebrew just don't work like that.  It is something like: "This is the
>> generation of his seekers.  my seeker.  your face."  This is how it
>> looks like in Hebrew.  It just doesn't work.
>>
>> Yitzhak Sapir
>
> [SteveMiller:] Thanks, Yitzhak.
> Is the reason that the pronoun suffix from דרשו cannot be the subject of 
> מבקשי only because of the singular vs plural mismatch, or is it also that a 
> pronoun suffix in Hebrew cannot be the subject of a following verb.
>
> Another question: I see that דרשיו is an alternate reading for דרשו. Is 
> there any difference in meaning between the 2?

Both.  In addition, your reading destroys any parallelism in the verse which 
is
also problematic.

דרשיו is not an alternate reading.  It is the reading for the word.
The -w was an
older form of the construct plural (attested in Lachish 3 from the 6th century
BCE).   The yodh was probably pronounced by then (-aywu) but by the Masoretic
period this changed to -ɔv.  It was popular enough in the Bible that a
-yw ending
represents the pronunciation -ɔv.  This is why the Masoretic comment that you
see notes that the reading is -yw.  It just means: "read it as -ɔv."
The older -w
form is ambiguous in the Bible with the singular form "his (singular
noun)", so it
could be read "his seeker (singular)."  The Masoretic comment is here because
of the ambiguity.  It just means the vocalization is with a qamats-waw.

Yitzhak Sapir