Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Pere:

Now to throw a spanner in the works:

Looking at the causing to die, we find it written with the tau doubled when
a personal pronoun is added, 1 Samuel 17:51, 2 Samuel 1:9, 10, 16, 2
Chronicles 22:11.

Looking at the boughten dictionaries, there are three verbs, HWM, HMH, HMM
where often the only way to tell between the different words are the
Masoretic points. Two of the words have the same meaning, dealing with the
idea of being in restless motion, stirred up, in commotion, the third one
HMM is used all but twice in context of war, where the loser is unable to
continue. HMTM can be conjugated from either HWM or HMM.

Since no one else has mentioned it, there is another example of HMTM used
with the second person plural suffix -TM, 2 Samuel 13:28, this time in the
context of having victory over another person such that he ceases to be a
viable enemy.

So the pattern found in Tanakh is that when a personal pronoun suffix as a
subject is added to the hiphil of MWT that the tau is doubled (not when the
personal pronoun is an object), and that there are two other verbs that can
be conjugated as HMTM with the -TM being a second persona plural suffix
subject, what is the likelihood that this example in Numbers 17:6 is
conjugated from MWT? Especially when the contexts allow for the other
readings?

So instead of closure, it looks as if I have added more options to the list,
hence a spanner in the works.

Karl W. Randolph.