Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>]

On Tue, 4 Oct 2011 23:00:17 +0300, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 10:07 PM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:
> 
>> Randall Buth:****
>>
>> You wrote: “[G]oats are feminine. Check out עזים. Gen 15.9.  In this case
>> יעל is a female ya`el.”

Is this the right reference?

> My point is that 'goats' have a masculine looking form and a masculine
> looking plural, yet they are "feminine".

If יעל/ya`el has a masculine looking form and a masculine looking plural, it
seems that the only reason for not thinking it masculine would be to find
instances where it is associated with a feminine adjective or verb form.  Do
we have that?  Finding a semantically similar word עז/`ez used as a feminine
(I assume it *is* used as a feminine - I didn't see it in Gen. 15.9 and in
Gen. 27.9 it is used with a masculine adjective) is suggestive, but I think
not enough to prove the gender of ya`el.

> So there really isn't any problem in applying ya`el to a girl. the ya`el is
> a goat. A majestic goat to be sure.
> As for the masculinity of ya`el, is/was there any concord with the other
> occurrences in the Bible to show that ya`el was always 'masculine-only'?

If there's no proof from concord, it might be reasonable to consider the word
applicable to both sexes, although the fact that a specifically feminine form
יעלה/ya`ala exists would seem to make that a more natural choice for a woman's
name.

> Other 'cross-forms' exist. For example "qohelet" appears to be the 'convener
> of an assembly" and was masculine, yet the form with" -et" is distinctively
> 'feminine'.
> And we have Yona, a man's name formed from a feminine noun.

-- 
Will Parsons