Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Pere:

Reasons for some of my questions:


The -NW suffix can be used even on the same verb for the first person
plural, and the third person masculine singular. E.g. יאכלנו Y)KLNW in
Numbers 11:4, 18 “make us eat” but in Numbers 18:13 “he should eat it”. Or
תאכלנו T)KLNW “you should eat it” Numbers 18:10 while “it (fire) eats us”
in Deuteronomy 5:25.


The -HW suffix is found on lamed he verbs, e.g. ויבזהו YBZHW 1 Samuel 17:42
“he had disdain, contempt for him”, while in 1 Samuel 10:27 merely is a
plural “they disdained”.


So far I have not found any verbs that can use both suffixes, rather it
seems that those verbs that use the -NW suffix do not use the -HW suffix,
and visa versa. So far I have not found a pattern to explain the difference.


One idea I had is that maybe the choice of which suffix to use was
connected to the form of the verb, but נמכרנו NMKRNW Genesis 37:27 and
תזכרנו TZKRNW Psalm 8:4 take the -NW suffix, while יתארהו YT)RHW Isaiah
44:13 (also another example of a lamed he verb taking a -HW suffix יעשהו
Y(%HW) and ישרהו Y$MRHW Psalm 41:3 (yet another example of a lamed he verb
taking the -HW suffix, יחיהו YXYHW) which seems to argue against the form
(in this case the final resh) indicating which suffix to use.


After writing the above, I found an example of a verb that takes both the
-HW and -NW suffixes to refer to a third person singular masculine object:
ראה R)H in Psalm 91:16 אראהו )R)HW, Isaiah 53:2 נראהו NR)HW, many other
examples, while Genesis 45:28 ואראנו )R)NW, also Numbers 23:9, 24:17,
Jeremiah 23:24, Micah 7:15 and other examples.


Oy veh! This study instead of answering my questions, has only raised more!


Karl W. Randolph.

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 10:54 PM, Pere Porta <pporta7 AT gmail.com> wrote:

> Verbs lamed-heh (nowadays lamed-yod) clearly tend to take the suffix -NW.
> Look for instance at http://www.oham.net/out/PS-d/PS-d2421.html
> Now, sometimes suffix -HW is also found:
> http://www.oham.net/out/PS-d/PS-d1038.html
>
> but remark: this is suffix -HW, not suffix -W (so that the preceding H
> would be part to the root)
>
> Friendly,
>
> Pere Porta
>
>