To learn to read and to understand the words of Scripture
Rāphè (רָפֶה i.e. weak, soft), a horizontal stroke over the letter, is the opposite of both kinds of Dageš and Mappîq, but especially of Dageš lene. In exact manuscripts every בגדכפת letter has either Dageš lene or Rāphè, e.g. מֶלֶךְֿ mèlĕkh, תָּפַֿר, שָׁתָֿה. In modern editions (except Ginsburg’s 1st ed.) Rāphè is used only when…
1. Mappîq, llke Dageš, also a point within the consonant, serves in the letters א ה ו י as a sign that they are to be regarded as full consonants and not as vowel letters. In most editions of the text it is only used in the consonantal ה at the end of words (since…
Hebrew Vowels The original Hebrew alphabet consisted only of consonants and vowel letters. The vowel signs and pronunciation (known as vowel pointings) currently accepted for Biblical Hebrew were created by scholars known as Masoretes after the 5th century AD and are known as Tiberian vocalization. The Masoretes are thought also to have standardized various dialectal…
The common form of the 3rd sing. masc. of the Perfect Qal is קָטַל, with ă (Pathaḥ) in the second syllable, especially in transitive verbs. There is also a form with ē (Ṣere, originally ĭ), and another with ō (Ḥolem, originally ŭ) in the second syllable, both of which, however, have almost always an intransitive…
In grammar Dageš forte, the sign of strengthening, is the more important. It may be compared to the sicilicus of the Latins (Lucul̂us for Lucullus) or to the stroke over m̄ and n̄. In the unpointed text it is omitted, like the vowels and other reading signs. Oort, Theol. Tijdschr. 1902, p. 376, maintains that…
Dageš, a point standing in the middle of a consonant, denotes, (a) the strengthening of a consonant (Dageš forte), e.g. קִטֵּל qiṭṭēl ; or (b) the harder pronunciation of the letters בְּגַדְכְּפַת (Dageš lene). The root דגשׁ in Syriac means to pierce through, to bore through (with sharp iron); hence the name Dageš is commonly…
1. Dageš lene, the sign of hardening, is in ordinary printed texts placed only within the בְּגַדְכְּפַת letters as a sign that they should be pronounced with their original hard sound (without aspiration), e.g. מֶלֶךְ mèlĕkh, but מַלְכּוֹ mal-kô; תָּפַר tāphár, but יִתְפֹּר yith-pōr; שָׁתָה šāthā, but יִשְׁתֶּה yiš-tè. 2. Dageš lene occurs almost exclusively…
1. The formation of the parts of speech from the stems (derivation), and their inflexion, are effected in two ways: (a) internally by changes in the stem itself, particularly in its vowels: (b) externally by the addition of formative syllables before or after it. The expression of grammatical relations (e.g. the comparative degree and some…
1. The Hebrew language is one branch of a great family of languages in Western Asia which was indigenous in Palestine, Phoenicia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Assyria, and Arabia, that is to say, in the countries extending from the Mediterranean to the other side of the Euphrates and Tigris, and from the mountains of Armenia to…
1. The essential characteristic of this conjugation consists in a prefix to the stem. This exists in two forms: (a) the (probably original) prepositive nă, as in the Hebrew perfect and participle, although in the strong verb the ă is always attenuated to ĭ: נִקְטַל for original nă-qăṭăl, participle נִקְטָל, infinitive absolute sometimes נִקְטוֹל; (b)…