An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

ומש הוהי
would originally have appeared as
םשוהימחלמשאוהי
It is easy to appreciate that a scribe whose grasp of the oral tradition was weak
might, for example, read ם ֵשׁ for וֹמ ְשׁ or misdivide the sequence אוהי, writing
אוּה and assigning the י to the previous word. (Word spacing or, more commonly,
word dividers were not regularly used in early alphabetic writing.) In Exod 15:1
the MT has the sequence האָ ָגּ הֹא ָג,
while the Samaritan Pentateuch reads יוג
האג; erroneous orthographic revision accounts in part for the Samaritan reading.
1.6.3 Vocalization
a The relative uniformity of Biblical Hebrew results primarily from two factors: the
largely consonantal presentation of the language throughout its pre-Masoretic
history and the unified representation of it by the Tiberian Masoretes. The
consonantal representation, both with and without matres lectiones, effectively
“covers up” vocal variations both on the synchronic and diachronic levels. The
consonantal phonemes, those[Page 25] represented by most of the letters, are
precisely those that are most stable and not given to change, whereas the vocalic
phonemes, those most given to change, are not graphically represented apart from
the limited use of vowel letters. Even more significantly the Tiberian tradition
aimed to squelch variation in order to produce a normative text. Our expectation
that the vowels changed within both the phonological and morphological systems
can be verified. Nevertheless, the MT’s vocalization essentially represents an
ancient and reliable tradition. Here too we must exhibit the tension, which once
again leads to the posture of cautious conservatism before the MT.
b Evidence of change. The type of phonological changes that occurred in Biblical
Hebrew before it was standardized in the MT may be illustrated from English. On
historical grounds, the word ‘wind’ should be pronounced waInd, to rhyme with
‘find’ and ‘bind,’ but since the eighteenth century ‘wind’ has been pronounced
wInd, to rhyme with ‘thinned’ and ‘sinned.’ Because the older form occurs in
poetry (and is in fact preserved in poetic usage long after it has disappeared from
speech), readers can easily reconstruct its shape, even if they are ignorant of the
historical development of the word.
c Hebrew phonology shows two changes for which the MT provides late evidence.
One affects original short a in word-initial closed syllables; in the MT a in such a
position has shifted to i but at the time of the LXX the shift had not occurred.
Thus we have in the LXX (and elsewhere) Sampsōn but in the MT ןוֹשׁמְ ִשׁ; in the