Special Issue IOSOT 2013 - Books and Journals

D. Pardee / Vetus Testamentum IOSOT (2013) 99-108 107
with emitting (wind, odor, liquid, etc.). Ugaritic/Hebrew ypḥ would be, then,
a triconsonantalization of this original p + ḥ/ḫ complex by the addition of yod;
the /ḥ/ indicates its affiliation with the notion of emitting rather than with
“blowing” per se. If Jer. iv 31 is any indication, ypḥ would have been used primarily
for emitting the voice. Thus the Hebrew language commentators from
Rashi to Tur-Sinai28 would have been correct in glossing ypḥ by forms of dbr
“to speak”.
If the root of yp( y)ḥ is correctly identified as ypḥ, what is the form? Even
Lambert was troubled by the form, considering that the failure of the qameṣ
to reduce in the first syllable was due solely to the Massoretic interpretation of
the form as a verb (i.e., because yāpīaḥ is a substantive in Lambert’s view, the
qameṣ should reduce to šĕwa).29 McKane follows this theory and revocalizes
to yĕpīaḥ.30 Though this position may indeed be correct, I would like to suggest
that in this case the Massoretes have correctly maintained an old tradition
and that the qameṣ should not reduce to šĕwa. The suggestion is based
on the observation that the North-West Semitic words for “witness” are participles
with unchangeably long vowels: Hebrew ʿēd/ʿēdîm/ēdĕ; Aramaic śāhēd/
śāhǎdîn/ śāhǎdê (cf. Arabic šāhid; Akkadian šîbu, a stative verbal adjective
“elder” → “witness” from šʾb “be old”). If Ugaritic adhered to this pattern, ypḥ,
derived from a transitive verb “emit (the voice)” (?), would have been vocalized
yāpiḥu. Normally this would have become yōpēaḥ in Hebrew. The hypothesis
here advanced is that the word was borrowed into Hebrew as a learned word
for “witness” from a dialect in which the Canaanite vowel shift (ā → ō) did not
obtain and in which the /i/ did not (necessarily) shift to /ē/ (the vowel /i/ of
the word ypḥ appears in Hebrew five times as /î/, once as /ī/, twice as /ē/). Only
in Ps. xxvii 12 has the unchangeably long quality of the /ā/ been lost, along
with the shift of /i/ to /ē/; in Hab. ii 3 the word yāpēaḥ is not in the construct
state so there is no reason to expect the /ā/ to reduce, but /i/ has shifted to /ē/.
All the attestations of yp( y)ḥ in Hebrew are relatively late (Proverbs, Psalm
xxvii, Habakkuk, Jeremiah), but none of the traditional sources of borrowing
for the middle of the first millennium B.C. are obvious candidates in the present
case (Northern Hebrew and Phoenician observe the Canaanite shift, while
ypḥ is not attested in Aramaic which, moreover, has another regular word for
28) Raschi in Miqraʾot Gedolot on Prov. vi 19, xii 17, xiv 5, Ps. xxvii 12, Hab. ii 3; N. H. Tur-Sinai, mšly
šlmh (Tel Aviv, 1946-1947), p. 16.
29) Delitzsch, p. 114; Lambert, REJ 57 (1909), p. 280.
30) Pp. 326, 445, 469, 529.