Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/131

 ) only four times, viz., , ; in   (before a ) is even used as feminine.

III. Third Person.

6. (a) In and  (hû and hî) the  (corresponding to the ʾElif of prolongation in Arabic, cf. ) might be regarded only as an orthographic addition closing the final long vowel, as in, , &c. The is, however, always written in the case of the separate pronouns, and only as a toneless suffix  does  appear as, while  becomes. In Arabic (as in Syriac) they are written and  but pronounced húwă and hı́yă, and in Vulgar Arabic even húwwa and hı́yya. This Arabic pronunciation alone would not indeed be decisive, since the vowel complement might have arisen from the more consonantal pronunciation of the and ; but the Ethiopic weʾetû (=huʾa-tû) for, yeʾetî (=hiʾa-tî) for  (cf. also the Assyrian ya-u-a for ) show that the  was original and indicated an original vocalic termination of the two words. According to Philippi ( xxviii. 175 and xxix. 371 ff.) arose from a primitive Semitic ha-va,  from ha-ya.

(b) The form also stands in the consonantal text  of the Pentateuch (with the exception of eleven places) for the fem. . In all such cases the Masora, by the punctuation, has indicated the  ( perpetuum, see § 17). The old explanation regarded this phenomenon as an archaism which was incorrectly removed by the Masoretes. This assumption is, however, clearly untenable, if we consider (1) that no other Semitic language is without the quite indispensable distinction of gender in the separate pronoun of the 3rd pers.; (2) that this distinction does occur eleven times in the Pentateuch, and that in, ,  and  are found close to one another; (3) that outside the Pentateuch the distinction is found in the oldest documents, so that the  cannot be regarded as having been subsequently adopted from the Aramaic; (4) that those parts of the book of Joshua which certainly formed a constituent part of the original sources of the Pentateuch, know nothing of this epicene use of. Consequently there only remains the hypothesis, that the writing of for  rests on an orthographical peculiarity which in some recension of the Pentateuch-text was almost consistently followed, but was afterwards very properly rejected by the Masoretes. The orthography was, however, peculiar to the Pentateuch-text alone, since it is unnecessary to follow the Masora in writing for  in, , , or  for  in , ,. The Samaritan recension of the Pentateuch has the correct form in the throughout. Levy’s explanation of this strange practice of the Masoretes is evidently right, viz. that originally was written for both forms (see k, note), and was almost everywhere, irrespective of gender, expanded into. On the whole question see Driver, Leviticus (in Haupt’s Bible), p. 25 f. In the text Driver always reads.

7. The plural forms and  (after prefixes, ) are of doubtful origin, but ,  have probably been assimilated to  which goes back to a form hı́nnā. In Western Aram. ,, Syr. henûn