Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/266

 The ending îm is also common in Phoenician, e.g. ; Assyrian has âni (acc. to P. Haupt originally âmi, cf. ); Aramaic has în; Arabic ûna (nominative) and îna (in the oblique cases, but in vulgar Arabic în is also used for the nominative); Ethiopic ân. Cf. also the verbal ending in the 3rd plur. perf. and in the 3rd and 2nd plur. impf. .

Less frequent, or only apparent terminations of the plur. masc. are—

(a), as in Aramaic, found almost exclusively in the later books of the O.T. (apart from the poetical use in some of the older and even the oldest portions), viz. ,, , , , , ; defectively , ; ,. Cf. also, , in the North-Palestinian song of Deborah, which also has other linguistic peculiarities; , (before ; cf. );  (from the really Aram. ), , and twelve other places in Job (beside , ten times in Job); further,  ,  , and  ,  .—The following forms are doubtful:

(b) (with the  rejected, as, according to some, in the dual  for , cf. ), e.g. ,  for  (unless it is to be so written) ; , , and, probably, also  (in  it may be taken as ; cf. in the parallel passage  ; also in  the î of  is better regarded as a suffix); see also  as compared with , and on the whole question Gesenius, , p. 524 ff. More doubtful still is—

(c) (like the constr. state in Syriac), which is supposed to appear in e.g.,  (perhaps my princes is intended: read either the constr. st. , which also has good authority, or with LXX ); for   (according to others dual, see , or a loan word, cf.  iii. 93) read. On and, which have also been so explained, see above, .—  (where the right reading is certainly ) must be intended by the Masora either as a singular with the formative syllable  =bareness or, more probably, as a constr. st. with the original termination ay (cf. ) to avoid the harsh combination hasûfê šēt ; in (prop. my lord, from the plur. majestatis, ), the ay was originally a suffix,.

(d) a supposed plural ending in = (or lice), and  (supposed by some to be a plur. like our stairs); but cf. on the former,.

2. The plural termination of the feminine gender is generally indicated by the termination (often written defectively, e.g. , plur.  (only in post-biblical Hebrew