A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar Christo H.J. van der Merwe Jackie A. Naudé Jan H. Kroeze Biblical Languages: Hebrew 3

Dedicated to Eric Samson.

Without his generous sponsorship of the

Eric Samson Chair for Hebrew Grammar

this project would not have been possible.

Copyright © 1999 Sheffield Academic Press

Published by

Sheffield Academic Press

Mansion House

19 Kingfield Road

Sheffield S11 9AS

England

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Contents

Foreword

Abbreviations

Chapter 1

Introduction

§1. Biblical Hebrew as a Semitic Language

§2. The Historical Unity and Development of Hebrew

§3. A Short Review of the Grammatical Treatment of Biblical Hebrew

Chapter 2

The Hebrew Alphabet and Masoretic Signs

§4. The Alphabet—Consonants

§4.1. The Form of the Hebrew Consonants

§4.2. Special Features of the Hebrew Consonants

§5. The Alphabet—Vowels

§5.1. The Form of the Hebrew Vowels

§5.2. The Classification of Vowels and their Characteristics

§6. Diphthongs

§6.1. With י after a Vowel

§6.2. The Transitional Pataḥ or Pataḥ Furtivum

§7. Syllables and Accents

§7.1. Types of Syllables

§7.2. Accentuation

§7.3. The Distribution of Vowels in Syllables

§8. Masoretic Signs with a Double Function

§8.1. The Šewâ

§8.2. The Dagesh

§8.3. The Qāmeṣ

§8.4. The וּ Sign

§9. Additional Masoretic Signs

§9.1. The Meteg

§9.2. The Mappîq

§9.3. The Maqqēf

§9.4. The Sôf Pāsûq

§9.5. The Accent Signs

§9.6. The Pausal Forms

§9.7. Kethib and Qere Readings

§9.8. Other Masoretic Markers

Chapter 3

Word, Clause and Text in Biblical Hebrew: A Survey

§10. The Levels of Language Structure

§11. The Word Categories/Classes in Biblical Hebrew

§11.1. Verbs

§11.2. Nouns

§11.3. Adjectives

§11.4. Prepositions

§11.5. Conjunctions

§11.6. Adverbs

§11.7. Predicators of Existence

§11.8. Interrogatives

§11.9. Discourse Markers

§11.10. Interjections

§12. The Clause in Biblical Hebrew

§12.1. The Clause: A Definition

§12.2. The Syntactical Units of the Clause

§12.3. The Relationships between the Syntactical Units of the Clause

§12.4. Typical Characteristics of BH Clauses

§12.5. Types of Sentences

§13. The Text in Biblical Hebrew

Chapter 4

The Verb

§14. Review

§15. The Morphology of the Basic Paradigm

§15.1. The Perfect Form

§15.2. The Imperfect Form

§15.3. The Imperative Form

§15.4. The Cohortative Form

§15.5. The Jussive Form

§15.6. The Infinitive Construct

§15.7. The Infinitive Absolute

§15.8. The Participle

§16. The Stem Formations

§16.1. The Names of the Stem Formations

§16.2. Morphology and Semantics of the Qal

§16.3. Morphology and Semantics of the Niphal

§16.4. Morphology and Semantics of the Piel

§16.5. Morphology and Semantics of the Pual

§16.6. Morphology and Semantics of the Hithpael

§16.7. Morphology and Semantics of the Hiphil

§16.8. Morphology and Semantics of the Hophal

§16.9. Table 8. The Stem Formations: the Complete Paradigm

§17. Pronominal Suffixes Added to Verbs

§17.1. Introduction

§17.2. Suffixes ...