Isaac Fried:
I may have found a little backing for your controversial view of a final
ayin, and in an unexpected source at that: Akkadian weak verbs. Akkadian has
no ayin (which may be telling us something right there). But many Akkadian
verbs are cognates of Hebrew verbs that end in ayin. So what is the nature
of Akkadian verbs that are cognates of Hebrew verbs that end in ayin? Take
a gander at this statement from a standard Akkadian grammar textbook:
“Verbs third weak (i.e. with a weak third radical) are by far the largest
class of weak verbs [in Akkadian]. They include all verbs which in related
languages have as third root consonant the appropriate representatives of
Proto-Semitic 'aleph, h, h-dot [soft heth], 'ayin, ghain, waw, yodh.” Richard
I. Caplice, “Introduction to Akkadian” (2002), at p. 56.
All three of your designated culprits are there: final H, aleph, and ayin.
So when an Akkadian verb is cognate to a Hebrew verb that ends in ayin,
that Akkadian verb will be weak, and in particular, its third radical, which
substitutes for ayin (because Akkadian has no ayin), will be “a weak third
radical”. What scholars call “a weak third radical” you call “filler” and I
call “a mere verbal suffix”. But aren’t we all describing the same
phenomenon? There is no tri-consonantal root in )RB( or $M( or YD(. Those are
archaic 2-consonant roots all the way -- RB, $M and YD -- with the final ayin
being a mere verbal suffix [or, if you insist, “filler”].
Isaac Fried, who would have thought your ideas and Akkadian weak verbs
would fit together so nicely? In fact, we could figure out all sorts of
important things in the Bible if we could get beyond seeing the final ayin in
Hebrew verbs as being an integral part of the word’s original, true root. For
example, why insist that the meaning of the Anakim giant’s name )RB( is “Four”
? That makes no sense. Rather, )RB( as the Bronze Age proper name of an
Anakim giant means “Be Big”. The archaic 2-consonant root of )RB( is RB,
which means “be big; be great; be many; be bigger than three, that is, be
four”. So call that Anakim giant “Mr. Big”, not a nonsensical “Mr. Four”.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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