Well, I think it is so The dagesh, which I believe to be a pre NIKUD reading hinter, is not needed in plene writing. Indeed, SIYM is routinely written in full, and consequently with no dagesh, as the יְשִׂימָם YSIYMAM of Deut. 7:15. But in 2Ki 13:7 it is וַיְשִׂמֵם WAYSIMEM, and still with no dagesh. This means, I think, that at the time the dgeshim were introduced into the biblical text the word was written plene with a Y, which was lost later on.
A similar fate befell the letter W of UGAB of Ps. 150:4, and hence the lack of a dagesh in the letter B following a qubuc. I think that there were two systems of dgeshim that got mixed together in our present text. In one system, a dot was placed after a qubuc, a patax or a xiriq even in a letter not followed by a vowel, for example, סִתְּמוּם SITMUM of Gen. 26:15 and וַיְסַתְּמוּם WAYSATMUM of Gen. 26:18. In the other system, a dagesh is not placed in a letter marked now by a schwa, for instance, וַאֲמֻשְׁךָ WA-AMU$KA of Gen. 27:21. Isaac Fried, Boston University On May 10, 2012, at 11:33 AM, Isaac Fried wrote: > Why there is no dot in the first letter M of וַיְשִׂמֵם > WAYSIMEM I don't know. _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
