BHS Help Needed

Could someone remind me what the vertical bar in the BHS text means? I can't seem to find an explanation for it in the apparatus. I seem to remember it is to mark a pause for someone doing public reading but I am not sure. Here is an example from Ex. 34:6

וַיַּעֲבֹ֨ר יְהוָ֥ה׀ עַל־פָּנָיו֮

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HJ. van der Wal

Shalom Dan and welcome to the forums!

The first vertical stroke in Exodus 34:6 is a paseq. The second vertical stroke you encounter in this verse belongs to the munah legarme accent.

[quote]

Påseq (פָּסֵק, an Aramaic participle meaning “separating”) is a vertical stroke placed on the left of a word. This sign is graphically similar to the vertical stroke of some accents such as lgarme, major shalshelet Paseq was introduced at a late period and in a manner less coherent than other accents, as a result of which its use is not very clear. In most of about 480 examples found in our editions(), this sign serves as a bumper which prevents two words being brought into too close a relation under certain circumstances, e.g. when the same consonant appears both at the beginning and at the end of a word as in Jer 51.37 בָּבֶ֨ל ׀ לְגַלִּ֧ים ׀ מְעוֹן. But quite a few instances of it do not seem to fit this definition, and several hypotheses of varying degrees of likelihood have been put forward to account for these: e.g., that paseq is a diacritical symbol, or that it indicates an ancient abbreviation, or the insertion of a short gloss.

(1) The list is found in Wickes, Accentuation of Prose Books (cf. § n), pp. 120ff.

Joüon, P., & Muraoka, T. (2003). A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Vol. 1, pp. 68–69). Pontificio Istituto Biblico.

(Edited)

Dan Starcevich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/832590#Comment_832590

Thanks so much brother!

Stephen Miller

Dan,

The vertical line in BHS is as short break. When reading BHS, pause but not long enough to take a breath. It is sometimes combined with another pause mark a few words before.

Technically it is is a Paseq ... think of "pauseq".

Stephen Miller

Sydney, Australia

Dan Starcevich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/832674#Comment_832674

thank you !

Benjamin Denckla

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/832590#Comment_832590

I "half agree" with this analysis provided by HJ. van der Wal (almost 8 years ago).

I agree that the first vertical stroke in Exodus 34:6 is a paseq (separating יְהֹוָ֥ה from עַל־פָּנָיו֮).

I do not agree that the second vertical stroke in Exodus 34:6 (separating יְהֹוָ֣ה from יְהֹוָ֔ה) belongs to the munaḥ legarmeh accent. According to me, that second vertical stroke is also a paseq, like the first vertical stroke.

Unfortunately, one cannot distinguish paseq from legarmeh using word-local context alone.

What I mean by that is: unfortunately, not all vertical bars following a word with munaḥ are legarmeh bars; some are paseq bars!

Experts may disagree about a few cases, but this case is pretty clearly a paseq. It is a paseq because the accent in question (munaḥ or munaḥ legarmeh, we'd like to know) is serving zaqef qatan on יְהֹוָ֔ה. This is not a known use of munaḥ legarmeh. In the great majority of cases, munaḥ legarmeh serves revia. An example of this typical use can in fact be found the next verse, Exodus 34:7, in the phrase פֹּקֵ֣ד ׀ עֲוֺ֣ן אָב֗וֹת. But zaqef qatan is not among even non-revia accents that are served (rarely) by munaḥ legarmeh. In addition, it is a known use of paseq to separate pairs of יהוה (the tetragrammaton).

Editions distinguishing paseq from legarmeh are not common. A paper edition that does so is Tiqqun Qorim Simanim (the "Reader's Edition" by the publisher Simanim). A web edition that does so is "MAM with doc" (Mwd). Here's Exodus 34:6 in Mwd. Other editions of MAM (like that on Sefaria) also make this distinction, but Mwd's formatting makes the paseq vs legarmeh distinction the most obvious among all the MAM editions. Here's the start of 34:6 in Mwd:

For comparison, here's that typical revia phrase from 34:7:

Mwd also includes, as one of its "features of interest" listings, a listing of cases of "munaḥ with bar" (munaḥ with legarmeh or munaḥ with paseq). The notation is rather terse, but with a little work, I hope you can get the gist of it.