Word Study

Leonard S. Berkowitz

Consider that "been" is the same grammatical form as "seen" (despite a difference in pronunciation.

Hebrew has the same phenomenon, but the spellings are much more complex, because the vowel markings are so rich. I have a Hebrew word, the third word from the end in Numbers 31:15, that has an unusual constellation of vowels. In fact, one of the notes in BHS suggests a reading based on the Vulgate and other sources that is more normal.

Is there a way that I can search the Hebrew Bible so see whether there are other instances of these vowel markings -- the consonants can be different, and probably will be?

If so, how would I go about doing this? I am a newbie in the area of Word Study.

Thanks,

Leonard Berkowitz

MJ. Smith

Don't think that you are being ignored, I'm sure that several of us have puzzled over it and decided we were unqualified to answer. For your been/seen example, I feel comfortable going back to the classes of proto-IndoEuropean verbs and the historical phonological changes to be able to narrow the set of possible words e.g. it is not all verbs ending in -een - think careen, screen, keen, preen. To answer your question I'd have to know something about phonetic rules in Semitic languages and what makes the unusual constellation of vowels occur at all. However, you could try using the Search on the Hebrew with wild cards for the consonants - this works in English if one wants to sort through all the results.