[Avodah] mah tovu

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 11:08:23AM -0700, Saul.Z.Newman at kp.org wrote:
: on why it is written chasser, 2 thoughts: one i saw, one i'm thinking
: about

Nice thoughts. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the question works.

/TBW/ appears in Tanakh twice -- here and Shir haShirim 4:10.

/TWBW/ appears 3 times, but all three are "tuvo", not "tovu". (Hoshea 3:5,
Zekhariah 9:17, Iyov 20:21).

So it would seem to be written chaseir simply because that's normal
spelling of the word. There is no abnormality to darshen.

Of course, with only two examples, that's pretty hard for me to assert
too strongly...

It might be related to the loss of the yud in "tzitz" when it becomes
"tzitzis" /SSYT/ and the vav in "luach" when it becomes "luchos" /LCVT/.
There too, only the second vowel is malei. If so, the counterexample of
"tuvo" might help explain this issue that Mesorah members must be
tired of me raising every 18 mo or so.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is equipped with such far-reaching vision,
micha at aishdas.org        yet the smallest coin can obstruct his view.
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