[Avodah] Merchavyah

[Akiva Miller]

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R' Micha Berger asked:
> How is this a halachic question again? How is a copy of
> Tehillim kosher or pasul? The kavanah and pronunciation are
> unchanged, no? It's important to know what the pasuq actually
> says, but is it a halachic question at all?

One can say whether a written Navi is kosher or pasul, and one can say
whether a written Megilla is kosher or pasul. But I do concede that I
don't know whether this is relevant to a written Tehillim.

On the other hand, this question of one/two words does affect both the
meaning and the pronunciation.

Meaning:

Ibn Ezra takes it as two separate words, the second of which is a Shem.

In the Siddur Otzar Hatefilos, the "Iyun Tefila" at the very bottom of
the page spells it as a single word, with nekudos, and explains that
"merchavyah" simply means "very very wide"; he also gives three other
examples where a word is given a yud-heh suffix merely for emphasis.

Pronunciation:

I can see how one might argue that if the vowels are unchanged, then
the pronunciation is also unchanged. But I cannot agree with that.
Surely, if they are two words, then there must be a gap between them,
and that gap must be longer than what normally happens at a shva nach,
no?

But actually, the difference is bigger than that: When merchavyah is
printed as two words, the final letter is a mapik heh. But when it is
a single word (as in the Hirsch Tehillim, the Hirsch Siddur, and the
Hertz siddur,) the mapik is missing. This is explicit in the Minchas
Shai on our pasuk (Tehillim 118:5) and it is definitely going to
affect the pronunciation (or at least, it *ought* to affect the
pronunciation. :-)

Akiva Miller