[Mesorah] Chana question

[Michael Hamm]

On Tue, 26 Sep 2006, D&E-H Bannett wrote, in part:
> Methinks that if the word is akhla in the past tense, most
> chumashim will have a meteg in the alef to indicate a long
> vowel as per R' Yosef Kimhi.
>
> As there is no meteg, the word is evidently okhla.

And someone else clarified for my benefit that this rule applies to any
syllable two before the emphasis, counting a sh'va na as a syllable for
this purpose.

I've heard this rule before but never quite believed it.  So now I decided
to test it, and picked a pasuk at semirandom, the second pasuk of the
tamid that we say in korbanos twice a day (or fewer).

Tzav es-b'ne Yisrael v'amarta alehem es-korbani lachmi l'ishay reach
nichochi tishm'ru l'hakriv li b'moado.

There are nine words in this pasuk (ten if es-b'ne counts as one) that the
rule as stated should apply to, yet only three of them (v'amarta,
nichochi, and b'moado) have a meseg.  I then turned a semirandom number of
pages back and came upon Korach, perek 17 pasuk 2:

Emor el-El'azar ben-Aharon hakohen v'yarem es-hamachtos miben has'refa
v'es-haesh z're-hol'a ki kadeshu.

This pasuk has six words the rule should apply to (eight if hyphenated
words wount), yet only one of them has a meseg.

Am I missing a key component of the rule?  Or are there just lots of
exceptions?

G'mar chasima tova to all,

Michael Hamm
AM, Math, Wash. U. St. Louis
msh210 at math.wustl.edu                Fine print:
http://www.math.wustl.edu/~msh210/ ... legal.html

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