[Mesorah] Leining and Transitive Verbs

[Joshua Meisner]

A couple of months back, I got into a leining dispute centered over Shmos
10:17.  The ba'al kri'ah, who did not distinguish between patach and komatz,
read "sa na chaTAsi ach ha-pa'am", instead of "sa na chataSI ach ha-pa'am".
I argued that the phrase required correction, as the ba'al kri'ah read
"Please bear/forgive; I have sinned this time", rather than "Please forgive
my sin, this time", while another mispaleil argued that since "sa" is a
transitive verb that must carry an object, the effective reading that I
suggested was impossible, so that the ba'al kri'ah's reading was merely
sloppy, and did not change the meaning of the passuk.  (He also argued that
the ba'al kri'ah wasn't such a skilled leiner, so deserved more leeway, but
that strikes me as being a more dubious argument.)

(Neither of us noted the fact that the te'amim could serve as further
evidence of the meaning of the passuk, in that the tertiary mafsik is on the
word chatasi, but even if this is a mitigating factor, let's assume that the
ba'al kri'ah did not sufficiently distinguish between low-level mafsikim and
m'sharsim, either - which may very well have been the case, although I don't
recall offhand.)

Thoughts?

Joshua
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