[Mesorah] She'ata / Sha'ata

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 01:45:38PM -0600, Michael Hamm wrote:
: On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Gershon Dubin <gershon.dubin at juno.com> wrote:
: <<In Modim and elsewhere.  Can someone give me an explanation for the
: komatz for the shin?>>

: Not I, but note also:
:  . shakamti with a patach (shiras D'vora)
:  . shagam with a patach (end of parasha B'reshis IIRC)
:  . shalama with a patach (Shir Hashirim)

Gid'on refers to a mal'akh as sha'atah.

Some maskil decided that sha- was more biblically authentic, and laid
in a new course for Ashkenazi siddurim. The same hypercoreection phase
that turned "lakh" into "lekha" (except in the first instance in Modim,
oddly enough), "Toresakh" into "Torasekha", and perhaps also "bori peri
hagefen" (mishnaic diqduq) into "gafen" (Tanakhi).

Of interest to me, you'll notice a general evolution from "asher" to
"sha-" to "she-" among biblical texts if you take their ages as they
are al pi mesorah. An argument against Higher Criticism.

Along -- or really I should say "against" -- those lines, the word I
think you are thinking of in the 2nd bullet item is "beshagam" (6:3),
not plain "shagam". According to what I just said, the norm for chumash
would be "ba'asher [hu?] gam". Rashi and Ramban write "kemo 'beshegam',
besegol..." Unqelus translates "bedil", as though "beshagam" means
"mipenei", not from "gam". The Zohar takes it as a noun: "'beshagam
hu basar' -- beshagam zeh Hevel de'ihu Mosheh..." Lehavdil, Genesius
<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Gesenius%27_Hebrew_Grammar_%281910_Kautzsch-Cowley_edition%29.djvu/204>
has "in their error", the root being "shagam", although he does add "there
is also good authority for beshagam from sha- = she- = asher and gam...)

:-)BBii!
-Micha

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