[Mesorah] a kleinigkeit

[Mandel, Seth]

I call it that because most people only care about masorah if it changes the meaning or the pronunciation.

But the non-defenestrated denizens of the Mesorah group understand that the masorah is much deeper than such things, and is important in light of the number of rishonim who spent time on it.

So I am mentioning something that I shamefully admit that I was unaware of all my years:

In the pasuq:
יד:יא וַיֹּאמְרוּ, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה הֲמִבְּלִי אֵיןקְבָרִים בְּמִצְרַיִם לְקַחְתָּנוּ לָמוּת בַּמִּדְבָּר, מַה-זֹּאת עָשִׂיתָ לָּנוּ לְהוֹצִיאָנוּ מִמִּצְרָיִם.
regarding the word "hamibb'li," all printed Chumashim have the punctuation as is above, with a hataph-patah under the he'.

However, that is not the puncuation in the kisvei yad that represent the Ben-Asher masorah.  Rather, all of them, without exception have a full patah — WITH a ge‘aya/AKA meteg.  As the meritorious members of this group are aware, that means that the syllable "ha" is lengthened and has a secondary stress.

The Minchas Shai already noticed this issue.  He notes that R. Yonah had it with a full patah, and it is the R'DaQ who says it should be a hataph-patah based on S'faradi mss.  He even goes on to say that there are some who claim that the ms. on which R.Yonah was basing himself was the Aleppo Codex.  That means to me that the Minchas Shay, without being able to decide the matter, attaches serious weight to the view of R. Yonah.

In any event, now we can be certain based on the better mss. that we have.

Prescriptive grammarians, who hold that the he' hash'elah should always have a hataph-patah, of course will be disturbed.  But as we know, the Masorah did not believe in prescriptive grammar, only in descriptive.



Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union

Voice (212) 613-8330     Fax (212) 613-0718     e-mail mandels at ou.org
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