[Mesorah] Bamidbar 23:18

[Mandel, Seth]

Dear Mr. Topas,
The answer to your question does not lie in any grammar book yet written, all of which are based on the printed text of the T’NaKh.
But the T’NaKh existed for a little b’h time before printing was invented, and the Ben Asher school of Masoretes became acknowledged as the most careful. They had many differences with other school (e.g. they punctuated  “b’yisrael,” whereas other groups punctuated it as “bisrael”).
Aharon Ben Asher, the latest and greatest of the family, was developing a system of using the vowels to reflect very small differences in how words are pronounced, for instance when the sh’wa is pronounced and when it is silent. One way he did that was to use a Chatham vowel instead of a plain sh’wa.
The Masorah shows that sometimes the sh’wa was pronounced after the prefix “u-“ although most of the time it is not. They show when it is, Aharon Ben Asher and some other members of his school used the chataph vowel.
So the direct shottbandwer to your query is: to show that the sh’wa undervthe shin is not silent but rather pronounced.





On July 1, 2018 at 4:51:29 PM EDT, Henry Topas via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
In yesterday's kriat hatorah, the phrase "kum balak u'sh'ma" is vowelized in many seforim as "kum balak u'sha'mah with a chataf patach in place of the sh'va.  The Minchas Shai also draws one's attention to the same situation in Va'etchanan on the phrase "k'rav atah u'sh'mah or u'sha'mah" and in Daniel "Hatei .....aznecha u'sh'ma".

My understanding was always that the vav ha-chibur changes to the shuruk when followed by a consonant vowelized by a sh'va (or if followed by either vet, vav, mem or phay)

If the shuruk at the beginning of the word is a given, why would the chataf patach be an option instead of the shva?

Thank you,

Henry Topas
Dollard des Ormeaux, Montreal


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