[Mesorah] Two (obvious) questions on parshas bereshis - double trop and double arum

[Toby Katz]

 In a message dated 10/9/2018 1:55:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, mesorah at lists.aishdas.org writes: 
>>  According to an online version of Strong's, they say that the first two occasions of the word "arum" (ayin-reish-mem), are from two different shorashim (one meaning naked, the other meaning cunning).  Can anyone here elaborate on that? <<-- Sholom
 
 
 >>>>
 
Someone -- I think R' Seth Mandel -- once posted here that there used to be two different "ayins" in ancient Hebrew.
 
Here is a very interesting article, "Changes in the Hebrew Alphabet," by Jeff A. Benner.  

<<http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/alphabet_changes.html>>
 
He writes that there used to two different ayins, "ayin" and "ghayin," and he says that modern Arabic retains these two different letters.  He has a list of Hebrew words in which the same shoresh (containing an ayin) has two completely different meanings, and claims that in each case, one of the couplet was originally spelled with a ghayin.  The list includes "arum" -- naked, or crafty.  The latter was originally spelled with a ghayin.  The two different ayins were pronounced differently, as they still are in Arabic.  The ghayin was a guttural sound, traces of which remain in the English place names "Gemorrah" and "Gaza."
 
But a possible counter-argument might be this:  The Torah is clearly juxtaposing the two "arums" for poetic effect (as well as the suggestion that the two meanings are related in some deep way).  There are many such examples in Tanach.  If they were originally two different words, the poetic effect would (maybe) be lost.
 
In many of these cases, Rashi will specifically point out the poetic effect, calling it "Lashon nofel al lashon."  (We would call it a play on words.)
 
For one example, see Shoftim 15:16 where Shimshon says (poetically), "Belechi hachamor chamor chamorasayim"  -- "with the jawbone of a donkey, I piled up heaps and heaps [of Philistine corpses]."
 
By the way, Brenner in his article suggests there were also originally two different letters "ches."  That may or may not be so but again, the fact that Shimshon's words seem to be deliberately chosen for their poetic effect would seem to argue that there were not two different cheses, or that their pronunciations were similar to each other.
 
 
--Toby Katz
t613k at aol.com
 
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