Homophony
It often happens in every language that words of entirely different meaning may sound alike, like the English words "beat" and "beet"; or even the noun "well," and the verb "well (up)," and the adverb "well." We have already alluded to a notable example in 25
Isaiah 9, where lo ("for him") was incorrectly given in the MT as lo' ("not"). Another obvious example is Micah 1:15, where the MT reads 'abi lak ("my father to you") rather than 'abi lak ("I will bring to you"--the meaning obviously demanded by the context).
The Masoretic notation in the margin favors the addition of an '(aleph) to 'abi . The LXX
so translates it ( agago soi ) and also the Vulgate ( adducam tibi ). As a matter of fact, it is conceivable that in Micah's day (eight century B.C.) the imperfect of the verb "to bring"
may have been optionally spelled without the aleph, owing to a greater brevity in the indication of sound.
7. Misreading similar-appearing letters
This type of error can actually be dated in history because at various stages of the alphabet development some letters, which later were written quite differently, resembled one another in shape. A notable example of this is the letter y (yodh), which greatly resembled the w (waw) from the postexilic period, when the square Hebrew form of the alphabet was introduced. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke of the "jot" (yodh) as the smallest letter in the alphabet-- "One jot or one tittle of the law shall not pass away until all be fulfilled" (Matt. 5:18). But up until the early sixth century B.C., yodh was as large a letter as many others in the alphabet and bore no resemblance whatever to the waw. Therefore we may confidently date all examples of confusion between yodh and waw to the third century B.C. or later.
Examples of misreading similar letters abound in 1QIsa. In Isaiah 33:13 it reads yd`w ("let them know") rather than MT's wd`w ("and know ye"). More significantly we find in the MT of Psalm 22:17 (Psalm 22:16 English.) the strange phrase "like the lion my hands and my feet" ( kaari yaday weraglay ) in a context that reads "dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me--like the lion my hands and my feet!" This really makes no sense, for lions do not surround the feet of their victims.
Rather, they pounce on them and bite them through with their teeth. Furthermore, this spelling of the word for "lion" ( 'ari ) is rendered more than doubtful by the fact than in v.13 (14MT) the word "lion" appears in the normal way as 'aryeh . It is most unlikely that the author would have used two different spellings of the same word within three verses of each other. Far more likely is the reading supported by most of the versions: ka'ru ("They [i.e., the dogs or evildoers] have pierced" my hands and my feet). This involves merely reading the final letter yodh as a waw, which would make it the past tense of a third person plural verb. This is apparently what the LXX read, for oryxan ("they have bored through") reflects a karu from the verb kur ("pierce, dig through"). The Vulgate conforms to this with foderunt ("they have dug through"). The Syriac Peshitta has baz`w , which means "they have pierced through/penetrated." Probably the '(aleph) in ka'ru represents a mere vowel lengthener that occasionally appears in the Hasmonean manuscripts such as 1QIsa and the sectarian literature of the second century B.C.
Another pair of easily confused letters is d (daleth) and r (resh). It so happens that at all stages of the Hebrew alphabet, both the old epigraphic and the later square Hebrew, these two always looked alike. Thus we find that the race referred to in Genesis 10:4 as the "Dodanim" appears in 1 Chronicles 1:7 as the "Rodanim." It is generally thought that Rodanim is the better reading because the reference seems to be to the Rhodians of the 26
Asia Minor coastline. A rather bizarre aberration in the LXX rendering of Zechariah 12:10 is best accounted for by a confusion
It often happens in every language that words of entirely different meaning may sound alike, like the English words "beat" and "beet"; or even the noun "well," and the verb "well (up)," and the adverb "well." We have already alluded to a notable example in 25
Isaiah 9, where lo ("for him") was incorrectly given in the MT as lo' ("not"). Another obvious example is Micah 1:15, where the MT reads 'abi lak ("my father to you") rather than 'abi lak ("I will bring to you"--the meaning obviously demanded by the context).
The Masoretic notation in the margin favors the addition of an '(aleph) to 'abi . The LXX
so translates it ( agago soi ) and also the Vulgate ( adducam tibi ). As a matter of fact, it is conceivable that in Micah's day (eight century B.C.) the imperfect of the verb "to bring"
may have been optionally spelled without the aleph, owing to a greater brevity in the indication of sound.
7. Misreading similar-appearing letters
This type of error can actually be dated in history because at various stages of the alphabet development some letters, which later were written quite differently, resembled one another in shape. A notable example of this is the letter y (yodh), which greatly resembled the w (waw) from the postexilic period, when the square Hebrew form of the alphabet was introduced. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke of the "jot" (yodh) as the smallest letter in the alphabet-- "One jot or one tittle of the law shall not pass away until all be fulfilled" (Matt. 5:18). But up until the early sixth century B.C., yodh was as large a letter as many others in the alphabet and bore no resemblance whatever to the waw. Therefore we may confidently date all examples of confusion between yodh and waw to the third century B.C. or later.
Examples of misreading similar letters abound in 1QIsa. In Isaiah 33:13 it reads yd`w ("let them know") rather than MT's wd`w ("and know ye"). More significantly we find in the MT of Psalm 22:17 (Psalm 22:16 English.) the strange phrase "like the lion my hands and my feet" ( kaari yaday weraglay ) in a context that reads "dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me--like the lion my hands and my feet!" This really makes no sense, for lions do not surround the feet of their victims.
Rather, they pounce on them and bite them through with their teeth. Furthermore, this spelling of the word for "lion" ( 'ari ) is rendered more than doubtful by the fact than in v.13 (14MT) the word "lion" appears in the normal way as 'aryeh . It is most unlikely that the author would have used two different spellings of the same word within three verses of each other. Far more likely is the reading supported by most of the versions: ka'ru ("They [i.e., the dogs or evildoers] have pierced" my hands and my feet). This involves merely reading the final letter yodh as a waw, which would make it the past tense of a third person plural verb. This is apparently what the LXX read, for oryxan ("they have bored through") reflects a karu from the verb kur ("pierce, dig through"). The Vulgate conforms to this with foderunt ("they have dug through"). The Syriac Peshitta has baz`w , which means "they have pierced through/penetrated." Probably the '(aleph) in ka'ru represents a mere vowel lengthener that occasionally appears in the Hasmonean manuscripts such as 1QIsa and the sectarian literature of the second century B.C.
Another pair of easily confused letters is d (daleth) and r (resh). It so happens that at all stages of the Hebrew alphabet, both the old epigraphic and the later square Hebrew, these two always looked alike. Thus we find that the race referred to in Genesis 10:4 as the "Dodanim" appears in 1 Chronicles 1:7 as the "Rodanim." It is generally thought that Rodanim is the better reading because the reference seems to be to the Rhodians of the 26
Asia Minor coastline. A rather bizarre aberration in the LXX rendering of Zechariah 12:10 is best accounted for by a confusion
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