Today Hebrew grammar is well understood and there are many books on it. Rashi, however, lived before the age of grammar books. A major Rashi method is therefore the teaching of basic grammar.

Many students belittle this aspect of Rashi. They erroneously think that because of modern methods we know more. However Rashi will frequently focus on rare grammatical points not covered in conventional textbooks.

There are many classical aspects to grammar whether in Hebrew or other languages. They include
• The rules for conjugating verbs. These rules govern how you differentiate person, plurality, tense, mode, gender, mood, and designation of the objects and indirect objects of the verb. For example how do you conjugate, in any language, I sang, we will sing, we wish to sing, she sang it.
• Rules of agreement. For example agreement of subject and verb, of noun and adjective; whether agreement in gender or plurality.
• Rules of Pronoun reference.
• Rules of word sequence. This is a beautiful topic which is not always covered in classical grammatical textbooks.

Today we deal with the Biblical rules governing pronoun antecedent. Biblical Hebrew has a unique approach to antecedents. In English pronouns refer to the last mentioned noun. In Hebrew pronouns refer to the most reasonable of the last few mentioned nouns.

We apply the preceding analysis to Ex17-12a. We cite the verse and insert comments on pronoun referents in brackets. The underlines show the continual changes in subjects.
• Moses, Aaron and Chur went up the hill;
• And Moses' hands were heavy
• They [Aaron and Chur] took a stone and placed it under him [Moses] for support