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      3. RASHI METHOD: GRAMMAR
      BRIEF EXPLANATION: Rashi explains verses using grammar principles, that is, rules which relate reproducable word form to word meaning. Grammatical rules neatly fall into 3 categories
      • (a) the rules governing conjugation of individual words,Biblical roots,
      • (b) the rules governing collections of words,clauses, sentences
      • (c) miscellaneous grammatical, or form-meaning, rules.
      This examples applies to Rashis Dt04-23b
      URL Reference: (c) http://www.Rashiyomi.com/rule1302.htm
      Brief Summary: Watch yourself lest you worship idols which God has commanded you [not to do!]

Today only basic 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 study a rule common in many languages dealing with omission of words in a sentence. The technical term to describe such matters is ellipsis.

Hence Rashi translates Dt01-23b as follows: Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of HaShem your G-d, which He made with you, and make you a graven image, even the likeness of any thing which HaShem thy G-d hath commanded you [not to do] In other words the literal text which God has commanded you does not make sense since God did not command to make idols. One way of remedying our understandding of the text is to add the words concerning so that the entire text would read concerning which God has commanded you Rashi provides an alternative remedy and reads the text which HaShem thy G-d hath commanded you [not to do].

We have chosen to approach this Rashi as grammarical instead of as contradiction since the contradiction is resolved through interpretation of the underlying sentence as elliptical and ellipsis is common in many languages.


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