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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 Ex34-29b
      URL Reference: (c) http://www.Rashiyomi.com/rule1405.htm
      Brief Summary: There are 3 ways verbs can come from nouns: a) CREATION OF THE NOUN, e.g. to flower, to beam, b) REMOVAL OF THE NOUN, e.g. to dust, c) TYPICAL USAGE OF THE NOUN, e.g. to hammar.

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 transformation of nouns into verbs. Although most conjugation rules refer to the conjugation of verbs, there are also conjugation rules for transfroming nouns into verbs. We list several common methods for transforming nouns into verbs:
  • create the noun: e.g. to flower
  • remove the noun: e.g. to dust
  • use the noun: e.g. to hammer
  • the verb(activity) done to this noun: e.g. Dt21-04b: neck the calf in other words kill it with a blow to the neck

Hence from the noun phrase, beaming face we obtain the verb phrase, indicating a creation of the noun-phrase: that is, his face beams, means he has a beaming face.

English already has a word for this verb-noun transofrmation. Using the English words we translate Ex34-29 as follows: And it came to pass, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of Testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses knew not that his facial skin beamed.

We have already explained in rule #2, meaning above that in Hebrew we use the word horn instead of beam: So the verse literally says his face horned. 


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