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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 Gn28-02a
      URL Reference: (c) http://www.Rashiyomi.com/rule1315.htm
      Brief Summary: The Hebrew PadenaH (Suffix Hey) is equivalent to LePadan (prefix Lamed) In both cases the suffix hey/prefix lamed means TO (To Padan)

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 discuss a grammatical rule unique to Hebrew. The rule is quite simple: You can indicate the preposition to by either
    • attaching a prefix Lamed before the word
    • attaching a suffix Hey after the word.
    Hence the verse Gn28-02a Get up, Go Paden-ah Aram has the same meaning as Get up, go to Paden Aram. Here the suffix letter hey indicated by the underlined ah means to.


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