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 beautiful biblical topic of pronoun reference. English quite simply requires a pronoun to refer to the last mentioned noun. By contrast biblical Hebrew allows pronouns to refer to any reasonable antecedent. Verse Lv27-20 discussing the redemption of property dedicated by a private owner to the Temple illustrates this subtle principle.
• But if
  • he [the original owner] doesn't redeem the field [that he dedicated to the Temple]
  • and if he [the Temple manager] has sold the field to another person
• then the field can no longer be redeemed.
Rashi clarifies the references of the elliptic subjects, he. Rashi explains that the first he refers to the original owner while the last he refers to the Temple manager. Thus in one verse the word he remarkably has two different referents each one being the most reasonable. Indeed, the person selling the field must be the Temple since the original owner already dedicated his property to the Temple while by contrast the person not redeeming must be the original owner.

Advanced Rashi: Did you notice that the verse does not simply say If the original owner does not redeem the field and the temple manager does sell it then the field can no longer be redeemed. Rather the verse use a rare form of logic, the export-import law. The export-import law asserts that the following two sentence forms have the same meaning: If A and B then C and If A then if B then C. By using the repeating keyword if the Biblical Author creates distinctness in the two hypotheses a distinctness which is reflected in the different references of he - the he in one sentence refers to the original owner while the he in the second sentence refers to the Temple manager.