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 present a Rashi which is best understood using the rules of person agreement. Surprisingly Rashi gives us a rule we do not know!

Most people know that the subject, verb and object should agree in plurality and person. This is a rule in all languages. For example we say He speaks but They speak. Similar rules exist in Hebrew.

Rashi enunciates an exception to this rule: If you are speaking about something unpleasant you can switch from 1st person to 3rd person. This switch creates an artificial distance between you (the 1st person) and the unpleasnat topic.

Let us apply this Rahsi rule to Nu16-14 discussing the refusal of Dathan and Aviram to appear before Moshe. The intended verse is Moreover thou [Moses] hast not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor given us inheritance of fields and vineyards; will you take out our eyes [so we don't see what you have done to us]? we will not come up.' Following Rashi's principle we replace the underlined phrase, take out our eyes with the phrase take out their eyes or even better take out the eyes of these men. The entire verse would then read as follows: Moreover thou [Moses] hast not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor given us inheritance of fields and vineyards; will you take out the eyes of these men. [so we don't see what you have done to us]? we will not come up.

Advanced Rashi: This person-switch principle is universal to all languages and there are many examples of it in the Bible. Psychologically the use of this principle by Dathan and Aviram shows a heightened sensitivity to any suggestion of mishap. Such a heightened sensitivity is characteristic of the parnaoic state in which many of the slaves who left Egypt were still in. This paranoia prevented them from accepting God's love and ultimately led to their ruin. Interestingly the psychological evaluation of the Jews as paranoic is explicitly stated in the Bible Dt01-27, since the Hebrew root Resh-Gimel-Nun means paranoia.