Yitro: Rashbam and the Dagesh in וַיִּ֣חַדְּ
I’ve been kvetching a lot about Eliyahu Munk’s commentary, and the censorship therein. One point I try to make is that we should take care not to hastily attribute nefarious motives to mistranslations. These might be mere mistranslations because of the difficult task of translating, not because our English translator is trying to hide stuff from us. (Yes, on occasion he does, but Hanlon’s Razor is an important principle.)
Last week, we noted that he said he would avoid translating some overly grammatical Chizkunis:
[seeing that it is poetry and you my readers are mostly not experts in classical Hebrew grammar (neither is this editor), I omit most of these comments. Ed.]
and this is praiseworthy transparency — I only wish he’s explicitly denote which he had omitted, and for that reason. In that same post, I pointed to a botched translation, where he took a Chizkuni saying that zu means “which” rather than “this one”, and rendered it as if Chizkuni were trying to say “this one”. This is unfortunate, but a result of the grammar being out of his reach. So, this is another thing we need to take care of, to not blindly accept the English grammatical discussions in his work. They might be quite off.
Here is an example from parashat Yitro. The verse, Shemot 18:9:
וַיִּ֣חַדְּ יִתְר֔וֹ עַ֚ל כׇּל־הַטּוֹבָ֔ה אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֥ה יְהֹוָ֖ה לְיִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר הִצִּיל֖וֹ מִיַּ֥ד מִצְרָֽיִם׃
And Jethro rejoiced over all the kindness that יהוה had shown Israel when delivering them from the Egyptians.
And Rashbam’s comment:
ויחד - מגזירת (חדה) [חדות] כמו: עוז וחדוה. כדין כל תיבה של בג"ד כפ"ת שמגזרת חטופי למד פעל שסופם דגשים. מן בכה ויבך. מן פתה ויפת בסתר לבי. יפת אלהים ליפת. אל תוסף על דבריו. מן שבה וישב.
ויחד, a word derived from the category חדה, similar to the word חדוה in Chronicles I 16,27 עוז וחדוה, “strength and joy.” The construction follows the rule applicable to all roots of the ב,ג,ד,כ,פ,ת group of consonants (letters which sometimes take a dagesh chazak). They also lose their last root letter as a result of this. (in our verse the letter ה) More examples are the root בכה and the construction ויבך, vayevk, “he cried.” Another well known example is the root שבה, and the construction וישב, vayashav, “he returned.”
There are several problems with this translation.
(1) He refers to dagesh chazak, but that is a dagesh which doubles the pronunciation of a consonant, and not specifically the letters of beged kefet. For instance, we have a dagesh chazak in the na of ana Hashem hoshia’ na in Hallel. They are all over the place.
For instance, in the very verse, there is a dagesh chazak in the tet of הַטּוֹבָ֔ה, the tzadi of הִצִּיל֖וֹ, and the yud of מִיַּ֥ד.
What Munk presumably intends is the dagesh kal, which appears in the beged kefet letters. The presence of that dagesh distinguishes between the plosive and fricative pronunciation of the letter. The plosive form (making a little explosion when you stop on that letter) often occurs at the beginning of the syllables, so that means at the beginning of words or immediately following a sheva nach that closed the preceding syllable. The dagesh chazak can occur in plenty of other consonants, so it does not make much sense to discuss a dagesh chazak and then restrict it to beged kefet letters.
So, the heh drops, and we end the word without that last syllable. We keep the middle letter, and the form will be with a sheva nach followed by a consonant; if that consonant is in begedkefet, there will be a dagesh. (But see below — might I be wrong?)
OK, that is a mere error in terminology. But it does not exactly inspire confidence in the grammatical analysis.
(Of course, this particular instance is quite weird, because it is not vayichd. It is vayichad, with a full patach. We might have thought that, therefore, there is no need for a dagesh kal in beged kefet after a vowel. Still, Rashbam’s examples make it pretty clear, I think.)
(2) Munk provides examples of this phenomenon of dagesh (kal) in the last letter. But, he skips some of Rashbam’s examples, and he makes mistakes in others.
Thus:
a. More examples are the root בכה and the construction ויבך, vayevk, “he cried.” That is fine.
b. The second example is מן פתה ויפת בסתר לבי. יפת אלהים ליפת. This is Iyov 31:27, וַיִּ֣פְתְּ בַּסֵּ֣תֶר לִבִּ֑י, as well as Bereishit 9:27, יַ֤פְתְּ אֱלֹהִים֙ לְיֶ֔פֶת, where vayift and yaft involve a sheva nach followed by a beged kefet letter with dagesh kal at the end of the word.
c. Rashbam’s third example is אל תוסף על דבריו. Munk skips this. My guess is that, when Eliyahu Munk wrote his commentary, searches were not as easy. The phrase is NOT pronounced al tosef, but al tosp. See Mishlei 30:6, אַל־תּ֥וֹסְףְּ עַל־דְּבָרָ֑יו.
d. Munk writes about the fourth example, Another well known example is the root שבה, and the construction וישב, vayashav, “he returned.” Argh! Alas, intended word was Bemidbar 21:1, וַיִּ֥שְׁבְּ ׀ מִמֶּ֖נּוּ שֶֽׁבִי. So, it is not vayashav, but vayishb. The idea being that it is supposed to illustrate that final bet, a beged kefet letter, becoming the plosive form. It does not make any sense to choose the more common word vayashav, which does not illustrate the pattern. And the meaning is not to return, but to take captives.
If I am right about the dikduk, then once again, we should be a lot more charitable when reading translations which seem to be wrong. It is possible that it is a mere error.
Now, maybe I am wrong and he is right. Not about the vashav example. That is clearly not so. But I decided to ask ChatGPT o1, to see how it stacked up against Eliyahu Munk and against me. Especially about whether this is a dagesh chazak.
In one chat, where I didn’t prime it to try to say it was dagesh chazak. I asked it to justify it being a dagesh kal and it did. Then it defended that proposition against suggestions that it was dagesh chazak.
In a different chat, I first asked it to translate. Here was its translation.
“And he rejoiced (va-yaḥad)” – This derives from the root ḥadah (חָדָה) [meaning joy, as in חֲדָוָה (ḥadvah)], similar to the phrase “ʿoz va-ḥedvah” (“strength and joy”). This follows the same pattern governing words of the BGD-KPT group, which come from “snatched” (contracted) lamed-peʿal roots whose final letter is doubled (has a dagesh). For example, from בכה (bakah) we get ויבך (wayevk); from פתה (patáh) we get ויפת (wayeft) in the phrase “בְּסֵתֶר לִבִּי” (“in the secret of my heart”) and in “יַפְתְּ אֱלֹהִים לְיֶפֶת” (“May God enlarge Japheth”); likewise “אַל־תּוֹסְףְּ עַל־דְּבָרָיו” (“Do not add to His words”), and from שבה (shavah) we get וישב (wayyashév), etc.
There are obvious problems, like incorrect vowel points followed by incorrect and incompatible transliteration. For instance, instead of chedvah, it refers to חֲדָוָה (ḥadvah). It claims that the “final final is doubled (has a dagesh)” but all that Rashbam said was שסופם דגשים, has a dagesh. Thus, it injected gemination, which is doubling of a letter, which in turn comes from dagesh chazak, into the translation, when Rashbam quite possibly said no such thing. As discussed above.
It did get the right Biblical quote of אַל־תּוֹסְףְּ, because it was trained on Biblical text. But for שבה, it rendered וישב as wayyashév, instead of the correct vayevk.
I gave it Munk’s translation, and it said that, while it paraphrased and left examples out, overall, it was correct.
When I pressed it on the chazak / kal distinction, it doubled down. Excuse the pun. After all, it is a dagesh chazak if it follows a vowel. And consider the examples:
וַיֵּבְךְּ - The bet (ב) has a dagesh but is preceded by a vowel (the tzere under the yod).
יִפְתְּ and יַפְתְּ - it is after a vowel (ַ /a/ or ֶ /e/).
וַיֵּשֶׁב — Shin (ש) is not one of the beged kefet letters, so any dagesh appearing in ש must be dagesh chazak.
אַל־תּוֹסֵף — the dagesh is in the middle of the word.
These are all completely nonsensical. For the first two, yes, it is after a vowel, but after that vowel is another consonant, followed by the sheva nach! For the third, it got the wrong word, and true, shin is not one of the beged kefet letters, but the dagesh is not in the shin, even in its wrong word. It is in the bet in the right word. For the last, it now misspelled אַל־תּוֹסֵף and claimed that the non-existent dagesh was in the middle of the word (I guess the tav). That is the beginning of a new syllable. And the real dagesh is in the final letter, the peh sofit.
Another argument is that grammarians claim that when the heh drops, the dagesh in the preceding beged kefet letter is the assimilated heh. It is compensatory lengthening / gemination. It made a convincing enough argument, but I am not convinced by that argument. It seems made up, and I was not able to find the sources it claimed asserted this. But ChatGPT claimed that:
Long before the Tiberian vocalization system was standardized, biblical Hebrew had its own morphological processes. One frequent process is that when a final ה (or other weak letter) drops, the preceding consonant can become geminated (doubled). For instance:
From the root ב־כ־ה (to weep), one might historically expect something like vay‑yebbech
Over time, in script, we see a single kaf with a dagesh.
Medieval Jewish grammarians (e.g., Rashi, Rashbam, Radak) often talk about “compensatory gemination” (i.e., the missing ה is “compensated” for by doubling the preceding consonant). They will call that doubling a “dagesh” or “dagesh chazak.”
Modern historical linguistics likewise notices that the older shape of the language suggests real doubling—at least historically—and that the Tiberian system’s single consonant with a “silent sheva + dagesh” is how the Masoretes wrote that older doubling. In living pronunciation, though, it likely collapsed to a single “hard” consonant, not a true double.
The example has errors, such as that vay‑yebbech is a geminated bet, not a geminated kaf.
I had some back and forth with it but could not convince it. It held strong and fast to the idea that this was a strong dagesh, and that Eliyahu Munk was right. But ChatGPT is good at generating persuasive text, even if it is not really true; and will make up sources that sound convincing to bolster its points.
Please let me know, in comments or email, if I am way off here!