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YHWH (יהוה) feminine?


HansK

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A question for the scholars under us:

 

Is YHWH (יהוה) a feminine word because of its ending?

Personally I think its a masculine and I find support in Lexica like DCH.

My question is related to a study given here in the Netherlands (in Dutch) in which the speaker asserts that the word in question is feminine because of its ending.

 

Thanks beforehand for your reply. If possible, reference to books and articles is appreciated.

I have a basic knowledge of Hebrew, but have access to an University Library.

 

Hans

Edited by HansK
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Hi @HansK,
That is a great question. The ה ending is "normally" a feminine ending, but it is not a guarantee. There are a few masculine words like this but I am drawing a blank at the moment on examples. That stated, YHWH is masculine. There is a theological principle of interpreting the unclear (like an ending) in light of the clear, and YHWH clearly and repeatedly tells us that he is the Father (Deut 32:6, Is 63:16, Is 64:8). He always 100% of the time in the OT uses masculine pronouns. Furthermore, Jesus is the son of the God of the OT, which is why he calls him father (Mt 11:25, Lk 10:21) and tells us to do the same (Lk 11:1-4).

I hope this is helpful,

Kristin

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Hi @HansK,
There are others, but a few examples of other names just occurred to me, being the male prophets Nehemiah (נְחֶמְיָה) and Jonah (יוֹנָה). :)
 

So as mentioned before, the ה ending is often feminine, but for sure not always and the pronouns will be a greater indicator.


Take care,

Kristin

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@Jordan S, is it possible to do something similar in research? Since Hansk had actually been looking for academic sources I had wanted to do Research in grammars and commentaries with ה WITHIN 5 words of "masculine." I had been able to search for the ה, and even insert the "WITHIN" command, but I was not looking for a tag but simply an English word. However, whenever I would try to type "masculine" it would type in Hebrew. If I set it to English, it would convert my ה to English too.

 

I finally resorted to "gender*" within a certain number of "exception*" and found one random hit, but it did not seem relevant enough so I wound up just posting what I did above, which may or may not have been helpful.

Kristin

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 @Jordon. Does אריה in 2Sam. 17:10 show up in your results? If not why not? This is a question about the = operator. 

Edited by c. stirling bartholomew
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I used the = for lexical forms, but it looks like I shouldn't have since that is excluding those lexical forms that end in -0, -1, -2, etc. The -0 refers to Aramaic lexical forms, the -1, -2, -3 refer to separate entries in HALOT. You can see אריה in this list. Good eye! 

 

1372689295_ScreenShot2022-01-24at11_08_56AM.thumb.png.35d67be7da094dc12c478c2b09d0d695.png

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Kristin, This is how I would search for "masculine" and *ה in the same paragraph within Joüon-Muraoka. This would not work in a Research tab since we are using multiple search fields.

 

738395200_ScreenShot2022-01-24at11_24_56AM.thumb.png.6f6516898f2657275ca7dd23da7cf4a6.png

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Thanks all for your help thus far

I found some help in Jouon-Muraoka §89, but no reference is made to YHWH (יהוה).

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If this is some sort of form of masculine active participle of the verb אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה then the ending makes sense.

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