Here is just one example, among many thousands, of how Ugaritic is helping us with Hebrew and the ancient Israelite Religious outlooks and knowledge and ways of life. This is an important resource I just recently acquired and I am very excited to share a lot of this material with you as I incorporate it into my research as well.
The absolute ending of the feminine in -t and -at is of rather frequent occurrence in Hebrew. Beyond the instances cited by grammarians (e. g., G-K, § 80), the following might be considered: Ps. 27:4, ʾaḥat šāʾaltî mēʾāt (MT mēʾēt) yahweh ʾôtāh ʾabaqqēš, “One thing I have asked a hundred times; O Yahweh, this do I seek”. Compare absolute meʾat (perhaps better mēʾāt) in Eccles. 8:12. Job 27:13, zeh ḥēleq ʾādām rāšāʿ ʿim ʾēl wenaḥalat ʿārîṣîm miššadday yiqqāḥû, “This is the wicked man’s portion from God (see under 10.14 below for ʿim, “from”), the inheritance tyrants receive from Shaddai”. The substantive naḥalat is not the regens of a construct chain, but an absolute noun serving as the accusative object of yiqqāḥû. Prov. 6:34, kî qāneʾāh ḥēmāt (MT qinʾāh ḥamat) gāber welōʾ yaḥmôl beyôm nāqām, “For her husband will be livid with rage, and he will be unsparing on the day of vengeance”.
For the third masculine singular qāneʾāh see below (9.7), while ḥēmāt is in the absolute state, functioning as an adverbial accusative. On Job 41:25–26, ḥatāʾāt, “crack, flaw”, Biblica 45 (1964) 410.
8.5. Gordon rightly notes that no Semitic language uses the dual more widely than Ugaritic. Given the close rapports between Ugaritic and Hebrew, this fact authorizes the Hebraist to look for more duals than commonly admitted. For Jer. 6:29, mappūḥēm, “the bellows”, ʾiššātēm “the two fires”, Ps. 16:4, middēm, “from my hands”, and Job 24:11, bên šûrōtēm, “between the two walls”, see present writer in Biblica 44 (1963) 298, and Mélanges Tisserant (Studi e Testi 231: Vatican City 1964), I, p. 96. The analysis of Ps. 16:4, middēm finds support in Ps. 17:4, lipʿullôt ʾādēm, “against the work of your hands”. The pronominal suffix is forthcoming from parallel śepātekā, “your lips”, while the sense of the phrase is clarified by Neo-Punic, felioth IADEM, “the work of the hands (of Rogatus)”, in a Latin-Libyan inscription discussed by H. Donner and W. Röllig, Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften, II, p. 165.
The possible dual meaning of Prov. 16:14, malaʾkê māwet, “the two messengers of Death”, has been examined in Proverbs, p. 36; the emendation of pḥm in Prov. 26:21 to mappūaḥ, “bellows”, can be avoided by the simple repointing of MT peḥam as pāḥēm, the participle of pwḥ, “to blow”, with the contracted Northern dual ending -ēm, as in the Samaria dialect and in Ugaritic. Literally, pāḥēm would read “the two blowers”. Cf. further, Jer. 23:31, hinenî ʿal hannebîʾīm neʾum yahweh hallōqēḥîm lēšônēm (MT lešônām) wayyinʾamû neʾum, “Believe me, I am against those prophets — Yahweh’s word — who mislead by their double tongue and continually utter oracles”. Consonantal lšnm may well be identical with Ugar. lšnm, “double tongue” (cf. above 7.4).
8.7. The plural themes ilht, “goddesses”, bhtm, “house(s)”, umht, “mothers”, amht, “handmaidens”, and Phoen. dlht, “doors”, offer a negative response to the query of Donner-Röllig, KAI, II, p. 26, who ask whether Phoen. dlht is “nach aram. Muster?”
8.8. Analogous to the double plurals aḫt and aḫtt are biblical qāšōt, “bows”, (I Sam. 2:4, MT reads sing. qešet which does not agree with plur. ḥattîm; Ps. 141:9, where the pointing qāšōt dissolves the two grammatical difficulties besetting the verse), and normal qešātôt. Cf. Ps. 37:14, where a pointing qešōtām (MT qaštām) would create the numerical symmetry desiderated by plur. qaštōtām in the next verse.
8.9. With the plurals rašm, rašt, and rišt, compare Heb. rāʾšîm and rāʾšôt in Jer. 13:18, as proposed by the writer in CBQ 23 (1961) 462, and tentatively adopted by J. Bright, Jeremiah (The Anchor Bible: New York 1965), p. 93, n. d-d. Other Ugar. substantives exhibiting double plurals are grnm and grnt, “threshing floors”, kbkbm and kbkbt, “stars”, mrbdm and mrbdt, “(bed)-covers”; cf. Phoen. ymm and ymt, “days”, as in Hebrew.
G-K
Wilhelm Gesenius’ Hebräische Grammatik völlig umgearbeitet von E. Kautzsch. 28th edit.: Leipzig 1909
Proverbs
M. Dahood, Proverbs and Northwest Semitic Philology. Rome 1963
KAI
H. Donner and W. Röllig, Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften. 3 vols. Wiesbaden 1962–1964
Dahood, Mitchell, J.: Ugaritic-Hebrew Philology : Marginal Notes on Recent Publications. Rome : Biblical Institute Press, 1989 (Biblica Et Orientalia, 17), S. 14
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