ך ָל : second person feminine singular or second person masculine singular? The study of Tiberian prosodic hierarchy

Abstract

Textbooks on Biblical Hebrew grammar, including works by Futato (2003), Verbruggen (2014), and Schneider (2016), identify ‘לָךְ’ as the suffix of the second person feminine singular form. In addition, Bible parsing tools – such as biblehub.com and Bibleworks 10 – also favor ‘לָךְ’ as the suffix of the second person feminine singular. For instance, these Bible parsing tools analyze ‘לָךְ’ as the suffix of the second person feminine singular in the contexts of 1 Samuel 10:7. This article, however, challenges the simple identification in various Biblical Hebrew grammar textbooks, as well as the analyses found on Bible parsing tools. This research posits that the Hebrew preposition ‘לָךְ’ can be identified in two distinct ways: as the suffix of the second person feminine singular form and as the second person masculine singular form. The methodology employed in this study is based on the Tiberian prosodic hierarchy and contextual analysis of the book of Obadiah to prove its thesis.