The Semitic family[1] consists of a group of about 70 distinct language forms closely related to each other and more distantly related to the rest of the AfroAsiatic group which includes Ancient Egyptian, Berber and the Cushitic languages [2]. The Semitic languages, as far back as can be traced (2nd and, in some cases, 3rd millennium BCE), have occupied part of present day Iraq and all of present day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Arabian peninsula.

Maps of the Ancient Near East http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_maps_asia_neareast.htm

A good, simple outline of the relations of the Semitic languages to each other is at http://phoenicia.org/semlang.html

Since the Semitic languages are clearly closely related [3], it is a reasonable and long-held assumption that they are all derived from an original undifferentiated, though rather variable language called Proto-Semitic. Although no records of Proto-Semitic exist, through the comparative study of the various languages it is possible to deduce, in outline, Proto-Semitic’s phonology, much of its vocabulary and its grammar including some of its probable syntax. In general, it can be said that each Semitic language preserved some Proto-Semitic features whereas while diverging from Proto-Semitic in other features. For instance, Akkadian, the language of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians [4] in present day Iraq, has alone preserved the Proto-Semitic verbal system while its sound system, influenced by the non-Semitic Sumerian language, was greatly simplified. Classical Arabic [5] has most faithfully preserved the Proto-Semitic system of case endings of nouns and adjectives [6] and mood endings of the verb and the Proto-Semitic sound system [7] though in its syntax and use of tenses it is more removed from Proto-Semitic than is Biblical Hebrew.

It is probable that Proto-Semitic was spoken over most of the territory earlier mentioned until 3500-3000 BCE. At about that time Akkadian split off. This language, which was spoken until the first century BCE, has left written records from about 2600 BCE.

Box 1

What is a Semitic √Root?

In any discussion of Semitic languages frequent mention will be made of “roots”. The term refers to three, less often two[8], and occasionally four consonants that form the basis of Semitic verbs and most nouns when combined with patterns of vowels and sometimes consonants. These patterns are referred to as stems, themes, stirpes or in Hebrew binyanim. Roots are also the basis of most nouns.

E.g. From the root √ŠBR} (š = sh) we get in [TH] –

[šɔː'baːr] – he broke

[šɔː'baːrtiː] – I broke

[šib'bẹːr] - he smashed

[šub'baːr]– it was smashed

[šә'boːr] - breaking

[miš'bɔːr] – breaking waves

The non-Akkadian [9] part of the Semitic family, called West Semitic, divided prior to 2000 BCE into South Semitic, whose major descendants are Arabic and the Semitic languages of Ethiopia [10], and Northwest Semitic which includes Aramaic [11] and the Canaanite languages of which Biblical Hebrew was one. Shortly after this split, the initial /w/ sound in Northwest Semitic became /y/[12]. Thus we have the equivalence such as the root √whb in Arabic corresponds to √yhb יהב in Hebrew and Aramaic. Thus also, the word for child in Arabic is /walad/ while in Pre-Exilic biblical Hebrew (/EBHP/) Hebrew it was */'yald/ ילד <yld> now pronounced ['yęlęd].

Probably even as late as 2000 BCE one can picture a dialect continuum where, from the desert fringes of Iraq through south-eastern Anatolia, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula a traveler could have passed from tribe to tribe and village to village noticing only very slight and gradual dialectical changes as he progressed. Although people at the opposite extremes of this language area might have been unable to understand each other, at no point would a language frontier like those, say, between French and German occur. This situation is quite similar to that pertaining to the various dialects of spoken Arabic over the same area (and beyond in North Africa), today[13]. It is from this period i.e. the third millennium BCE, that we receive our first records of the Semitic languages. These records comprehend 3 languages:

Akkadian (East Semitic) – both in Akkadian texts and Akkadian words preserved in Sumerian texts;

Eblaite (intermediate between East Semitic and West Semitic) – preserved in Early Bronze Age (2500 BCE) tablets amounting to about 3000 tablets in all;

Amorite [14] – this West-Semitic language is preserved mainly in proper names in Sumerian and Akkadian texts. Fortunately, as Semitic names are frequently short sentences – e.g. Hebrew ’eli'yah = my God is YH – the language can be partly reconstructed even from such meager data.

The situation outlined ended with the rise of political-cultural centers in the Northwest Semitic areas. By about 1000 BCE, the dialect of Damascus had established itself as normative Aramaic and started a spread, helped by its use as a lingua franca, which would enable it, by 100 BCE to completely replace Akkadian in the North-East and, by 200 CE to displace Hebrew in the south.

2. History of Hebrew from its Pre-history[15] to the Present (See for details Sáenz-Badillos)

While Damascus Aramaic was becoming a standard language in Syria and upper Mesopotamia, the situation in what is now Lebanon, Jordan and Israel remained one of a series of dialects none of which was able, through conquest or prestige, to become a linguistic standard.

We have only fragments of most of the various Canaanite dialects, of the period 1000-500 BCE. However, it would seem that they were mutually intelligible [16]. Two dialects, from opposite ends of the Canaanite spectrum, have left literary remains. In the extreme north, on the Lebanese coast, was Phoenician[17] and its North African Carthaginian offshoot Punic, have left inscriptions[18] dating from 10^th-1^st centuries BCE and 9^th C BCE to 2^nd CE respectively. This tended to be a rapidly developing language very open to foreign influences as we would expect for a language of a sea-faring people. In the extreme South we have the literary dialect of Jerusalem i.e. CBH .

Before we leave the other languages, we could point out one of the many benefits to the understanding of Hebrew gained through the comparative study of Semitic languages. As I said before, the Semitic languages are closely related. For example “A survey of the first 100 Phoenician words in the dictionary shows that 82 percent have the same meaning in Hebrew. Between Ugaritic [19] and Hebrew the figure is about 79 percent.” Thus it not infrequently occurs that a root or word may be common in say Aramaic, while it may occur only once or twice in Hebrew. A knowledge of Aramaic may then lead to an understanding of the Hebrew word. Thus the root √yhb occurs only in the imperative of the basic stem of the verb (qal or pa’al) sometimes in the same context as the normal Hebrew root √ntn meaning “to give”. In Aramaic, the root {YHB} is routinely used meaning “to give” and it is clear that the meaning in Hebrew is the same.

Table 13 - Proto-Semitic Phonemes (Consonants) Exhibiting Sound Shifts in Hebrew and Their Equivalents in Aramaic and Classical Arabic

Table 14 - Biblical Hebrew Phonemes (Consonants) of Multiple Origin and their Equivalents in Proto-Semitic, Classical Arabic, Aramaic and Ugaritic

You may be familiar with Psalm 137:5

אם אשכח ירושלם תשכח ימיני

The King James Bible translates this as “If I forget thee O Jerusalem let my right hand forget her cunning. The last two words are printed in italics. In the King James Bible this indicates that the words are not found in the Hebrew. We can see the problem of the early translators. What they read was “If I forget thee Jerusalem let my right hand forget”. Clearly this is problematic. Hence they added their guess of what it might forget – i.e. its cunning. The problem is that the same root שׁכח is used twice in the same stem in the same verse. This root, in this stem, is the normal way to say “forget” in Hebrew. In Table 1 you will see that there are 6 possible Proto-Semitic origins of the Hebrew root שכח. Is it possible that of the 5 possibilities for שׁכח i.e. aside from שׁכח = 'forget', one will be preserved in another Semitic language with a meaning which appears both original and to explain the verse? Fortunately, in the closely related Ugaritic language there is said to be such a root √θ-k-ḥ 'shrivel' which fills the bill. Thus, the New Revised Standard Version translates our verse as –

“If I forget you O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither”

Table 1 - Possible Proto-Semitic Origins of the Root √škḥ

It makes sense!

We can explain the course of event as follows:

1. Around 2000 BCE Proto-Hebrew had two distinct roots: (1) √θ-k-ḥ or √θ–k- ḫ depending on its proto-Semitic origin meaning “shrivel”; and, (2) √š-k-ḥ “forget”;

2. Prior to 1000 BCE all instances of the fricative /θ/ in Hebrew shifted to /š/ =sh /ʃ/^{^[20]} hence the roots became indistinguishable leading to the abandonment of שׁכח “shrivel” except in the conservative poetic dialect in situations where it was not likely to be confused and could be used for a pleasing poetic effect such as in our verse;

3. In time the meaning of שׁכח “shrivel” was completely lost due to its rare use, destruction of scribal schools etc...

It should be noted that comparative philology is difficult to use credibly and can easily be abused. See B arr.

2.1 Pre-Exilic Hebrew (PreExH) (See also Sáenz-Badillos chapt. 3-5)

a) Varieties of Pre-Exilic Hebrew

See - Diglossia and Dialect in PExH: What Do We Mean by Judahite and Israelian Hebrew?

Ø Proto-Hebrew (PH). The Canaanite dialects (c.1200-1000 B.C.E.) that would develop into Hebrew with the loss of the case endings. For details see BHA phase 2. Sources - see Harris 1939, Hendel-Lambdin-Huehnergard, Sáenz-Badillos.

Ø Pre-exilic Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH). The literary dialect of Jerusalem c.950-586 B.C.E (First Temple Period). This is the only widely attested form of Judahite Hebrew. It developed out of PH. See: Establishment of Jerusalem Written and Spoken Dialects (c. 1000-c. 900 BCE).

Ø Israelian Hebrew - This is a catchall term for all the dialects spoken in the villages and towns of the Kingdom of Israel c. 1000 BCE until at least the seventh century BCE. We have very little evidence of Israelian Hebrew. The use of this term does not imply that these dialects had more in common with each other than many of them had to some of the dialects spoken in the Kingdom of Judah and hence classed under the rubric Judahite Hebrew.

Ø Judahite Hebrew (BHA phase 3). This is a catchall term for all the dialects spoken in the villages and towns of the Kingdom of Judah during the First Temple Period. Use of the term Judahite Hebrew does not imply that these presumably variable dialects had more in common with each other than many of them had to some of the dialects spoken in the Kingdom of Israel and hence classed under the rubric Israelian Hebrew.

As stated earlier, Biblical Hebrew (see Steiner and Encyclopedia Judaica) is the literary form of the very conservative dialect of Jerusalem. CBH crystallized in Jerusalem about 900 BCE and showed little change until the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BCE. From then on, Post-Classical Biblical Hebrew (PCBH) became more and more an archaic literary vehicle radically different from the (presumed) spoken Hebrew[21]. As a literary dialect it was used until the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

Biblical Hebrew can be divided into a number of registers including:

Ø Poetic Biblical Hebrew - This is divided into an archaizing poetic form and a standard poetic form (e.g. Job, Psalms). The archaizing poetic form used a special vocabulary and the poetry written in it is highly stylized. The date of origin of the earliest poems is in dispute. They may date from as early as the eleventh century BCE or as late as the nineth. The latest poems in the Hebrew Bible may date from about 450 BCE.

Ø Prophetic Hebrew[22] - This is a semi-poetic form of rhythmic speech used in e.g. Isaiah which may be compared to blank verse[23]; and,

Ø Prose Biblical Hebrew[24]

It is clear that PCBH developed in the exilic and post-exilic period. However, there is actually no reason to believe that CBH did not continue to be used in some circles well after 500 BCE alongside PCBH.[25]

b) Social Base of Pre-Exilic Hebrew

Ø The similarity of Biblical poetry to Ugaritic poetry clearly indicates continuity in the literary tradition between pre-Israelite Canaan and biblical poetry. The Canaanite glosses in the El-Amarna Letters (See for details Sáenz-Badillos pp. 33-34) and Phoenician inscriptions are compelling evidence of the origin of Biblical Hebrew out of the Canaanite linguistic matrix. However, the development of Biblical Hebrew out of this matrix had a context:

Ø Continuance of the Canaanite Israelite Literary Tradition. This tradition was likely oral in its early phases and mixed oral and written through much of its history. In this connection it may be interesting to quote Dever[26]

One of the revisionists' principal objections to Israel's having been a centralized state in the 10th century is that writing would have been a bureaucratic necessity, but we have little if any 10th-century evidence. I have mentioned that the few early Hebrew texts that we do happen to have, however, include an abcedary, or list of the letters of the alphabet (^cizbet Ṣarṭah; 12th-11th century), and a poem giving the agricultural seasons (Gezer, 10th century). Both are almost certainly schoolboys' practice texts. Students and others were now learning to write, adapting the Old Canaanite alphabet and script as Hebrew developed into a national language and instrument of cultural expression. We may assume that writing, and even what we may call "functional" literacy, was reasonably widespread by the 10th century, and certainly by the 9th century when even the revisionists must concede that an Israelite state did exist”[27]

Ø Transition from Iron I to Iron II - “The considerable archaeological evidence that I have summarized here regarding centralized planning and administration reflects what is regarded in the literature as the principal trait of state-level organization.... I would stress ... that the city defenses and all the rest are part of a dramatic, large-scale process of organization and centralization that utterly transformed the landscape of most of Palestine in the period from the early 10th to early 9th century. It is such shifts in settlement type and distributions together with marked demographic changes that signal most clearly a new archaeological and thus new cultural phase, in this case the transition from Iron I to Iron II.”[28]

Ø Dialects - We do not have any information on the dialects of the Shephelah[29]. The only direct information that we have on the Samarian dialect(s) is derived from the Samaria Ostraca. As summarized by Gibson[30] -

“In the sphere of language, the ostraca tell us little of the northern dialect beyond the likelihood that the process of diphthongal reduction had gone further in Israelite than in Judean Hebrew; thus ין = [yēn], passim, as against יין = [yayn] in the biblical orthography….”

See - Dialect, Koine and Diglossia in Ancient Hebrew and the table - Some Political, Social and Linguistic Developments in the Pre-Exilic Period c. 1000-586 BCE.

Ø The Separation of Israel and Judah – This would have reduced the wealth of the government in Jerusalem and lessened its need for scribal services and also led to an exodus of Samarian, Galilean and Gileadite nobles or officials that had established themselves in the capital. Among other impacts, this would have diminished the influence in Jerusalem of Israelite dialects from Samaria, Galilee and Gilead all of which were now included in the kingdom of Israel.

Ø Samarian Refugees Inundate Judah and Jerusalem - A huge demographic change occurred with the Assyrian destruction of the Kingdom of Israel (722 BCE) which led to a massive transfer of population from Samaria into the towns and countryside of Judah. Much of the archeological evidence of this change has been gathered by Broshi and Finkelstein[31] and is neatly summarized by Finkelstein and Silberman[32] . As pointed out by these authors[33] -

“The royal citadel of Jerusalem was transformed in a single generation from the seat of a rather insignificant local dynasty into the political and religious nerve center of a regional power—both because of dramatic internal developments and because thousands of refugees from the conquered kingdom of Israel fled to the south.

Here archaeology has been invaluable in charting the pace and scale of Jerusalem's sudden expansion. As first suggested by Israeli archaeologist Magen Broshi, excavations conducted there in recent decades have shown that suddenly, at the end of the eighth century BCE, Jerusalem underwent an unprecedented population explosion, with its residential areas expanding from its former narrow ridge—the city of David—to cover the entire western hill …. A formidable defensive wall was constructed to include the new suburbs. In a matter of a few decades—surely within a single generation—Jerusalem was transformed from a modest highland town of about ten or twelve acres to a huge urban area of 150 acres of closely packed houses, workshops, and public buildings. In demographic terms, the city's population may have increased as much as fifteen times, from about one thousand to fifteen thousand inhabitants.

A similar picture of tremendous population growth emerges from the archaeological surveys in Jerusalem's agricultural hinterland. Not only were many farmsteads built at this time in the immediate environs of the city, but in the districts south of the capital, the formerly relatively empty countryside was flooded with new farming settlements, both large and small. Sleepy old villages grew in size and became, for the first time, real towns. In the Shephelah too, the great leap forward came in the eighth century, with a dramatic growth in the number and size of sites…. Likewise, the Beersheba Valley in the far south witnessed the establishment of a number of new towns in the late eighth century. All in all, the expansion was astounding; by the late eighth century there were about three hundred settlements of all sizes in Judah, from the metropolis of Jerusalem to small farmsteads, where one there were only a few villages and modest towns. The population, which had long hovered at a few tens of thousands, now grew to around 120,000.

…(W)ith the influx of refugees from the north after the fall of Samaria, the reorganization of the countryside under Hezekiah, and the second torrent of refugees from the desolation of the Shephelah by Sennacherib, many of the traditional clan attachments to particular territories had been forever destroyed.”

Ø It is likely that the flood of Samarian refugees brought with them Northern (Samarian and, to a lesser extent Galilean and Gileadite) traditions such as the hero-stories included in the Book of Judges, and traditions relating to the Northern Israelite heroes – Jacob, Joseph, Joshua, Elijah and Elisha. They may also have brought documents reflecting the E tradition and the core of Dueteronomy

Ø Regarding the linguistic impact of the Samarian refugees see Development of Proto-Mishnaic Hebrew (c. 586 BCE-c. 70 BC).

c) Tenses or Aspects in Biblical Hebrew

Proto-Semitic Tense System – basically as in Akkadian see Encyclopedia Judaica article Hebrew Language vol. 16 col. 1566-1568

Biblical Poetry – Niccacci 2006 makes a good case for the tense forms in biblical poetry following the interior logic of their use in biblical prose (see folowing). However, the segmental character of poetry can result in any of the two tense forms and active participle (שמר, ישמור, שומר) referring to times past, present or future. See Table 9a and 9b for the ambiguities caused by this situation.

Biblical Prose - The exact range of meanings of the Biblical Hebrew verb forms, particularly the finite forms (שמר (<šmr> TH /šɔ'mar/)/ וישׁמור (<wyšmr> TH /wayyiš'mor/); ישמור (<yšmr> TH /yiš'mor/) / ושׁמר (<wšmr> TH /wešɔ'mar/ )) has long been subject to debate. Useful descriptions of the complex biblical Hebrew verbal system are found in: Joϋon-Muraoka Part Two chapter II; Waltke-O’Connor chapters 30-34; and, Naude-Kroeze- Merwe chapter 4. Speaking simplistically, one can conceptualize the Biblical Hebrew tense forms as centering on whether the act or state is seen as complete or incomplete at the time being described not at the time of the narrator. Therefore, both tense forms can be used in relation to the past, present or future. Complete states or acts use the forms שמר (<šmr>) and וישׁמור (<wyšmr>); incomplete states or acts use the forms ישמור (<yšmr> ) and ושמר (<wšmr>) or even the active participle. At least morphologically, the active participle is not really part of the verbal system (see Gordon in Select Bibliography below). Most commonly:

o Actions in the past are expressed using the forms שמר (TH /šɔ'mar/) and וישׁמור (TH /wayyiš'mor/) if they are seen as completed.

o Actions the future are expressed using the forms שמר (TH /šɔ'mar/) and וישׁמור (TH /wayyiš'mor/) if they are seen as certain to happen, as good as completed ;

o Generally actions in the present and future are expressed using the forms ישמור (TH /yiš'mor/) and ושמר (TH /wešɔ'mar/) as are acts in the past that were seen as ongoing e.g. Moses was speaking.

o States in the present are seen as being complete so the perfect forms are used for the past and present and the imperfect forms for the future. E.g. ידעתי in the Bible means I know or knew depending on context. Similarly קטונתי means I am or was small.

Box 2

The Origin[34] of the “waw conversive"

The “waw conversive" (Hebrew ההיפוך ו) is a defining feature of biblical Hebrew. Superficially it appears that a prefix וַ (and doubling of the following prefix) added to the imperfect-jussive (יקטל and where it exists, the shorter form of the imperfect[35] e.g. יבן/יבך) converts the meaning of the verb into that of the perfect (קטל) while adding וְ (and sometimes accompanied by a shift of stress) to the perfect, converts the meaning of the verb into that of the imperfect. verbal major is also known as the “waw consecutive" since it is normally used in sequential narrative.

The following is quoted from The Evidence for Perfect *yʹaqtul and jussive * yaqtʹul in Proto-Semitic by Robert Hetzron in Journal of Semitic Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, Spring 1969.

“Evidence brought from East Semitic (Akkadian), Central Semitic (biblical Hebrew in its Tiberian form) and south Semitic … points to the existence in proto-Semitic of a perfect [36] *yʹaqtul, with stress on the prefix and a jussive *yaqtʹul, with final stress. Since the stress-system of each branch of Semitic was later reorganized, this stress-opposition could not be maintained as such. This led to radical changes in the verbal system, mainly to the gradual elimination of the perfect *yʹaqtul.” P. 20 (See also Hetzron sect 38.2)

“Biblical Hebrew has a very important survival of the prefix-perfect, the prefix-forms used after the so-called “waw conversive". The traditional interpretation of this form is that it is a jussive used in a bound form, a closed construction, or else it is an imperfect….

“The following is a preliminary presentation of the present writer’s views on the problem of the “waw conversive".

(1) The original waw conversive constructions are those with a prefix-conjugation. The forms with the suffix-conjugation are later, analogical developments. This can be proved …. The prefix-forms after waw conversive are of a much earlier formation….

(2) The waw conversive before prefix-forms, namely. waC:-, has nothing to do with the conjunction *wa- "and" . First of all, it is not legitimate to represent the forms with waw conversive as essentially non-initial and depending on a preceding verb. They occur in speech-initial positions quite often. The form is not a consecutive one with no tense-implication, like the ka- forms in Swahili or the converbs in Ethiopian. It does have a tense-connotation, that of perfect. It is the normal expression of the sentence-initial perfect, while the suffix-perfect qātal is, with very few exceptions, reserved to non-initial positions. Furthermore, the conjunction *wa- "and", if not reduced to *wə - as it normally is, becomes *wā- in Hebrew, e.g. yōmām wā-laylā "day and nigh:'', and never waC:- like the waw of the "converted" prefix-forms. In my opinion, the best theory about the origin of the waw conversive is still that of J. D. Michaelis, long forgotten by Semitists. Michaelis thought (in 1745) that waC:- had come from the verbal form *hawaya "it was", first reduced, like all the suffix-perfect sg. 3 m. forms, to *haway and, as a prefix, to a monosyllabic form *way- > waC:-. The independent use of the same verbal form underwent other changes and became hāyā. It is possible that, when the prefix-perfect began to decline and to yield to