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      3. RASHI METHOD: GRAMMAR
      BRIEF EXPLANATION: Rashi explains verses using grammar principles, that is, rules which relate reproducable word form to word meaning. Grammatical rules neatly fall into 3 categories
      • (a) the rules governing conjugation of individual words,Biblical roots,
      • (b) the rules governing collections of words,clauses, sentences
      • (c) miscellaneous grammatical, or form-meaning, rules.
      This examples applies to Rashis Gn37-31b
      URL Reference: (c) http://www.Rashiyomi.com/w33n6.htm
      Brief Summary: English indicates construct using OF. Hebrew indicates CONSTRUCT using two word forms.

Verse Gn37-31 states And they took coat of Joseph, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood; Rashi comments: The phrase coat of Joseph uses the construct ( coat of) and hence is punctuated in Hebrew, Kuh-To-Neth while the second underlined phrase coat occurs absolutely without a construct and is punctuated Koo-To-Neth. In other words while English uses the word of to distinguish between the construct and non-construct, Hebrew uses two different punctuations for the construct vs. non-construct.

Advanced Rashi: The reader may wonder why Rashi explains this. After all, schoolchildren routinely learn the difference between construct and non-construct. However grammar was just beginning in Rashi's time and one of his major functions was to communicate grammatical rules to his readers who had no other way of finding them out.


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