Today Hebrew grammar is well understood and there are many books on it. Rashi, however, lived before the age of grammar books. A major Rashi method is therefore the teaching of basic grammar.

Many students belittle this aspect of Rashi. They erroneously think that because of modern methods we know more. However Rashi will frequently focus on rare grammatical points not covered in conventional textbooks.

There are many classical aspects to grammar whether in Hebrew or other languages. They include
• The rules for conjugating verbs. These rules govern how you differentiate person, plurality, tense, mode, gender, mood, and designation of the objects and indirect objects of the verb. For example how do you conjugate, in any language, I sang, we will sing, we wish to sing, she sang it.
• Rules of agreement. For example agreement of subject and verb, of noun and adjective; whether agreement in gender or plurality.
• Rules of Pronoun reference.
• Rules of word sequence. This is a beautiful topic which is not always covered in classical grammatical textbooks.

Today we review the rules of the interrogative in Hebrew. Recall (in English) that sentences can be declarative, for example, To the store I went, or interrogative, for example, To the store, I went? or commands, for example, Go to the store. The same set of words can change its meaning from a declaration to a question, if a question mark, indicating the interrogative, is placed at the end.

In Hebrew, instead of placing a question mark at the end of the sentence, one places a letter hey with a chataf-patach punctuation at the beginning of the sentence.

The first question asked in the Bible occurs at Gn03-19, Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? In English this sentence is indicated by a terminal question mark while in Hebrew it is indicated by a prefixed hey with a chataf-patach punctuation. Rashi explains This prefix hey with a chataf-patach indicates the interrogative.