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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 Ex17-12b
      URL Reference: (c) http://www.Rashiyomi.com/w33n8.htm
      Brief Summary: Moses, Aaron and Chur went to the mountain top. Moses hands were heavy. THEY (Aaron/Chur) took a stone to rest and AARON/CHUR supported him.

Two familiar functions of grammar in all languages are pronoun reference and plurality.

Hebrew is more flexible than English in pronoun reference. The following verse uses a pronoun reference first and only then mentions the people referred to. Such a construction would not be allowed in English.

    Verse Ex17-10:12b discussing Moses leading the people in prayer during the war on Amalayk, states,
  1. So Joshua did as Moses had said to him, and fought with Amalek; and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.
  2. But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat on it;
  3. and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.

As can be seen the underlined pronoun referent they is mentioned in bullet 2, but the identity of the pronoun is only made clear in bullet 3.

An alternate approach is to notice that bullet 1 mentions Moses, Aaron and Chur. Since bullet 2 mentions a they supporting Moses' hand we can infer from the plurality that the they refers to Aaron and Chur.

Both of these approaches are not allowed in English. English requires that a pronoun refer to an immediate antecedent which must therefore be mentioned first.

Rashi does not take sides on which approach is used. He simply points out that the pronoun they refers to Aaron and Chur and leaves the reader to guestimate what rule of grammar is used.


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