Today, students of the Bible learn grammar from Biblical Hebrew grammar textbooks. These textbooks organize material by topics. Grammatical topics include a) verb mood and conjugation, b) plurality agreement, c) pronoun reference, d) subject-verb-object sequencing, e) sentence structure and type and many other topics.

However in Rashi's time gramamr was just beginning. There were no official grammatical textbooks and tables. One of Rashi's functions was to teach grammar. Rashi did not write a grammar textbook but instead left grammatical explanations appended to each verse.

In today's example Rashi explains rules governing deficiently spelled plural words. Rav Hirsch introduced the concept that deficiently spelled plural was a grammatical technique that indicated a deficiency in the plurality by either
• referring to plural or singular
• an object missing parts (for example the misspelled English word, tabl could refer to a table without 4 legs), or
• a plurality of identical objects (which is inferior to a plurality of similar but not identical objects).
The idea of deliberate misspellings to indicate meaning occurs in many languages and is known as metaplasmus. Several examples are presented in the list below. For a more general discussion see my article Biblical Puns on the world wide web.

The following examples illustrate the techniques of Biblical metaplasmus:
• Metaplasmus indicating a deficiency in (numerical) plurality: Lv23-40 discussing the commandment of Lulav states ....take a beautiful fruit, ...palm br-nchs.... Rashi explains: The deficiently spelled br-nchs indicates a deficiency in plurality: You can fulfill the obligation by either taking several branches or only one. It is not required to take several.
• Metaplasmus indicating missing parts: Lv23-42:43 discussing the commandment to dwell in the Succah states ...dwell in the Sucah...all citizens dwell in the Sucah... Rashi explains: The deficiently spelled Sucah indicates a deficiency in parts - the obligation is fulfilled even with a Sucah that has only 3 walls instead of the normal 4.
• Metaplasmus indicating a deficiency in (qualitative) plurality: Ex31-18 discussing Moses' descent from the mountain with the 2 tablets states Moses descended from the mountain.. and two testimony tblets of stone were in Moses hand written by God's finger. Rashi explains: The deficiently written tblets indicates a qualitative deficiency in the tablets: The tablets were all identical (a plurality of identicals is inferior, deficient and less than a plurality of similar objects).

In the above illustrations we have mirrored the Biblical metaplasmus with a similar underlined English word which is misspelled. This technique was first presented in my article Biblical Puns.