272 Charles C. Torrcy, 



with the words preceding, while ntO^ (exactly parallel in form) belongs 

 with the foUoiving. This method of separating them phonetically is 

 effective, and perfectly legitimate. We do not know how old it is, and 

 ought not to alter the reading (as all our text-books do. In any case 

 it embodies ancient ideas of rhetoric which have historical worth. 



It is probable, as some have observed, that the form of the word 

 *ifT]2"l was determined by the assonance with JTISI.- 



4:20. Cancel all that follows the word ^nib^nV See the note on 

 vs. 12 in this chapter. 



o 



4:21 n^tOD- i'his is another word which has been vmiversally mis- 

 understood. So far from being the result of a scribal error (as it has 

 always been considered), it is one of the rare and valuable old forms 

 belonging to staiive verbs of this class. In all branches of the Aramaic 

 language, these forms with ^, which were originally regular in the peal 

 stem of intransitive j^"^ verbs, began at an early date to disappear. In 

 one verb after another, the stative forms are gradually replaced by the 

 corresponding active forms, before our very eyes, ^"in becomes XIH, 



^^^^ (imperative) is replaced by ^^^^-^^ and so on. In the numerous 

 verbs in which intransitive and transitive forms had stpod side by side, 

 the former are generally seen to vanish altogether. See Noldeke, 

 Syrische Gramni., § 176 A, D; Mandaische Gramm., pp. 256 f; 

 Dalman, Gramm. des jud.-paldstin. Aramdisch, § 72, 2 ; Brockel- 

 mann, Vergleichetide Grammatik, § 271, H, b. By good fortune, this 

 very verb ^13)2) alongside of K!0l!3> affords one of the best illustrations 

 of the process. Aside from this example in Biblical Aramaic, we have 

 a few solitary remnants of the intransitive pronunciation in the oldest 

 classical Syriac, and in Mandfean ; while in the Samaritan dialect ^tpj^ 

 is the usual form. Thus, in the Peshitta version of Jer. 32 : 23, 

 I^A**^' J5(Ti (jtJ^^ .G.JJ 2u^o, "and all this evil came upon them " — 

 a sentence which is strikingly parallel to this one in Daniel ! ; also (the 

 same form, with a similar meaning) in i Cor. 10:11, and i Pet. 4:7. 

 In all three of these passages, the later native editors, grammarians, 

 and lexicographers have wished to " modernize " the vowel-pointing (see 

 Payne-Smith) ; that is, they would do the very same thing which the 

 massoretic variant does in Dan. 4 : 21. And finally, this identical form, 

 fem. third sing, of the stative peal perf., happens to be found once more 

 in Mandaan, riK^iD^D' Noldeke, Gramm., p. 257. 



As for the pronunciation of this Biblical form, ri^uSD? the choice Hes 

 between n_ipp and n*pD- The former corresponds to the type followed 

 in the Syriac verbs of this class ; but the latter pronunciation seems to 



