THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH. 



193 



weighing of actions and their relation to the doer is worlds 

 away from the restless activity which, desiring to crowd the 

 canvas, views everything in relation to time. 



As is well known, the third singular personal pronoun in the 

 Pentateuch is written the same for masculine and feminine. 



It had been assumed that the pronunciation was the same 

 also. But it occurred to me to question and investigate this 

 assumption with the result that the whole original construction 

 of Semitic-Indo-European language has become like an open book. 



The labours of Indo-European scholars have made this 

 possible. In particular the investigation of what are called 

 Ablauts paved the way for me to extend my investigations in 

 Semitic to Indo-European. I found that there were innumer- 

 able traces of there having existed at one time a means of 

 expressing active and passive in the widest sense of these 

 grammatical terms, that this was originally done by two 

 diphthongal sounds, au to express the active, ai to express the 

 passive, these being inserted between two consonants.* On 

 investigation, what are called middle-vowel verbs in Semitic 

 yielded practically the same variation of vowels as philologists 

 had already found in Indo-European to have belonged to the 

 original parent language. 



Take one or two illustrations of the practical value of this 

 discovery. Let us take the word Shiloh, the understanding of 

 which is of great importance in the interpretation of Messianic 

 prophecy. This word now appears to be an old passive verbal 

 noun with the third singular masculine suffix. The key to its 

 meaning lies in the old verbal noun 7^tr, active, and always 

 occurring in the plural, expressing the parts of a garment 

 which encircled or went round the wearer — the skirt or train. 



In Isaiah vi, 1, we have "His train or vesture" V^^tLN "filled 

 the temple." Now riS^tp is the old passive form, as I have 

 said, with the suffix, and it gives us the, in every respect, 

 suitable and highly poetical meaning " His Investured One." 

 This glorious prophecy then runs : " The sceptre shall not 

 depart from Judah, nor a law-giver from between his feet, until 

 His Investured One shall come," viz. : n^"^t2)' Shiloh, whose 

 vesture filled the temple in Isaiah's vision. 

 Again take the name \^p_, " gotten." This proves to be the 

 old passive form of the original verbal noun of the biliteral 



^ Cf. " Essays," 6 S., 6 S.I.E., Research, etc., p. 2. 



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