PHILOLOGY TO THE 'J'lJUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 209 



but convincing alternation, when one has the key, of a- and 

 -i-sounds in the ordinary verb, while in vowel-Ayin verbs it has 

 long i from the original passive throughout, except in a few 

 shut syllables. . Note, too, the nomen verM of the second or 



intensive form in Arabic, J.jjvjijj taq-ti-lun. The long i here is 



a remnant of the original passive form. Now take the first 

 person sing, perfect of these verbs. The verbal noun here 

 precedes the pronoun, and must therefore have been in the 

 nominative case before the pronominal noun, which in turn 

 must have been in the genitive. This is what we would expect, 

 and when we come to make the investigation we actually have 

 '^ni^n, han-no-thi, the verbal noun hanno ends in 6, a common 



modification of the old nominative in u. Now, wlien in the 

 perfect, the noun preceded the pronoun, and was therefore in 

 the nominative, then in like manner in the imperfect, where 

 the verbal noun followed the pronoun, we would expect that 

 noun to be in the genitive, which it actually is, modified to e. 

 The " connecting vowel " in the fem. plural of IID, sa-hhdbh, 



" to turn," -^^sit&^em/i. is e, the genitive. 



These peculiarities, and others which are too numerous to 

 discuss, in these two classes of verbs, run right through the 

 Hebrew Bible from the Pentateuch to Malachi, or rather, taking 

 the Hebrew order, to ii Chronicles. In Daniel there seems 

 to be a revival of the most ancient type in ^ili^*^^, MnotJii, " I 



understood," which is not Hiphil, but the old passive form of 

 the verbal noun with the pronominal suffix, Dan. ix, 2. The two 

 classes of verb run into one another, and were originally one. 

 The so-called " connectincr vowels " occur also in the derived 

 forms of the verb, but were disappearing from the first. In 

 fact, the Pentateuch secured them just when they were about to 

 disappear from Hebrew, as from Arabic and other Semitic 

 languages. 



Turn now to primitive Indo-European verbs, and you find from 

 their endings that they too had the u, i, and a, the u and i often 

 modified to d and e ; but, with the exception of the nominative 

 u, these were not required in the strict formation of the verb, as 

 the pronominal element invariably followed the verbal noun. 

 Accordingly, you find them there but put to new uses. They are 

 the vowels of the so-called Thematic Stems in Greek. These 

 are the old case-endings put to new uses. 



They are also found in the " conjugations " in Indo-European. 

 Verbs ending in a have just the old accusative ending, in e the 



p 



