contracted from an original ay. Against this, however, it may be urged that the Phoenician inscriptions do not usually express this ê, nor any other final vowel.[1]
[e] (b) The employment of ו to denote ô, û, and of י to denote ê, î, may have resulted from those cases in which a ו with a preceding a was contracted into au and further to ô, or with a preceding u coalesced into û, and where י with a has been contracted into ai and further to ê, or with a preceding i into î (cf. § 24). In this case the previously existing consonants were retained as vowel letters and were further applied at the end of the word to denote the respective long vowels. Finally א also will in the first instance have established itself as a vowel letter only where a consonantal א with a preceding a had coalesced into â or ā.
[f] The orthography of the Siloam inscription corresponds almost exactly with the above assumptions. Here (as in the Mêšaʿ inscr.) we find all the long vowels, which have not arisen from original diphthongs, without vowel letters, thus אִשׁ, חֹצְבִם, מִימִן (or מִיָּמִן); אַמֹּת, קֹל, שְׁלשׁ, צֻר. On the other hand מוֹצָא (from mauṣaʾ), עוֹד (from ʿaud); מימן also, if it is to be read מִימִן, is an instance of the retention of a י which has coalesced with i into î. Instances of the retention of an originally consonantal א as a vowel letter are מָאתַ֫יִם, מוֹצָא, and קָרָא, as also רֹאשׁ. Otherwise final ā is always represented by ה: אַמָּה, הָיָה, זרה, נקבה. To this יֹם alone would form an exception (cf. however the note on יוֹם, § 96), instead of יוֹם (Arab. yaum) day, which one would expect. If the reading be correct, this is to be regarded as an argument that a consciousness of the origin of many long vowels was lost at an early period, so that (at least in the middle of the word) the vowel letters were omitted in places where they should stand, according to what has been stated above, and added where there was no case of contraction. This view is in a great measure confirmed by the orthography of the Mêšaʿ inscription. There we find, as might be expected, דיבן (= Daibōn, as the Δαιβών of the LXX proves), חוֹרֹנָן (ô from au), and בֵּיתֹה (ê from ai), but also even הֽשִׁעַנִי[2] instead of הֽוֹשִׁעַנִי (from hauš-), ואשב = וָֽאוֹשִׁיב, בֵּת four times, בֵּתֹה once, for בֵּית and בֵּיתֹה (from bait); ללה = לַיְלָה, אן = אַ֫יִן or אֵין.
- ↑ Thus there occurs, e.g. in Melit. 1, l. 3 שנבן = שְׁנֵי בְנֵי the two sons; elsewhere כ for כִּי (but כי in the Mêšaʿ) and Siloam inscrr.), ז for זֶה (the latter in the Siloam inscr.), בנת = בָּנִתִי (so Mêšaʿ) or בָּנִיתִי, &c. Cf. on the other hand in Mêšaʿ, אנכ = אנכי (unless it was actually pronounced ʾanôkh by the Moabites!). As final ā is represented by ה and א and final î by י, so final û is almost everywhere expressed by ו in Mêšaʿ, and always in the Siloam inscription. It is indeed not impossible that Hebrew orthography also once passed through a period in which the final vowels were left always or sometimes undenoted, and that not a few strange forms in the present text of the Bible are to be explained from the fact that subsequently the vowel letters (especially ו and י) were not added in all cases. So Chwolson, ‘Die Quiescentia הוי in der althebr. Orthogr.,’ in Travaux du Congrès... des Orientalistes, Petersb. 1876; cf. numerous instances in Ginsburg, Introd., p. 146 ff.
- ↑ השעני is the more strange since the name of king הוֹשֵׁעָ is represented as A-u siʾ in cuneiform as late as 728 B.C.
