Pairs (Gen 7:15)
The Flood
15 Then they came to Noah, at the box וַיָּבֹ֥אוּ אֶל־נֹ֖חַ אֶל־הַתֵּבָ֑ה
I said last time that we still had to talk about the very first word of v. 14: הֵ֜מָּה héimma ‘they’. That’s because it’s relevant now, as we move forward to v. 15.
Not that there’s anything particularly difficult about the word itself. Speakers and readers of Modern Hebrew may expect to see הֵם heim (the standard form now), but in the Bible héimma actually outscores heim 284–237. ⇥ See Lesson 9 of my Hebrew course for whatever you might want to know about Biblical Hebrew pronouns. ⇤
No, the problem is not the word itself but its placement. Here are vv. 13–15 boiled down (from NJPS) to their grammatical skeleton:
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