Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #masorah
Most recents (1)
In their zeal to preserve EVERY detail of the biblical text accurately, the #Masoretes sometimes make up little ditties, in #Aramaic, to help remember some textual feature or another. I've just come across one I'd not seen before, & which has instantly become my favourite. (1/5)
Remember #Ezekiel 18? The righteous man and the unrighteous man. The righteous man does not eat on the mountains (i.e. at the idol shrines), but the unrighteous man does eat on the mountains 
In both cases, the verb 'eat' happens to be marked w/ Zaqef. Zaqef is quite a strong disjunctive accent. S/times it causes the word it marks to be written as a pausal form (ie vowel change), s/times not. Here: 'does not eat' is pausal, but 'does eat' is written non-pausally.
