הוא נתנה לי
she it was that gave me of the tree, and I did eat.' Gen. iii. 13. 'And the woman said,
הנחש השיאני
, not merely 'the Serpent beguiled me,' but 'the Serpent was the cause; it beguiled me, and I did eat.' Exod. xiv. 14. 'Jehovah—he will fight for you; but as for you, ye shall hold your peace.' This kind of emphasis is correctly expressed in the Eng. translation of Psal. lx. 12, 'for he it is that shall tread down our enemies.' Without multiplying examples, I shall only observe that it must be difficult for the English reader to conceive that the Noun denoting the subject of a proposition, when placed after its Verb, should be in the natural order; and when placed before its Verb, should be in an inverted order of the words. To a person well aquainted with the Gaelic, this idiom is familiar; and therefore it is the easier for him to apprehend the effect of such an arrangement in any other language. For want of attending to this peculiarity in the structure of the Hebrew, much of that force and emphasis, which in other languages would be expressed by various particles, but in Hebrew depend on the collocation alone, must pass unobserved and unfelt.
[103] I am happy to be put right, in my stricture on the above passage, by E. O'C., author of a Gaelic Grammar, Dublin, 1808, who informs us that truaighe is here the Nominative, and Iosa the Accusative case; and that the meaning is not Jesus took pity on them, but pity seized Jesus for them.
[104] This construction resembles that of the Latin Infinitive preceded by the Accusative of the Agent.
——Mene desistere victam,
Nec posse Italia Teucrorum avertere regem?—I. Ænid 28.
[105] So in English, the Infinitive of a Transitive Verb is sometimes used instead of the Present Participle, and followed by the Preposition of; as, 'the woman was there gathering of sticks.' 1 Kings xvii. 10.
———— some sad drops