Inattention to the Keri and Kethib has given rise to the most fanciful and absurd expositions, of which the following may serve both as a specimen and a warning. In looking at the text of the Hebrew Bible, it Avill be seen that there is a final Mem (D) in the middle of the word t^3'^Di, Isa. ix, G. We have already alluded to the fact that it exhibits one of the fifteen instances where the Kethib, or the textual reading, is one word, and the Keri, or the emended reading, proposes two words (see above, sec. 1). Accordingly, H^^DP stands for il2"l obi^idilb, i. c. "?o them the dominion shcdl be ffi-eat," corresponding to the common abbreviation C3 for ens. The question is not whether sb may be con- sidered as an abbreviation of cnb, seeing there are no other examples of it ; suffice it to say that Je^vish scribes and critics of ancient times took it as such, just as they regarded Gbx~iX (Isa. xxxiii, 7) as a contraction of nXIX Clnb = nb (comp. the Sj^iac, Chaldee, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, Vulgate, Elias Levita, etc.) ; and that the Sept. read it as tu-o words (i. c. Mm tlP), Subsequent scribes, however, found it either to be more in accordance with the primitive reading, or with their exegetical rules, as well as with the usage of the prophet himself (comp. Isa. xxxiii, 23), to read it as one word; but their extreme reverence for the text prevented them from making this alteration without indicating that some C(idlces have two -words. Hence, though they joined the two words together as one, they yet left the final Mem to exhibit the variation. An example of the reverse occurs in Neh. ii, 13, where D'^JT^E^rt has been divided into two words, CliTlS "sn, and where the same anxiety faithfully to exhibit the ancient reading has made the editors of the Hebrew canon retain the medial Mem at the end of the word. It was to be ex- pected that those Jews who rcgaril both readings as
KERI AND KETHIB
54
KERIOTH
emanating from the Holy Spirit, and as designed tocon- ^•(■y some recondite meaning, woidd tind some mysteries in this tinal Mem in the midtUe of timcb. Hence we lind in the Talmnd (Stin/ieflriii, 04) the following remark upon it: "Why is it that all the Mems in the middle of a word are open [i. e. "2] and this one is closed [i. e. C]? The Holy One (blessed be he!) wanted to make Hczekiah the Messiah, and Sennacherib Gog and Ma- gog; whereupon Justice pleaded before the presence of the Holy One (blessed be he !), Lord of the World, ' What ! Davitl the king of Israel, who sang so many hymns and praises before thee, wilt thou not make him the ^Messiah; but Ilezekiah, for whom thou hast performed all those miracles, and who has not uttered one song before thee, wilt thou make him the Messiah?' Therefore has the Mem been closed." Aben-Ezra again tells us that the scribes (not he himself, as Gill erroneously states) see in it an allusion to the recession of the shadow on the dial in Hezekiah's time; whilst Kimchi will have it that it refers to the " stopping up of the breaches in the walls of Jerusalem, which are broken down during the captiv- ity, and that this will take place in the days of salva- tion, wlien the kingdom which had been shut up tiU the coming of the ^Messiah will be opened." But that Christian expositors should excel these mystical inter- pretations is surpassing strange. What are we to say to Galatinus, who submits that this Mem, being the ci- pher of 000, intimates that six hundred years after this prophecy the birth of Christ was to take place ? or to the opinion which he quotes, that the name D'^^.'a T\~\'^, Maria Domina, or even the perpetual virginity of INIary is thereby indicated (lib. vii, c. xiii) ? or to Calvin, who thinks that it denotes the close and secret way whereby the Messiah shoidd come to reign and set xx\i his kingdom? or to the opinion which he mentions tliat it indicates the exclusion of the Jews from the IMessiah's kingdom for their unbelief? or to the con- jecture of Gin, that " it may denote that the govern- ment of Christ, which would be for a time straitened, and kept in narrow bounds and limits, should hereafter be throughout the world, to the four corners of it, so as to be tirm and stable, perfect and comjilcte, which the figure of this letter, being shut and four-square, may be an emblem of?"
It should be added that there are some M-ords which are always read differently (^^p) from what they are written in the text (HTZ), and which, from the fre- quency of their occurrence, have only the vowel signs of the proposed Keri, without the latter being exhibited in the marginal gloss. Tliese are, a. The name nw, which has always the voAvel signs of '^3"1X, and is pro- nounced with these vowels, i. e. <^iri^, except when it precedes this name itself, in which case it has the vowel signs of D'^ri'SX, i. e. nifT^; h. The name Jerusalem, when, as in the earlier books of Scripture, it is written with a Yod before the Mem, has never its own points, i. e. Cb'i^n^ or C~, but has the vowel signs of C^?"'^"''"''?, and is read so ; c. The word X^in, which was epicene in earlier periods, is always pointed NW in tlie Pentateuch, when it is used as feminine, to make it conformable to the later feminine form X'^n ; and, c. The name "^ZU." — "^ is always furnished with the vowels belonging to the Keri, iZ'viJI' ^^'ith one Sinn.