5. Qal Internal Passive versus nifʿal Morphology

The broad move away from qal morphology to other stems included a shift away from qal internal passive morphology in favour of nifʿal morphology. This is clear in late forms of ancient Hebrew, biblical and extrabiblical, where qal internal passive forms are rare to non-existent. The process seems secondarily to have affected even early biblical texts, but only where the consonantal spelling was amenable to reinterpretation by means of the imposition of nifʿal pronunciation, which created many cases of artificial suppletion. While the nifʿal was by no means an innovation in Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH), its frequency there according to the Tiberian reading tradition does not align with its representation in the corresponding written tradition. The dissonance between the two traditions makes it difficult to perceive diachronic patterns in qal versus nifʿal usage in CBH, but by focusing on commonly used verbs, one can see the emergence of meaningful patterns. These arguably indicate a difference between the CBH of the Torah and the CBH of the relevant Prophets and Writings. They have mixed results as far as Source Theory is concerned.