Inattention to the Keri and Kethiv 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 Bibles, it will be seen that there is a final Mem (M) in the middle of the word riz-16, is. ix. 6. We have already alluded to the fact that it exhibits one of the fifteen instances where the Kethiv, or the textual reading, is one word, and the Keri, or the emended reading, proposes two words (vide supra, sect. 3). Accordingly, rinc9 stands for riz-, nr6, e., to them the do minion shall be great,' corresponding to the mon abbreviation nz. for crm. The question is not whether may be considered as an abbrevia tion of En9, seeing there are no other examples of it ; suffice it to say, that Jewish scribes and critics of ancient times took it as such, just as they regarded 61.4-11.1 (Is. xxxiii. 7) as a contraction of = 1:17.6 riNnt.; (comp. the Syriac, the Chaldee, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, Vulgate, Elias Levita, etc.); and that the Sept. read it as two words (i.e., nn 4). Subsequent scribes, however, found it either to be more in accordance with the primi tive reading, or with their exegetical rules, as vire]] as with the usage of the prophet himself (comp. Is. 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 codices have two vvords. Hence, though they joined the two words tog,ether as one, they yet left the final Mem to exhibit the variation. An example of the reverse occurs in Nell. ii. 13, where v.siinnn has been divided into two words, cm w3rin, and vvhere 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 expected that those Jews who regard both readings as emanating from the Holy Ghost, and as designed to convey some recondite meaning, would find some mysteries in this final Mem in the middle of ri2-03. Hence we find in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 94) the following remark upon it, Why is it that all the Alems in the middle of a word are open [i.e. nj and this one is closed [i.e. ID] ? The Holy One, blessed be lie ! wanted to make Hezekiah the Messiah, and Sen nacherib Gog and Magog ; whereupon Justice pleaded before the presence of the Holy One, blessed be he ! Lord of the World, what David the king of Israel, who sang so many hymns and praises before thee, wilt thou not make him the Messiah, but Hezekiah, for whom thou bast per formed all those miracles, and who has not littered one song befcrre thce, wilt thou make him the Messiah? Therefore has the Mem been closed.' Ibn Ezra again tells us that the scribes (not he himself, as Gill erroneously states) see in it an allu sion 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 captivity, and that this will take place in the days of salvation, when the kingdom which had been shut up till the coming of the Messiah will be opened.' But that Christian expositors should excel these mystical interpretations is surpassing strange. What are we to say to Galatinus, who
submits that this Mem, being the cypher of 600, 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 win rrz,,, Mir/a Domina, or that the perpetual vir ginity of Mary is thereby indicated (lib. vii. c. xiii.) ? Or to Calvin, who thinks that it denotes the close and secret way whereby the Messiah should come to reign and set up his kingdom ? or to the opinion which he mentions, that it indicates the exclusion of the Jew-s from the Messiah's kingdom for their unbelief? Or to the conjecture of Gill, that 'it may denote that the government 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, to be firm and stable, perfect and complete, which the figure of this letter, being shut, and four-square, may be an emblem of?' It only remains to be added, that there are some words, which are always read differently 0-1p) to what they are written in the text (m+rin), and which, from the frequency of their occurrence, have only the vowel signs of the proposed Keri, without the latter being exhibited in the marginal gloss. These are, a, The name riv, which has always the vowel signs of ',.)4itst, and is pronounced with these vowels, i.e., ;nil?, except when it precedes this name itself, in which case it has the vowel signs of e., nr14.; b, The name Jerusalem, when, as in the earlier books of Scripture, it is written with Yod before the Mem, has never its own points, e., or n-, but has the vowel signs of 126,1::nro, and is read so ; c, The word tm, which was epicene in earlier periods, is always pointed ti)n in the Pentateuch, when it is used as feminine, to make it conformable to the later feminine form • ; and d, The name 'Inn:" is always furnished with the vowels belonging to the Xen. 1Z.V s with one Shin.
5. Literature.—One of the earliest attempts freely to discourse upon the origin and value of the Keri and Kethiv, is that of Kimchi, in the Introduc tion to his Contmentary on yoshua ; Abravanel, too, has a lengthy disquisition on this subject, in the Introduction to his C01717,Ieldary 071 yerenziah. He was followed by the laborious Jacob B. Chajim, who fully discusses the Xeri and Xethiv in his cele bmted Introduction to the Rabbinic Bible, translated by Ginsburg in the journal of Sacred Literature for July 1863 ; and by the erudite and bold Elias Le vita, who gives a very lucid account of the Keri and Xethiv, in his Massoreth Ha-Massoreth, ed. Sulz bach, 1771, pp. 8 a, ff., 21 a, ff. Of Christian writers are to be mentioned the masterly treatises Cappellus, Critica Sacra, lib. iii. cap. ix., seq. ; Buxtorf, Tiberias, cap. xiii. ; Buxtorf the younger, Ant/critic-a, Basileae 1653, cap. iv. p. 448-5o9 ; Hilleri De Arcano Kethib et Her/ Tub. 1692 ; Walton, Biblia Polyglotta Proles:, 'Cantab. t828, vol. i. p. 412, seq. ; Wolf, Bibliotheca Rebrayz, p. 507-533 ; Frankel, VOrSirldlell Zll der ..S'eptzta ginta, Leipzig 1841, p. 219, .req.—C. D. G.