The Fourth Principle: On the elucidation of the vowels of the pattern Hitpa‘el for strong roots, and its identifying signs.

The Pattern Hitpa‘el Its identifying signs are a he, a tav, and a dagesh in the middle root letter — thus there are three identifying signs.

1. The Past Throughout, it has a he with a hiriq, followed by a tav with a quiescent sheva, and after it three root letters. The first root letter has a pataḥ throughout the entire pattern, and the middle root letter takes a dagesh, as in hitpaqed. But when it is one of the guttural letters or a resh, it takes a qamats, as in hitpa’er ‘alai (Exodus 8:5), and hitbarekh bilvavo (Deuteronomy 29:18), and similar cases. And all its reading and vocalization follow the pattern Paʿal with a dagesh.

The Participle It is formed with the addition of a mem with a hiriq at the beginning, followed by a tav with a quiescent sheva. Here too they dropped the he, for it would properly have been mehitpaqed, just as I wrote regarding the e-i-t-n letters in the pattern Hif‘il.

The Passive It does not occur in this pattern.

2. The Infinitive It is like the past tense, and the he does not drop, even when combined with the prefixed letters b-k-l-m.

And likewise the Imperative It always appears with the he; but in the future tense the he drops, as in the participle, and the letters e-i-t-n are vocalized with a hiriq, as in the pattern Qal and in the pattern Nif‘al. And for the most part the middle root letter has a tsere, as in ethalekh lifnei Hashem (Psalms 116:9); and in a few cases with a pataḥ, as in al tit’hader lifnei melekh (Proverbs 25:6).

3. It is known that in this entire pattern the tav of Hitpa‘el normally comes before the first root letter, as I have written. But when the first root letter is one of the letters zayin, samekh, shin, or tsadi, it has other rules. With a samekh and a shin, the tav comes after the first root letter, as in va-yishtamer ḥuqqot ‘Omri (Micah 6:16), and va-yistabbel he-ḥagav (Ecclesiastes 12:5). With a tsadi, it changes into a tet, as in u-ma nitzṭaddaq (Genesis 44:16). And with a zayin, it changes into a dalet, as in hizdamaneton le-me’amar (Daniel 2:9).

4. And it seems to me that no proof should be brought from hizdamaneton, for two reasons. First, because it is an Aramaic word. Second, because in the Masoretic tradition it is found as: written hizdamaneton, read hizdamaneton; and it is one of the two words that are read with a dalet but not written with it. It thus appears that they were in doubt whether the dalet ought to be written or not. And although we find that the masters of the Talmud were accustomed to do so, saying nizdaman lo tsevi, nizdaqen ha-din, this is not done in the Hebrew language, for thus our Rabbis of blessed memory said: the language of Scripture is one thing, and the language of the Mishnah is another (Avodah Zarah 58b).

5. Moreover, when I searched throughout all of Scripture, I did not find any root whose first root letter is zayin from which the pattern Nif‘al is built with its second meaning, as explained in the First Treatise, in the Eighth Principle, section two. And the word raḥatsu hizakku (Isaiah 1:16) you will find in the Book of Composition; likewise ve-hitshotatnah ba-gederot (Jeremiah 49:3) you will find there as well.

And now I shall turn to explain the defective roots, and afterward the quiescent roots, and afterward the doubled roots, briefly.