# הלל - praise (verb) - several variants?



## קטן

Hi all,


internet search yields several variants of the verb הלל (praise), for example:
a)
הִלֵּל
b)
הַלֵּל

Is there a general rule explaining this variety? 
And which variants comply with Modern Israeli Hebrew?


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## slus

הִלֵּל is the past singular masculine verb - he praised.

הַלֵּל is both the noun for praise and the imperative masculine.

It is not a very common word in modern Hebrew, but also not ultra-rare.


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## קטן

Slus, prompt reply.

However, my interest is in infinitives only, not inflections.


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## slus

The infinitive is לְהַלֵּל


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## קטן

To-infinitive (as opposed to bare infinitive) is לְהַלֵּל, and never לְהִלֵּל, right?

By the way, is לְהָלַל valid according to Modern Israeli Hebrew, with meaning 'to shine'?


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## slus

Right. Only לְהַלֵּל and never לְהִלֵּל.
I never heard of לְהָלַל.


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## Drink

קטן said:


> To-infinitive (as opposed to bare infinitive) is לְהַלֵּל, and never לְהִלֵּל, right?



That is correct. These is just simple verb conjugation rules.



קטן said:


> By the way, is לְהָלַל valid according to Modern Israeli Hebrew, with meaning 'to shine'?



The verb you are referring to occurs in the Bible only as the infinitive בְּהִלּוֹ and finite forms יָהֵל/תָּהֶל/יָהֵלּוּ. The to-infinitive would thus be לָהֵל.


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## קטן

May well be true.

The relation with הַלֵּל is, of course, the similarity in spelling according to כתיב חסר.
Internet sources assert that הָלַל ,means 'to shine' and 'to boast' according to Old Hebrew or Biblical Hebrew.


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## Drink

קטן said:


> Internet sources assert that הָלַל ,means 'to shine' and 'to boast' according to Old Hebrew or Biblical Hebrew.



Strong's concordance often uses unattested hypothetical forms as its entry titles, and those are often based on outdated information. Don't forget that the entry titles are usually the past tense qal forms (not infinitives!, and except for hollow roots, where they use the imperative instead; it's a really stupid system, they should have just used the bare root consonants without putting fake vowels on them). If this verb is indeed qal, and not hif'il, and if it had been attested, it may have been either הָלַל or הַל. There is no way to know, since it is not attested.


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## Abaye

Root הלל (shine) is used in modern Hebrew to form nouns and names like הִלָּה, see here and here.

Brown-Driver-Briggs for h1984 mention forms like בְּהִלּוֺ (qal infinitive with initial ב letter), יָהֵלּוּ (hif`il future 3 m p) to establish the root הלל (shine).

The Academia, in one of their simplistic Facebook posts, say:


> השם הילה כשמות תְּהִלָּה, יָהֵל, תָּהֵל, הִלֵּל, הַלֵּל ועוד גזור מן השורש הל"ל. לשורש זה כמה משמעויות, ובהן אחת הקשורה באוֹר והשנייה בשבח. לא ברור אם יש קשר בין שתי המשמעויות הללו, כלומר אם מן המשמעות הבסיסית של אור התפתחה משמעות השבח, או שרק מקרה הוא שלשתי המשמעויות אותן אותיות השורש.


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## utopia

Drink said:


> That is correct. These is just simple verb conjugation rules.
> 
> 
> 
> The verb you are referring to occurs in the Bible only as the infinitive בְּהִלּוֹ and finite forms יָהֵל/תָּהֶל/יָהֵלּוּ. *The to-infinitive would thus be לָהֵל*.


No.

It will be לְהָהֵל


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## Drink

utopia said:


> No.
> 
> It will be לְהָהֵל



That's what you might have thought, but we have right here an example of the infinitive: בְּהִלּוֹ. It's not *בַּהֲהִלּוֹ. Putting it in the canonical "to-infinitive" form gives לָהֵל.

What I'd say about this is that it's not clear whether this is a qal or hif'il verb.

If it's a qal verb, then you might ask, even though the future has a tzere/chiriq, why the infinitive doesn't have holam/qubutz. The answer is: I don't know, but it's not too implausible.

If it's hif'il, then you might ask why it has no extra ה. The answer is: I don't know, _but_ there is precedent. There are numerous sporadic examples sprinkled throughout Tanach where the hif'il to-infinitive form is missing the ה (such as in Isaiah 23:11).


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## Abaye

The Academia says that the infinitive construct + ל of root הלל qal is *לָהֹל* and for hif`il is *לְהָהֵל*.


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## Egmont

I realized today that I've been singing this word in the sense of "shine" for decades in the old song "Rachel, Rachel" (רחל רחל). (Shoshana Damari recorded it at least 60 years ago, since I was a teenager at the time; many others have also.) The lyrics, in Hebrew written in English characters and in English translation, can be found here. It's also easy to find performances on YouTube, but you'll have to find them yourself because of our "no audio or video links" rule (which I fully understand the reasons for and agree with).

The line ”רחל רחל, אורך יהל„ ("Rachel, Rachel, your light will shine") is the first line of the refrain.

(Granted, finding it in a song written 60+ years ago is not the same as saying it would be used in conversation today.)


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## Drink

Abaye said:


> The Academia says that the infinitive construct + ל of root הלל qal is *לָהֹל* and for hif`il is *לְהָהֵל*.



Yes, well Biblical Hebrew didn't always follow the Academia 

Like I said, the Academia's forms _are_ the expected forms. Nevertheless, we have בְּהִלּוֹ which shows otherwise.


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## Abaye

I don't think ridiculing the Strong's concordance including Brown-Driver-Briggs, or ridiculing the Academia of Hebrew language, is the right way to go.


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## Drink

I was not ridiculing anyone.

Strong's and BDB are valuable resources, just a bit outdated, and they certainly did not get everything right. Anyway, the main thing I was criticizing was a particular design choice, not even anything substantial, and that design choice was sort of the standard of the time, so not really their fault.

And I didn't say anything bad at all about the Academia. Just that the information you got from their site is not relevant here. What you found was how they say you _should_ conjugate these verbs. Whereas what I'm talking about is how this verb seems to have been _actually_ conjugated in the Bible. Those are different things, and I can probably find you numerous examples where the Academy's recommendation is not what is actually found in the Bible.


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## utopia

According to Even-Shoshan, there are some who think that בהלו is a shortened version of בההלו.

That somewhat resembles the word מלפנו (malfenu) from the root אל"ף, and also מגמה from גמ"א.

But that is not the regular way. לההל is, and the Academy tends to publish the more unified forms of verbs.


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## Drink

That makes sense, and is basically what I was saying. But again, it's actually not that unusual for the ה to be dropped. It happens in numerous places, such as לשמ[י]ד instead of להשמיד in the Isaiah verse I cited above. I've even seen it in the chumash, I think in Vayikra, but can't remember where.

PS: And for some verbs, like נהנה, even the Academy gives the standard infinitive as ליהנות instead of להיהנות.


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