Footnote 7 – Jacob’s Terrible Burden

Mwt is the Hebrew infinitive of the verb “to die,” of which metah is the third-person, female, singular conjugation in the past tense (“she died”). It is standard practice to transliterate infinitives in consonantal form, without vocalization. Thus, mwt represents the Hebrew consonants mem, waw, and taw, which together form the root of the verb “to die.” ‘Al is an uncompleted preposition (functioning here as an adverbial phrase), the translation of which is what is at issue here. ‘Alai completes that preposition with the first-person, singular pronoun.