A Diachronic Study of the Language of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi

Abstract

The language of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the three postexilic prophets, has been relatively unstudied with regard to its contribution to a diachronic understanding of Late Biblical Hebrew. Recent scholarship argues that the entire biblical corpus was written in the literary Hebrew of the Persian and Hellenistic periods with no clear-cut dichotomy between Standard Biblical Hebrew and Late Biblical Hebrew. This view posits that Early Biblical Hebrew and Late Biblical Hebrew coexisted, places the Hebrew of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi at the center of the controversy, and claims that these postexilic prophetic books contain primarily Early Biblical Hebrew with very few Late Biblical Hebrew elements. Through discussion of selected items in morphology, phraseology, semantics, and orthography, this study shows that, contrary to the prevailing view, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi make considerable use of Late Biblical Hebrew.