Tanach · Rishonim on Tanach · Ibn Ezra · Torah
Ibn Ezra on Exodus 2:17/אבן עזרא על שמות ב׳:י״ז
אויבאו. מ"ם ויגרשום כמו נו"ן שלא תתערב המלה עם הנו"ן הנוסף לעתיד, וככה צאנם במ"ם שלא להתחבר שני נונין:
1AND THE SHEPHERDS CAME. The mem of va-yegareshum (and drove them away) has the same meaning as a nun.148 in and drove them away refers to females, a nun should have been suffixed to va-yegareshu (and drove away) and the word read va-yegareshun rather than va-yegareshum. For the mem is a masculine suffix and the nun a feminine suffix. I.E. thus notes that although va-yegareshum is ordinarily masculine, here it is feminine. If va-yegareshum was spelled with a nun, the nun might be confused with a superfluous nun.149 (or a superfluous nun) is added to the plural imperfect. Thus in place of the usual yegareshu (they will drive away) we have yegareshun (they will drive away). Now if our word was written va-yegareshun we would not know whether the word was merely plural with a superfluous nun, meaning: and they drove away, or if it was a plural with a feminine suffix, meaning: and they drove them away. To avoid this problem Scripture employed the masculine form here. Similarly, the word tzonam (their flock) is spelled with a mem so as not to combine two nuns.150 is a feminine third person plural pronoun meaning their. Since our text speaks of flocks belonging to females we would expect to find tzonan, which has a feminine suffix, and not tzonam, which has a masculine suffix. I.E. explains that tzonam is used in place of tzonan because it is hard to pronounce two nuns in succession.