Three Spellings with an Extra Heh

The word yeshuah יְשׁוּעָה yesh-oo'-aw, salvation, occurs 77 times in the Hebrew Old Testament, in 76 verses. The Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), the tagged text this study uses, marks every one of those 77 as a feminine noun, and the standard lexicons agree. That agreement is a fact, and this chapter grants it plainly before going further.

Within that agreement, however, there are three verses that the standard analysis could not fit into its own categories. In these three places yeshuah is written with an extra heh added at the end. And one of the three was spoken by Jonah.

One Heh Too Many

The ordinary form, yeshuah, ends in the feminine ending -ah, written with a heh. In these three verses that ending takes its longer form, -at, written with a tav, and a heh is added after it, so that the word is written yeshuatah (or li-shuatah, “for salvation,” with a small word for “for” in front).

What could the second heh be? It could not be another feminine ending, because the word already has one. It could not be the heh of direction, which means “toward” a place, as when Mitzraymah means “toward Egypt,” because salvation in these verses is not a place that anyone moves toward. So the standard analysis filed it under the heading grammars use when they cannot name a purpose: the paragogic heh, an added heh whose purpose grammars do not agree on. The tags in OSHB record exactly that.

Here are the three verses (YLV verse numbers, Masoretic order).

From Inside the Fish

The first is the last line of Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the fish, the prayer that stands between his being swallowed and his being given back to the dry land.

Jonah 2:10 But I, with the voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you; that which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation (yeshuah) is the LORD's."

“Salvation (yeshuah) is the LORD’s.” In Hebrew the word here is yeshuatah, with the added heh.

The second is a line from David’s psalm when he fled from Absalom. His enemies were saying something about him.

Psalm 3:3 Many are saying of my soul (nephesh נֶפֶשׁ neh'-fesh), "There is no salvation (yeshuah) for him in God." Selah.

“There is no salvation (yeshuah) for him in God.” Again the word is yeshuatah.

The third is from a psalm of Asaph, a prayer for Israel.

Psalm 80:3 Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your might, and come for our salvation (yeshuah).

He asks God to “come for our salvation (yeshuah).” Here the word is li-shuatah.

Put the three side by side and you can see what they have in common.

Salvation that belongs to God, salvation that is in God, and salvation that comes from God: these are the only three places in the Hebrew Bible where yeshuah takes the extra heh.

The standard analysis stopped short at exactly these verses and left the function of the letter unnamed. That pause itself suggests that something is here which the existing categories do not capture. This study reads the added heh as a divine marker. At the very places that say most strongly that salvation belongs to God, the word ends the way God’s own name ends, as Yah ends.

It is fitting that one of the three should come from Jonah. The man whose three days and three nights in the fish became the one sign Yeshua gave closed that prayer with this word, written in this way.

The Evidence on the Other Side

A fair study does not stop where its own case looks strongest. Evidence also points the other way, and this study sets it out openly.

In four verses the verb that goes with yeshuah is feminine.

Isaiah 51:6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath; for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wear out like a garment, and those who dwell in it shall die likewise; but my salvation (yeshuah) shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not be shattered.

Isaiah 59:11 We growl like bears, all of us, and like doves we surely moan; we wait for judgment (mishpat מִשׁפָּט mish-pawt'), but there is none, for salvation (yeshuah), but it is far from us.

Job 30:15 Terrors are turned upon me; it pursues my dignity like the wind (ruach רוּחַ roo'-akh), and like a cloud my salvation (yeshuah) has passed away.

Psalm 69:30 But I am afflicted and in pain; let your salvation (yeshuah), O God, set me on high.

In Hebrew, “shall be” in Isaiah 51:6, “is far” in Isaiah 59:11, “has passed away” in Job 30:15 and “set me on high” in Psalm 69:30 (YLV, Masoretic verse order) are all feminine forms. The study does not deny this. The question is what it proves, and three things need to be kept apart.

First, the agreement of a verb tells you the grammatical gender of a word, not the nature of the one the word refers to. An example from German makes this clear. The German word for a girl, das Maedchen, is grammatically neuter and takes a neuter article, yet no one supposes that the girl is neuter. Grammar sorts words by their form. It does not tell you what they point to.

Second, there is a verse in which a masculine verb stands in the same line as yeshuah.

Isaiah 62:1 For Zion's sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation (yeshuah) as a torch that burns.

The line has two matching halves. In the first, “her righteousness” is the subject of the verb yetze, “goes forth.” In the second, “her salvation (yeshuah)” stands in the matching place, and the verb that completes that half of the line is yivar, “burns.” That verb is masculine. In the four verses above, yeshuah takes a feminine verb; here, in the half-line that speaks of “her salvation,” the verb is masculine. A word that the lexicons call purely feminine would not be expected to take a masculine verb.

Third, and this is the weightier point, in all 76 verses where yeshuah occurs, a survey of the text finds no feminine pronoun that refers back to it. Not once does the text say “she” of salvation.

Agreement and Reference

This is the heart of the matter. Verb agreement and pronoun reference belong to two different levels of language. Agreement follows the form of a word mechanically: a word with a feminine ending tends to draw a feminine verb, whatever it means. A pronoun is a choice. When a speaker takes up a word again with “he” or “she,” he shows how he understands the thing he is speaking of.

So the text attaches a feminine verb to yeshuah in four places, by form. But it has never once referred to yeshuah as a feminine person. And in Genesis 3:15, which we come to two chapters from now, a masculine pronoun takes up a word that ends in this same letter.

The study does not claim that these findings prove a single proposition as a sum proves its answer. It claims something narrower and firmer: that the rule “it ends in heh, so it is feminine” cannot be sustained for these words. God ended His own name with that letter, and the word for what He became for His people ends with the same letter.

Form and distribution can show that the label “feminine ending” does not close the question. They cannot show what the word yeshuah names. Isaiah sang that the LORD has become his yeshuah, and Simeon held that yeshuah in his arms. Was it ever only an abstract word for deliverance? Or was it, from the very beginning, a person? John answers that question in the first verse of his Gospel.