| 11. Linguistic Exegesis The narrative opens with vayehi {וַיְהִ֨י | va-ye-hî} ‘and it happened’, a vav-consecutive marker signaling a new event. Two temporal modifiers, bəmalkho {בְמָלְכוֹ | bə-māl-kô} ‘in his reign’ and kəšivto {כְּשִׁבְתּ֣וֹ | kə-šîv-tô} ‘as he sat’, establish immediacy upon enthronement. The verb hikkāh {הִכָּה֙ | hiqqāh} ‘he struck’ with ʾet selects kol-bēt {כָּל־בֵּ֣ית | kol-bēt} ‘all the house’ as its object. The idiom maštīn bə-qîr {מַשְׁתִּ֣ין בְּקִ֑יר | mashtīn bə-qîr} ‘one urinating against a wall’ functions as an emphatic expression for male descendants. A tricolon wə-gō‘ălāv wə-rē‘ēhû {וְגֹאֲלָ֖יו וְרֵעֵֽהוּ | wə-gō‘ălāv wə-rē‘ēhû} ‘and his kinsman and his friend’ underscores the complete eradication of kin and companions. The English rendition balances fidelity to Hebrew structure with clarity, treating the idiom literally in formal and functionally in dynamic. |