| 15. Linguistic Exegesis The verse features an infinitive construct liqro {לִקְרֹא | liqrô} ‘to call’ marking purpose. The prepositional phrase le-ovrei-darekh {לְעֹבְרֵי־דָרֶךְ | lə-ʿōvrê-dā-reḵ} ‘to those passing by’ functions as the directional object. A Piel participle ham-mə-yaš-šərîm {הַמְיַשְּׁרִים | ham-mə-yaš-šərîm} ‘those making straight’ provides an ethical descriptor of the audience. Finally, the construct noun orḥotam {אֹֽרְחוֹתָֽם | ʾor-ḥō-ṯām} ‘their paths’ completes the object phrase with a suffix pronoun. This infinitive–participle parallelism underscores both the act of proclamation and the moral trajectory of the hearers, preserving Hebrew syntactic balance and the journey metaphor. |