The revelations of a musical concordance

You might think that a concordance is somewhat boring to scan. Not for the avid student. Such things are very revealing. Even the mundane like a two letter preposition /al/. This root governs 6,585 words in the Scripture. Just over 2% of the total words in the Bible. In a religious text that is more words than most people read on their own. And what a word! It covers the preposition to, a negative particle usually introducing a command rather than a state of affairs (nice into here), and the base word for a god or God.

The preposition alone is of immense interest. From the points of view of translation, music, and semantic domain. 

Any preposition has dozens of forms that are hard to reduce to a single word like to. As I have noted before, prepositions are notorious for not being able to be translated concordantly. /al/ is rendered as to, into, on, at, in, concerning, against, etc. We do this in English too - what's it to you = how does this concern you.

Whatever the text requires the translator must put in. Sometimes it's a choice, but more often than not it's just the way the host language handles prepositions that is completely different from the guest language. This usage is also related to the verb. Some verbs require a preposition in one language and not in another. So sometimes prepositions will have /--/ against them, signifying that the word was not glossed. (It was translated, but by implication.) Compare my translation with the CJB for 1 Kings 10:7, the report of the Queen of Sheba. My words are in sequence for the music so I can render the preposition. CJB is freer with word order. 

It's interesting that the commonplace English phrase not half is very old and occurs in other languages.

1 Kings 10
וְלֹֽא־הֶאֱמַ֣נְתִּי לַדְּבָרִ֗ים עַ֤ד אֲשֶׁר־בָּ֙אתִי֙ וַתִּרְאֶ֣ינָה עֵינַ֔י וְהִנֵּ֥ה לֹֽא־הֻגַּד־לִ֖י הַחֵ֑צִי הוֹסַ֤פְתָּ חָכְמָה֙ וָט֔וֹב אֶל־הַשְּׁמוּעָ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר שָׁמָֽעְתִּי	z vla-hamnti ldbrim yd awr-bati vtrainh yinii vhnh la-hugd-li hkxi hospt kcmh v'tob al-hwmuyh awr wmyti	7 And I had not believed the words until I came and my eyes had seen, and behold, the half was not told me. You have added shrewdness and good to the report that I had heard.

Also, prepositions are used with pronoun suffixes. What better way to learn them than in a spacious list, rather than embedded in a sentence when you are first learning and can barely see the example in the small print of a textbook. 

So many examples at the link, beginning about 2/3 of the way through the post. The first is the common alicm אֲלֵיכֶ֔ם, seventy discrete occurrences sung so many ways depending on where it is in the musical phrase, though always spelled the same: aleph, hatef-patah, lamed, tsere, yod, kaf, holem, mem-sofit.

Example: Jeremiah 25:3, 26:5

In the first example, the alicm is part of the middle of the phrase leading back to the tonic.
In the second, it is at the mid-verse cadence. Look in the boxes.

This may be the first glossary that you can sing from beginning to end.

Look at it. There is (was - I fixed it) a surprise at the bottom. The Aramaic for /al/ is different and does not belong in the category of Grammar-Preposition, but rather Engagement-Look. (search for 'look' you will find it.) Here's a method of finding inconsistencies in my division in the semantic domains.