Masoretic Accents and Non-Trivial Exegesis of Biblical Verses

The article focuses on the functioning of Masoretic accents in cases of non-trivial exegesis of biblical verses. It discusses several examples showing that the Masoretes used accentuation to convey their own understanding of the syntax and meaning of biblical verses, which often differs from today's commonly accepted interpretations. Comparisons between unusual cases of Masoretic accentuation and Targums or medieval Jewish commentaries reveal that, even when these accents seem perplexing to modern scholars, they still encode the syntactic structure of the verses—just not according to the interpretations commonly accepted in contemporary biblical studies, but rather according to the Masoretes' own understanding.