Qere and Ketiv

Torah scrolls for use in public reading in synagogues contain only the Hebrew language consonantal text, handed down by tradition (with only a very limited and ambiguous indication of vowels by means of matres lectionis).

However, in the Masoretic codices of the 9th–10th centuries, and most subsequent manuscripts and published editions of the Tanakh intended for personal study, the pure consonantal text is annotated with vowel points, cantillation marks and other diacritic symbols used by the Masoretes to indicate how it should be read and chanted, besides marginal notes serving various functions.

This is also evident throughout 2 Kings 4, where the archaic Hebrew 2p feminine form of -ti is consistently eliminated by the qere, which replaces it with the familiar standard form of -t.[2] In such Masoretic texts, the vowel diacritics of the qere (the Masoretic reading) would be placed in the main text, added around the consonantal letters of the ketiv (the written variant to be substituted – even if it contains a completely different number of letters), with a special sign indicating that there was a marginal note for this word.

Because the difference between the qere and ketiv is relatively large, a note is made in footnotes, sidenotes or brackets to indicate it (see "Typography" below).

In rarer cases, the word is replaced entirely (Deuteronomy 28:27, 30; Samuel I 5:6) for reasons of tohorat halashon, "purity of language.

In a few cases a change may be marked solely by the adjustment of the vowels written on the consonants, without any notes in the margin, if it is common enough that this will suffice for the reader to recognize it.

The Masoretes indicated this situation by adding a written diacritic symbol for the vowel [i] to the pre-Masoretic consonantal spelling hwʔ הוא‎ (see diagram).

The consensus of mainstream scholarship is that "Yehowah" (or in Latin transcription "Jehovah") is a pseudo-Hebrew form which was mistakenly created when Medieval and/or Renaissance Christian scholars misunderstood this common qere perpetuum, so that "the bastard word 'Jehovah' [was] obtained by fusing the vowels of the one word with the consonants of the other"[5] (similar to reading hiw for the qere perpetuum of the third-person singular feminine pronoun).

[15] Modern editions of the Chumash and Tanakh include information about the qere and ketiv, but with varying formatting, even among books from the same publisher.

Usually, the qere is written in the main text with its vowels, and the ketiv is in a side- or footnote (as in the Gutnick and Stone editions of the Chumash, from Kol Menachem[16] and Artscroll,[17] respectively).

Other times, the ketiv is indicated in brackets, in-line with the main text (as in the Rubin edition of the Prophets, also from Artscroll).

However, an additional note is still made in brackets (as in the Kestenbaum edition from Artscroll) or in a footnote (as in the Tikkun LaKorim from Ktav.