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Ruth 1:8 says:

ח וַתֹּאמֶר נָעֳמִי, לִשְׁתֵּי כַלֹּתֶיהָ, לֵכְנָה שֹּׁבְנָה, אִשָּׁה לְבֵית אִמָּהּ; יעשה (יַעַשׂ) יְהוָה עִמָּכֶם חֶסֶד, כַּאֲשֶׁר עֲשִׂיתֶם עִם-הַמֵּתִים וְעִמָּדִי.

8 And Naomi said unto her two daughters-in-law: 'Go, return each of you to her mother's house; the LORD deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt with the dead, and with me.

Is עמדי an acceptable variation of עמי? Does it have exactly the same meaning? Why is it there? And are there any other examples of it in the Hebrew Bible?

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  • 1
    Hi L-J du Heaume and welcome to Judaism.SE! Thanks for the grammatical precision question. – WAF Aug 11 '11 at 14:20
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It appears to be more or less synonymous, and yes it appears often thoughout Tanach. The first instance of imadi is Genesis 3:12 (Adam blames G-d for "the wife you have put with me", imadi; the first time imi appears in Tanach is when Joseph's master's wife tells him "sleep with me" [imi].

A grammarian such as Malbim is likely to explain the nuanced distinction between imi and imadi, but I don't know what it is off-hand.

It appears to actually be the more-common form used both in Genesis and Job. Here are the counts I'm coming up with, based on parsing mechon-mamre's text, counting both "with me" and "from with me". (And yes, to do this properly you should eliminate cases of ami and amei instead of imi; but this is a first-degree approximation. Count the *imadi*s as the actual number, and the *imi*s as an upward bound; for instance, Lamentations is all ami's, no imi's).

I'm having trouble pasting code correctly into this template with the right right-to-left order thing working, so I'll do this all in English:

Bookname            "imi"      "me'imi"     "imadi"     "me'imadi"

Genesis             7           1           14          0
Exodus              17          0           2           0
Leviticus           4           0           1           0
Numbers             1           0           0           0
Deuteronomy         1           0           3           0
Joshua              2           0           0           0
Judges              5           0           1           0
Samuel              20          0           4           2
Kings               12          0           0           0
Isaiah              24          0           1           0
Jeremiah            30          0           2           0
Ezekiel             22          0           0           0
Hosea               10          0           0           0
Joel                4           0           0           0
Amos                5           0           0           0
Obadiah             1           0           0           0
Jonah               0           0           0           0
Micah               9           0           0           0
Nahum               0           0           0           0
Habakuk             0           0           0           0
Zephaniah           3           0           0           0
Hagai               0           0           0           0
Zachariah           2           0           0           0
Malachi             0           0           0           0
Chronicles          21          0           0           0
Psalms              11          0           2           0
Job                 1           0           14          0
Proverbs            0           0           0           0
Ruth                4           0           0           0
SongOfSongs         1           0           0           0
Ecclesiastes        0           0           0           0
Lamentations        6           0           0           0
Esther              2           1           0           0
Daniel              9           0           3           0
EzraNehemiah        8           5           0           0

UPDATE: I've added v' forms as well. Here are the totals:

Bookname        "imi/me'imi/v'imi"        "imadi/me'imadi/v'imadi" 

Genesis             8                     14
Exodus              18                    2
Leviticus           4                     1
Numbers             1                     1
Deuteronomy         1                     3
Joshua              2                     0
Judges              6                     1
Samuel              20                    6
Kings               12                    0
Isaiah              24                    1
Jeremiah            35                    2
Ezekiel             22                    0
Hosea               11                    0
Joel                4                     0
Amos                5                     0
Obadiah             1                     0
Jonah               0                     0
Micah               9                     0
Nahum               0                     0
Habakuk             0                     0
Zephaniah           3                     0
Hagai               0                     0
Zachariah           2                     0
Malachi             0                     0
Chronicles          22                    0
Psalms              11                    2
Job                 1                     14
Proverbs            0                     0
Ruth                4                     1
SongOfSongs         1                     0
Ecclesiastes        0                     0
Lamentations        6                     0
Esther              5                     0
Daniel              9                     3
EzraNehemiah        14                    0
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  • 1
    Why does this not return any "imadi"'s for Ruth? There is at least one. – zaq Aug 11 '11 at 18:53
  • See the below table, which excludes unwanted word forms for a better comparison. Feel free to incorporate it into your answer, if you like, in which case I can just go ahead and delete my answer. – Fred Apr 6 '14 at 23:15
  • The counts are interesting, but what does it have to do with why Ruth uses that term? – Argon Dec 28 '20 at 3:44
1

Update: The AlHaTorah concordance confirms the accuracy of my tally below (except for the fact that the AlHaTorah concordance misses Ruth 1:8, "כַּאֲשֶׁר עֲשִׂיתֶם עִם-הַמֵּתִים וְעִמָּדִי" and B'reishis 31:31 "פֶּן-תִּגְזֹל אֶת-בְּנוֹתֶיךָ מֵעִמִּי", while I had originally missed an instance of imi in דָּנִיֵּאל).

The below table shows the number of instances of imi/mei'imi/v'imi in the first column, and imadi forms in the second column (excluding words like the command "imdi", the noun "omdi", or the plural noun/preposition combo "amudei"). There are no other instances in Tanach of these words with prefixes other than mem or vav.

The third column tallies instances of ami/mei'ami/v'ami/amei/mei'amei/v'amei that were not excluded in the table in Shalom's above answer.

The below table is not an answer in and of itself, but it is a useful aid for interpreting the table in the above answer. Note that, while it is possible (but unlikely) that I may have occasionally missed instances of a word appearance, the below table is fairly comprehensive:

                 imi/me'imi/v'imi      imadi forms      ami/me'ami/v'ami/amei/me'amei/v'amei

Genesis                 4                   14                  4
Exodus                  1                   1                   17
Leviticus               4 (all in tochacha) 1                   0
Numbers                 1                   0                   0
Deuteronomy             0                   3 (2 in Ha'azinu)   1
Joshua                  1                   0                   1
Judges                  3                   1                   3
Samuel                  8                   6                   12
Kings                   1                   0                   10
Isaiah                  0                   0                   24
Jeremiah                0                   0                   31
Ezekiel                 0                   0                   21
Hosea                   0                   0                   11
Joel                    0                   0                   4
Amos                    0                   0                   5
Obadiah                 0                   0                   1
Jonah                   0                   0                   0
Micah                   0                   0                   9
Nahum                   0                   0                   0
Habakuk                 0                   0                   0
Zephaniah               0                   0                   3
Hagai                   0                   0                   0
Zachariah               0                   0                   2
Malachi                 0                   0                   0
Chronicles              5                   0                   17
Psalms                  2                   4                   9
Job                     1                   14                  0
Proverbs                0                   0                   0
Ruth                    1                   1                   3
Song of Songs           0                   0                   1
Ecclesiastes            0                   0                   0
Lamentations            0                   0                   6
Esther                  1                   0                   4
Daniel                  7                   0                   1
Ezra/Nehemiah           6                   0                   8
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