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I understand very well what "a sentence" is. Most time it works for the scriptures too, but sometimes it makes no sense to be a standalone Posuk, like:

וּמִשְׁמָע וְדוּמָה וּמַשָּׂא׃
Mishma, Dumah, Massa,

אַבְנֵי־שֹׁהַם וְאַבְנֵי מִלֻּאִים לָאֵפֹד וְלַחֹשֶׁן׃
lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece.

Or the opposite:

לֹא תִּגְנֹבוּ וְלֹא-תְכַחֲשׁוּ וְלֹא-תְשַׁקְּרוּ אִישׁ בַּעֲמִיתוֹ (three sentences in one)

Assuming the division is not arbitrary,
what does it mean to be a standalone Posuk in Hebrew scriptures? In what sense is it a standalone unit? What dod G-d mean by making it a unit?

Al Berko
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  • Possible duplicate https://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/13502/759 – Double AA Nov 21 '19 at 23:23
  • With minor translation tweaks those could all be sentences. – Alex Nov 21 '19 at 23:37
  • @DoubleAA Probably a Mi Yodeya technicality, here. But, it doesn't seem useful to dupe a question that has no positive answers. – DanF Nov 22 '19 at 03:20
  • @DanF seems very useful. That way all the useful answers stay together! – Double AA Nov 22 '19 at 03:42
  • The pesukim are a tradition from Sinai. Are you asking for why the Torah is broken that way? – Loewian Nov 22 '19 at 04:33
  • I'm not sure what you mean by "what does it mean". It's a pasuk delineated by a specific trope note. What else could that mean, or what else are you seeking? Why do psukim need to make logical sense on their own? That's usually what the commentaries and Midrash are for. – DanF Nov 22 '19 at 14:39

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As you most likely know, when viewing the Torah scroll, you would not know from reading it where a pasuk begins or ends, because it's written as a continuous paragraph. Thus, to determine where it ends, you need trope (cantillation notes.)

Every pasuk has exactly one sof pasuk trope. As its name means, it marks the end of a pasuk. So, this is how you know.

Incidentally, one cannot definitively say that the end of a paragraph (parsha) is the end of a pasuk. There are several situations where there is an etnachta at the end of a parsha.

In the case of the 10 Commandments, this is actually part of the whole debate between ta'am elyon vs. tachton. If you're using elyon, then these are 3 separate psukim.

Hence, there is controversy as to how many total psukim there are in the Torah.

DanF
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  • I’m not sure this really answers the question. – Alex Nov 22 '19 at 12:20
  • @Alex It answers "what does it mean". It means that there's a group of words that end in a specific trope note. See my comment below the question. – DanF Nov 22 '19 at 14:41
  • Thank you. I didn't mean technically as we do know the division. I meant what kind of a semantic unit is it. E.g. why "וּמִשְׁמָע וְדוּמָה וּמַשָּׂא" is a unit? or maybe, how does G-d treat it? – Al Berko Nov 23 '19 at 17:05