Canter Bridge

The abstract of this article reads as follows:

J.M. Allegro has convincingly shown that the archaic Hebrew relative pronoun זה can function as a genitive marker in a common Semitic pattern Noun Pronoun Noun (cf. Aramaic bayta di-malka). So far, it has been assumed that once זה was replaced by אשׁר this pattern was no longer possible in Hebrew. The current paper offers data which indicate that at least in Biblical Hebrew אשׁר can still function as a genitive marker.

This excellent article convincingly argues the case that זה was replace by אשׁר as ‘a lexical replacement rather than a syntactic change’.