What Is the Karnei Farah Trope?
Karnei Farah (קַרְנֵי פָרָה, "cow's horns") is a disjunctive Torah cantillation mark and one of the rarest of all the trope symbols, appearing exactly once in the entire Torah. Its symbol and melody are formed by combining the telisha ketana and telisha gedola signs.
קַרְנֵי פָרָה
Disjunctive (pausal) accentWhat it does in the verse
Karnei Farah is a disjunctive (pausal, mafsik) accent, meaning it signals a break that separates words within a verse. It is preceded by yerach ben yomo, the conjunctive (mesharet) accent that obligatorily leads into it. Because its glyph fuses a disjunctive sign (telisha gedola) with a conjunctive one (telisha ketana), commentators have noted an ambiguity about whether it functions purely as a pause — the basis of the "horns of a dilemma" framing — though it is standardly classified among the disjunctives.
What the symbol looks like
Karnei Farah is a combining mark placed above the word, drawn as a pair of horn-like strokes — the visual source of its name "cow's horns." The glyph fuses the symbols of telisha ketana and telisha gedola placed together. It is encoded in Unicode as U+059F HEBREW ACCENT QARNEY PARA (◌֟), a non-spacing combining mark in the Hebrew block, added in Unicode 2.0 (1996). In its sole Torah appearance it sits on the word "b'amah" (בָּאַמָּה, "cubit").
Good to know
Karnei Farah occurs exactly once in the whole Torah, at Numbers 35:5, on the word "b'amah" ("cubit"), immediately following yerach ben yomo on "alpayim" ("two thousand") — itself a mark found only once in the Torah, in the very same verse. (The phrase "two thousand cubits" appears four times in Numbers 35:5, each with a different trope set; this yerach ben yomo plus Karnei Farah pairing is the first of the four.) The pairing occurs 16 times across the entire Tanakh per the Leningrad Codex (Torah 1, Nevi'im 6, Ketuvim 9), a count drawn from David Weisberg's study of the rare accents. Weisberg also suggested that the unique pairing in Numbers 35:5 evokes the halakhah of the 2,000-cubit Shabbat travel limit. Karnei Farah also appears in the Book of Esther at Esther 7:9, on the word "Haman" — and because Esther is read twice each year on Purim, that instance is heard more often than the Torah one. Its rarity is comparable to other unique marks such as Shalshelet, which occurs just four times in the Torah. With TropeTrainer you can hear Karnei Farah chanted and practice the readings in which it appears.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Karnei Farah trope?
Karnei Farah (קַרְנֵי פָרָה, "cow's horns") is a disjunctive Hebrew cantillation mark used in chanting the Torah. Both its symbol and its melody are formed by combining the telisha ketana and telisha gedola signs. It is famous for being one of the rarest trope marks, appearing only once in the entire Torah — at Numbers 35:5. TropeTrainer lets you hear it chanted and practice the reading it appears in.
What does Karnei Farah mean?
The Hebrew name קַרְנֵי פָרָה literally means "cow's horns" (qarnei = horns, parah = cow). The name comes from the appearance of the symbol, which is drawn as a pair of horn-like strokes above the word.
Is Karnei Farah a pause?
Yes. Karnei Farah is a disjunctive (pausal, mafsik) accent, so it marks a break that separates words within a verse. There is a known nuance: because its glyph fuses a disjunctive sign (telisha gedola) with a conjunctive sign (telisha ketana), commentators describe it as being "on the horns of a dilemma" — but it is standardly classified as a disjunctive.
Where does Karnei Farah appear in the Torah?
It appears exactly once in the entire Torah, at Numbers 35:5, on the word "b'amah" ("cubit"), immediately after yerach ben yomo on "alpayim" ("two thousand"). It also appears in the Book of Esther at Esther 7:9 on the word "Haman," which is actually heard more often since Esther is read twice yearly on Purim. You can hear Karnei Farah chanted and practice these readings in TropeTrainer.
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