Ger VeToshav VaChay Imach as understood by Onkelos and trup

In parshat Behar:

לה וְכִי-יָמוּךְ אָחִיךָ, וּמָטָה יָדוֹ עִמָּךְ--וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ, גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב וָחַי עִמָּךְ.

35 And if thy brother be waxen poor, and his means fail with thee; then thou shalt uphold him: as a stranger and a settler shall he live with thee.

Rashi comments:

you shall support him: Do not allow him to fall down and collapse altogether, in which case it would be difficult to pick him up again [from his dire poverty]. Rather, “support him” while his hand is still faltering [for then it is easier to help him out of his trouble]. To what can this be compared? To a load on a donkey-while it is still on the donkey, one person can grasp it and hold it in place. Once it falls to the ground, however, [even] five people cannot pick it up. - [Torath Kohanim 25:71]		והחזקת בו: אל תניחהו שירד ויפול ויהיה קשה להקימו, אלא חזקהו משעת מוטת היד. למה זה דומה, למשאוי שעל החמור, עודהו על החמור אחד תופס בו ומעמידו, נפל לארץ, חמשה אין מעמידין אותו:
a convert or a resident: Even if he is a convert (גֵּר) or a “resident (תוֹשָׁב).” And what is a “resident”? Any [non-Jew] who has accepted upon himself not to worship idols, but eats carrion. - [Torath Kohanim 25:72; and compare Rashi verse 47] [These people are called “residents,” as they are permitted to reside permanently in the land of Israel (Rambam A.Z. 10:6).]		גר ותושב: אף אם הוא גר או תושב, ואיזהו תושב, כל שקבל עליו שלא לעבוד עבודה זרה, ואוכל נבלות:

But consider the trup, and Targum Onkelos:


Shadal in his commentary refers us to his comments in Ohev Ger, his perush on Onkelos. There, he writes as Onkelos having yedur ve(y)totav, (verbs) which our Mikraos Gedolos just has for Tg Yonatan. But see above, where we have dayyar vetotav, which are nouns. He comments:

וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ, גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב וָחַי עִמָּךְ -- yedur vetotav, and he will live with you. And so in Targum Yonatan, Yedur viytotav {we don't have the yud}, and he will be supported with you. {Note: With these yuds, these are verbs, rather than nouns.}

And already for many years I was pained about the trup of this verse, for no commentator set his heart to them, and they are, apparently, very strange, for the etnach come under וּמָטָה יָדוֹ עִמָּךְ {on the word imach}, while it is fitting that it should come under וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ, if it is in accordance with the explanation of the commentators that the verse encompasses two commands, one which is "And if thy brother be waxen poor... then thou shalt uphold him"; and the second which is upon the ger, that גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב וָחַי עִמָּךְ.

And the second strangeness is that the words גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב come with a darga tevir, where their rule should be with a munach and zakef katon, if the ger vetoshav were the subject of the statement; and the words וָחַי עִמָּךְ were the predicate.

And now, when I saw this nusach in the Targum, the matter was made clear to me, and I see that the position of Onkelos according to the original nusach (which was emended by later ones {acharonim} in their way, in order to accord it with the Hebrew) is precisely the position of the author of the trup, that this verse only encompasses a single command: "And if thy brother be waxen poor, and his means fail with thee" -- this is the condition upon which the command relies -- "then thou shalt uphold him; as a stranger and a settler shall he live with thee" -- this is the command. Therefore, the etnach occurs on עִמָּךְ, and the import of the words ger vetoshav is that he shall be a ger and he shall be a toshav (as is known in the Holy Tongue, that the omission of the verb is extremely common). That is to say, he shall dwell and settle, and therefore it comes with a darga tevir, with a disjunctive break of less force than on the word וָחַי, for the עִמָּךְ at the end of the pasuk distributes to all three of them: yagur with you; yeshev with you; and yichyeh with you.

And there is great confusion to the explanation of the commentators, for what relevance does the "toshav" {non-Jewish resident} have here, where afterwards {next verse} it says:

לו אַל-תִּקַּח מֵאִתּוֹ נֶשֶׁךְ וְתַרְבִּית, וְיָרֵאתָ מֵאֱלֹהֶיךָ; וְחֵי אָחִיךָ, עִמָּךְ.

36 Take thou no interest of him or increase; but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.

And note this well, for I am not able to expand upon this.

To perhaps explain this a bit more in terms of the trup and in terms of Shadal's intent, there seems to be two ways of parsing this pasuk. One is that when the pasuk states:
וְכִי-יָמוּךְ אָחִיךָ, וּמָטָה יָדוֹ עִמָּךְ--וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ, גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב וָחַי עִמָּךְ, there are two separate commands.

The first has two commands, with the first command as
וְכִי-יָמוּךְ אָחִיךָ, וּמָטָה יָדוֹ עִמָּךְ--וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ
That is, when your brother, fellow Jew, I suppose, becomes poor, you shall support him.
and the second command as:
גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב וָחַי עִמָּךְ
that if the person is not your brother, but a ger vetoshav, even so, he shall live with you.

Shadal feels this is against the trup. Not that this should overly concern him, since he feels one is entitled to argue with the trup, which is post-Sinaitic. But he feels it is against the trup. Why? Because if so, the etnachta should be on bo, at the end of the first command.

And also, because of the darga tevir on ger vetoshav. To explain this latter point, a zakef is something which subdivides a phrase ending in silluq, while a tevir is something which subdivides a phrase ending in tipcha. Therefore, had the trup been munach zakef-katon, as Shadal suggested, then we would have:
וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב וָחַי עִמָּךְ becoming

וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ
גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב וָחַי עִמָּךְ becoming

גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב
וָחַי עִמָּך

with this last division matching the aforementioned two-command structure, that for a ger vetoshav, he shall live with you.

However, we have darga tevir on גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב. That means that the structure is:
וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב וָחַי עִמָּךְ becoming

וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ
גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב וָחַי עִמָּךְ becoming

גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב וָחַי
עִמָּךְbecoming

גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב
וָחַי

Shadal points out that if it were that the condition of vachay imach is ger vetoshav, it would not be linked initially with vachay and separate from imach. Rather, since we separate imach off first, it distributes across all three words, and this is so if we interpret all three as verbs rather than the first two as nouns.

I am not certain if the reason he cannot expand on the theme at the end is because of possible oppression from the idea that money-lending for interest is permitted to non-Jews, or merely because he has gone on on this topic for long enough, and does not want to dedicate any more space.

At any rate, while he gives this explanation in Ohev Ger, where the purpose is to explain what Onkelos means, in his own commentary on Chumash, he toys with diverging from this explanation.

לה] גר ותושב : עיין אוהב גר , ושם פירשתי כתרגומו ידור ויתותב , יהיה גר ויהיה תושב ויחיה עמך , וזה פירוש קשה , ואולי הכוונה בין שיהיה גר ( שיש לו אשה ובנים ), בין שהוא תושב ( שהוא בגפו ) יחיה עמך .

Thus, he refers to his commentary in Ohev Ger, where he takes everything as verb, but here feels free to say that this is a difficult explanation. And that perhaps the intent is whether he is a ger (that he has a wife and children) or a toshav (that he is by himself), he shall live with you.

Here, he is perhaps moving away from the explanation of this as gentile, as opposed to achicha, for the reasons given above.