Appearance and Placement
Its form is a vertical bar placed either to the left, the right, or in the middle of the niqqud under a consonant. It is identical in appearance to silluq and is unified with it in Unicode.
Meteg differs from other Hebrew diacritics in that its placement is not totally fixed. While meteg is usually placed to the left of a vowel, some texts place it to the right, and some place it in the middle of hataf vowels. The Rabbinic Bible of 1524–25 always shifts meteg to the left, while the Aleppo and Leningrad codices are not consistent in meteg placement.
| Position | Occurrence | Reference | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| centered alone | לאמר | Exo 20:1:6 | common |
| after vowel | וימצאו | 1 Kings 1:3:7 | common |
| before cantillation | לא | Exo 20:4:1 | rare |
| after cantillation | עבדים | Exo 20:2:8 | rare |
| between vowels | ירושלם | 2 Chron 14:14:9 | common |
| medial with hataf | אלהיכם | 2 Chron 32:15:22 | common |
| medial with hataf | אשר־לדביר | 1 kg 6:22:8 | common |
| left of hataf | היות־אהיה | Psa 50:21:5 | rare |
| right of hataf | הלא־אתה | Psa 85:7:1 | rare |
| before vowel, first syllable | תעשה־לך | Exo 20:4:2 | common |
| before vowel, word-medial | ולנערה | Deut 22:26:1 | rare |
| after vowel and accent | ננתקה | Psa 2:3:1 | occasional |
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