For me, it's about thirty years now.
The Hebrew text is unambiguous and, in fact, emphatic. The masculine pronoun is added, though not needed; and the verb is Qal imperfect, third person masculine singular with a second person masculine singular pronominal suffix. "He, he shall strike you."
No doubt about that.
Glad to help,
Dan
Biblical Christianity web site
Well, Jerome may or may not have been a better Hebrew scholar than Dan (in fact, Jerome was simply one of the relatively-few Major Fathers at the time who knew much Hebrew at all, which does not prove he was a "Hebrew linguistic savant"...
...Except that you're not even quoting Jerome, are you now, lass; you're quoting that deplorable cheesecloth, the "Douay-Rheims Bible".
From a Roman Catholic (and therefore right and good, natch) Apologetics website:
The reason for the difference in the renderings is a manuscript difference. Modern translations follow what the original Hebrew of the passage says. The Douay-Rheims, however, is following a manuscript variant found in many early Fathers and some editions of the Vulgate (but not the original; Jerome followed the Hebrew text in his edition of the Vulgate). The variant probably originated as a copyist error when a scribe failed to take note that the subject of the verse had shifted from the woman to the seed of the woman. ~~ http://www.cin.org/users/james/questions/q105.htm
The Latin word for He is ipse (not ipsa, "she") and is translated as such in the Latin translation of the Bible by Jerome (405 A.D.), as well as every ancient translation of Scripture we have.
Ahh, the ever-bumbling Douay-Rheims, quite possibly the single most incompetent "translation" of the Bible ever penned by the hand of man -- it's not faithful to the Hebrew, it's not faithful to the Greek, it's not even bloody well faithful to JEROME, fer cryin' out loud.
By the way, Dan, when you say "The masculine pronoun is added, though not needed" -- not to nitpick, but actually the addition of the Masculine Pronoun here (in addition to the singular voice of the verb and suffix) may well be God's predestinarian way of providentially countermanding the anti-messianic Jewish reading. Notice how the Jewish Publication Society re-words the Verse:
Thus turning this from a Messianic prophecy, into a pro-Judaism prophecy. But in addition to the singular voices of the verb and suffix which you point out, I would argue that with the Masculine Pronoun "HE" included, God is making it all the more emphatically a prophecy of Jesus in particular and all the more adamant that our otherwise-admirable Jewish friends are not Biblically permitted to re-word the verse as they have.
My knowledge of Hebrew being somewhere between "microscopic" and "infinitesimal", It'll probably be thirty more years before I have any opportunity to teach you anything on the matter -- so I thought I'd throw that little morsel-for-thought at you when I had the chance. ;-)
Best, OP