"Perish the two hands of Abu Lahab [an uncle of the Prophet], and perish he!"
Perish is verb and he is a subject pronoun, so why is "perish he!" used here?
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It's archaic English word order. (As is the subjunctive mood of perish.) EIther this was written long ago, or it was written to sound as if it were written long ago. – Peter Shor Mar 08 '19 at 18:40
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Welcome to EL&U. It appears that you are quoting a sentence from a publication. Please provide the name & other details of the publication, and preferably a web-link to the relevant part of the publication: context can be important in answering Qs like this. – TrevorD Mar 08 '19 at 18:42
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It first part refers to perishing the hands and the latter refers to the person. – Karlomanio Mar 08 '19 at 20:08
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This sounds as though it might be a translation from Arabic. If that's the case how old is the translation, and is the word order similar in the Arabic? – BoldBen Mar 09 '19 at 02:23
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Think of it as "May he perish". This construction is called 'optative', a minor clause type used to express wishes. Some optatives are subjunctives, as is your example. – BillJ Mar 09 '19 at 12:47