Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryan Rocine" <596547 AT ican.net>]

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> From: Lee R. Martin <lmartin AT vol.com>
> To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> Subject: Exodus 12
> Date: Wednesday, November 04, 1998 2:31 PM
> 
> I was reading Exodus 12 yesterday and I would be interested in
> everyone's opinions regarding the following questions:
> 1-Verse 21 contains a series of three imperatives.  Why were the last
> two not presented by way of weqatals?
> 2-Verse 22 switches to weqatal, and the weqatals are  used as
> continuation imperatives (injunctives).  Why not have three more
> imperatives as in v.21?

An interesting prospect for the answers to your first two questions lies in
socio-linguistics/pragmatics.  For instance, perhaps three imperatives
represent more direct exhortation than weqatals, the string of imperatives
being appropriate for use by social superiors with inferiors in a calm
situation or by anyone with anyone in an urgent situation.  E.g., in
English I say "Shut the door(please)" to my children at any calm time.  But
I say "Would you close the door(please)" to an honored guest.  In a fire
emergency, I will say "Shut the door" even to a king.  In this system
weqatals prevail for instructions rather than exhortations.  The line
between exhortation and instruction is approximate and flexible but not so
much so as to be insignificant.  Such a hypothesis may seem very difficult
to prove in the finite corpus of a dead language, but this very challenge
is taken up by Longacre in _Joseph_(1989) and in related matters by Revell
in _Designation of the Individual_(1996). 

> 3-Why does v.22 have the pronoun _We'aTeM_  before the negative LO? The
> pronoun seems totally unnecessary.

The unnecessity of it is the beauty of it!  Only optional behavior is
discourse significant.  The function is to topicalize )at.em.  The objects
of the previous three weqatal-instructions are for props.  The instruction
with the topicalized )at.em precedes the first instruction that is directed
at the addressees themselves.  It schematizes :  Do this, do that, do the
other, and as for you, not a man of you shall...  The "and as for you" is
the w:)at.em.  

And let me push the envelop a little:  In this context of 2nd person
references and transitive verbs, I would say that the topicalization has
almost reflexive significance, e.g., "and as for you, not one of you shall
walk himself out from the door of his house." 

> 4-At the beginning of v.24, does  USHMaRTeM (weqatal) function  as an
> imperative or as future indicative?  How do you know?

Not sure.  Try back-tracking the 2nd m. s.  reference.  I t goes all the
way back to the start of the liitle speech and thereby seems to make all
the 2nd m. s. verbs "imperatives."  Where there is a change in pronoun
reference to 3rd m. s., I would say there is an attendant shift in mood
from volitional to indicative.  I use shift in pronoun reference to
identify shift in mood.  Anyway, why would you care?  M is saying "you'll
be keepers..."  Clearly they won't *have* to keep the pesax as those bereft
of free will and, in fact, they don't always keep it.  It is *meant* as a
command, not a prediction.

Bryan

B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
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