Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Matthew Anstey" <manstey AT portal.ca>]

Dear Kirk,

You wrote,

>The syntax of 1 Kgs 1:40b can be read a couple of different ways. Without
>prejudicing this audience with my ideas ;-) , how would you understand
where the
>clause boundaries are, and how we are to understand the participles here
>(functioning as nouns, verbally, or perhaps even adverbially)?

I think Hatav's recent monograph helps greatly with your example. She
defines qotel as "inclusive." By this she means that qotel, when acting as a
verb (in a predicate as here, or as a nominal qotel) includes the
"reference-time" of the narrative. The reference time here is simple, as it
is concurrent with the event being described. She further argues that the
qotel in this construction after a wayyiqtol "contains at least the event
reported in the preceding clause" (p104). That is, the qotel here indicates
that the people played as Solomon went up. However, if the reference-time is
updated, and wayyiqtol always updates the reference-time (ie moves the
narrative forward) then "the situation of the qotel clause is understood as
including the event denoted in the following clause" (p.104). That is, the
verb the playing and rejoicing continued when the narrative moves ahead and
the earth shakes.

Hatav further argues that qotel is the *only* verb form in BH that is
inclusive. (From Genesis through Kings she notes that this is true of 95% of
all qotels, and that the exceptions relate mainly to future uses of qatal.)
That is, the qotel form here is ideal, as it is the only verb form that can
include the time covering both wayyiqtols. We must of course remember that
this presentation of events is from the perspectve of the author. We may
argue that the earth shaking of course did not occur as soon as Solomon
stopped moving up, but this is beside the point. The narrator is threading
the discourse with the wayyiqtols, and but wants to insert a "background" (I
am hesitant to use this term here) scene as it were that overlaps two
movements in the narrative.

Hatav's book is "The semantics of aspect and modality: evidence from English
and biblical Hebrew" 1997. John Benjamins Co. It is not easy to read, and I
think the most recent book on the Hebrew verb by Goldfajn is much better.
Her book is "Word order and time in Biblical Hebrew narrative" 1998.
Clarendon Press. She interacts with Hatav's PhD briefly, which was the basis
for her book. Hatav for a reason that I cannot understand omitted many
recent treatments of the verb, but Goldfajn is very thorough. Interestingly,
Goldfajn argues forcefully that Hebrew is tense-based, not aspect based, and
both rely on modern treatments of tense in logic (more so Hatav) and
linguistics (more so Goldfajn). Goldfajn further notes that her conclusion
is supported by other studies that perhaps have gone unnoticed, such as
Blake (1951), Barnes (1965), Hughes (1993), and the Polish scholar
Kurylowicz (1972),  who wrote "Verbal aspect as grammatical category does
not exist in Semitic." (p.83)!! I think her arguments for tense over aspect
are quite compelling, but I am not knowledgable enough to assess them
properly. I will be most interested to read reviews of both books in the
coming year.

Hope this helps.

Matthew Anstey