Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Lee R. Martin" <lmartin AT vol.com>]

Dear Kirk,
You have come upon a quirk of morphology that may defy English grammatical 
categories.
"Rejoicing" (SMaCHiM) derives from a stative verb. Stative verbs are no more 
than inflected
adjectives.  By their nature, stative verbs to not have participles (though a 
few
developed).   Instead of the participle (which can function as a verbal 
adjective) the
statives use the adjective form as a verbal.  That is why BDB lists SaMeaCH 
as a verbal
adjective (p.970).  A normal adjective in this type of sentence would be in 
construct
("joyful of heart", etc.), but this adjective is not in construct, leaving 
"great joy" as a
direct object of the verbal adjective. See Jouon sections 40c, 50b, 96Bd, and 
for other
verb of this class see Waltke 22.3h.  Therefore, the syntactic label should 
be "verbal
adjective."
Lee Martin

Kirk Lowery wrote:

>
>
> The first three words are clear syntactically: conj + subject + verbal
> participle + adverbial phrase (of instrument). The last three words are more
> problamatic. My first reaction is to understand an elided beth and include
> w.&:m"xiym with the previous and so we have a second adverbial phrase (they
> fluted with flutes and with "joys"). But that leaves us with what to do 
> with the
> last two. If they are an ordinary noun/adjective pair, then what is their
> syntactic function?