Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Dear Paul,

I don't think I can agree with you here. It's not the "sof pasuq" or 
anything, but to me it is the clear poetic parallelism between the two 
halves of this verse (and between verses 29 and 30, see below) that 
prove that they go together. Indeed I have rarely seen such an 
accurate synonymous parallelism! As I understand it "weyiqtol" is to 
be considered as simply "we-" + "yiqtol", and so here we have two half 
verses, exactly parallel in syntax and semantics, linked together by 
the simple conjunction "we-".

I know I have not explained the initial "kiy", but I know that word 
can have a wide range of meanings. I would not want to explain either 
half or all of verse 29 as a reason for verse 28 - it doesn't look 
like a reason of any sort, and your previous post gave a good reason 
for separating 28 and 29, the shift of person. Perhaps the meaning 
here is simply emphatic or intensive, BDB's sense 1e and Holladay's 
sense I.1a; or a marker of direct speech (BDB 1b, Holladay II.7) with 
the speech verb omitted. Or could the "kiy"s in 29 and 30 be intended 
to mark some sort of pair? There is a higher-level parallelism here: 
29a with 30a, 29b with 30b, marked by the repetition of "'ela" and 
"ganna".

Peter Kirk