Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Bryan wrote:
> Hi Lee,
> 
> I am
> checking with the experts here, like you.
> 
> You wrote:
> 
> > Dear Dave,
> > Rolf Furuli says wayyiqtol is imperfective (tenseless);
> > Vince DeCaen says it is modal/sequential;
> > Randall Buth says it is perfective (past tense);
> > Bryan Rocine says it is imperfective/sequential;
> 
> I say it is perfective in aspect and so very compatible with past time. 
> But the wayyiqtol does also have the intrinsic value, along with other
> prefixed forms, of describing emerging action.  This is in opposition to
> the suffixed forms which, taken together, represent the state the subject
> is in at the time being talked about.  I will say the prefixed forms are
> the only truly fientive verb forms in standard BH.  

I'm trying to put a concrete example in my head, and it's late...so 1 
Kings 11:1 says that King Solomon )HB many foreign women, 
which describes a state of mind with him...in American idiom we 
might say he had a "thing" for foreign women and it was eventually 
his undoing.  By contrast, Judges 16:4 says "after this, WY)HB 
Samson a woman in the valley of Sorek," which means he "fell in 
love" with this woman.  The former describes a state, the latter is 
fientive.  Am I with you so far?  This has real possibilities.  What do 
you see as the difference between the simple yiqtol and the 
wayyiqtol?

The situation changes
> as the language evolves and the qatal ultimately replaces wayyiqtol.
> Although we see hints of this change in the BH corpus, it is not in full
> evidence in any section of the corpus.

Agreed.

> > Many traditional scholars say it is equivalent to qatal.
> 
> A tangential point:  I think I recall Christo van der Merwe suggesting in
> one paper that traditional teaching grammars are designed(who knows if it
> was conscious?) to serve source criticism.  I think he may have been
> quoting someone.  If you are really interested, I think I can look it up. 
> In any case, one of our friends on list here mentioned the flood account as
> an important proof-text for documentary hypotheses.  But it is only strong
> for DH, says I, if the wayyiqtol and qatal are considered equivalents,
> which I don't.  If the wayyiqtol is thought of as a perfective past in the
> account and the qatal as providing stative-type background, the text as-is
> starts to make a lot more sense.

Excellent points.  I fully agree that the wayyiqtol and qatal are not 
equivalents.  The task at hand is to figure each one out on its own 
ground.


Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.