Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your response!  

One thing I'm noticing as I read everyone's contributions to this thread is
that the longer we talk, the closer we get.  Lee's initial query, which had
us looking like we are all reading different Bibles, does not seem to
describe *quite* so bad a mess after all.  You wrote:

> If we follow the regular understanding of N + qatal in 1 Kings 11:1, 
> the point is not that Solomon "had a thing for" foreign women or 
> "habitually fell in love with them". I guess that would require a 
> participle. Here, rather, the sense is pluperfect: at some time 
> previous to the events described in the previous passage, Solomon "had 
> fallen in love with" many foreign women and so was, at the narrative 
> time, in a state of love regarding them - cf an English or Greek 
> perfect or pluperfect tense. Indeed, they had become his wives and 
> concubines. I understand Bryan's conception of the qatal as stative as 
> relating in that way to its pluperfect "flashback" sense - is that 
> right, Bryan? Maybe the older grammarians were not as wrong as we 
> sometimes think in calling the qatal form "perfect".

Yes, but I am describing it as a 'brand' of perfect, a special Hebrew
brand. You may be interested to
know that Galia Hatav (_The Semantics of Aspect and Modality: Evidence from
English and Biblical Hebrew_ Philadelphia:John Benjamins, 1997) is using
the label 'perfect' for qatal once again in these last days of the 1990's. 
I received requests
off-line for full bibliographic data on her book, so I am posting it here. 
In her book
she alludes to the description of the qatal by Wm. Turner (treated in
McFall's _Enigma_), one of my favorites from the 1870's, as an insightful
view.  I have been influenced by Turner myself.  

> 
> On the other hand there are cases where qatal cannot be stative e.g. 
> Exodus 36:11 where wayyiqtol and qatal are parallel. Or is Bryan 
> suggesting that all such cases are late?
> 
> Peter Kirk
> 

The series wayyiqtol --> X-qatal, wherein the same root is used in both
clauses, is quite common, and I don't think there is anything
characteristically 'late' about it. In fact, it is fairly well attested
throughout the Bible.  In the X-qatal clause, the focus is on the X rather
than on the emerging action.  In Exo 36:11 we have the account of the
loop-making, and the wayyiqtol expresses the event as an event: "then he
made..."  In contrast, the X-qatal clauses focus on the *manner* in which
the next portions of the same project were carried out:  in Hebrew ken, or
in English "It was in like manner..."  Yes, our world-knowledge informs us
that making the loops for the second curtain was a successive event to the
making of the loops for the first.  The writer could have described the
successive events with all wayyiqtols if he wanted to focus on the
sequentiality of the loop-making for one curtain and then the next.  But
the sequence of events is probably too obvious to warrant that choice of
syntax.  Instead(and to reiterate), the writer chose to switch the focus
from the sequentiality of the loop-making to the manner in which it was
done.  In so doing, he changes the view of the subject from active in the
wayyiqtol, "then he made..." to stative or attributive in the qatal, "it
was in like manner that he was a maker of..."

Hope this helps   ;-)    thanks for the reminder, Paul!

Shalom,
Bryan



B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
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