Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor M Peterson <spedrson AT juno.com>]

On Wed, 27 Jan 1999 14:57:46 -0500 "Vincent J. DeCaen"
<decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca> writes:
>wondering how the discourse crowd would handle two problems.

Hopefully I won't butcher the passage or the discourse concepts too
badly.  I'm just learning this method myself, but I think I can account
for both examples.
>
>(1) 1sam1:12,  W:HFYFH K.IY HIR:B.:TFH L:HITP.AL."L ...
>all commentaries, etc, say, read wayhi for wehayah. no less authority
>than GKC insists on reading it so, and the confusion could be 
>explained
>with the old hebrew script. but... I don't want to mess with the text,
>especially since there are other instances (6 or 7 in samuel?).
>what do you discourse guys do with this? do you modify the text to fit 
>a
>given theory, or does your theory have to respect the text?

I don't see where this presents any problem at all for the discourse
approach.  Unless I'm mistaken, this is what Bryan would identify as a
pivotal/climactic event on the mainline of historical narrative--a
surrogate mainline, if you will.  The idea is that the weqatal thrust
into the string of wayyiqtols creates tension from what one might
normally expect and therefore places emphasis on this point in the
narrative.  And contextually, I think it's a good fit.  We're now coming
to the confrontation between Eli and Hannah, and it is at this point that
he will utter his blessing upon her request.
>
>(2) Jonah v.2. L"K: ..... W.Q:RF) .....
>seems to me based on my experience of standard hebrew that you might
>expect weqara'ta, that is a sequential, rather than uqra' the plain
>imperative. what does a discourse grammar do? do we say that the two
>forms would mean something different: weqara'ta vs. uqra'? or do we 
>say
>that jonah represents a later dialect without weqatal? etc?

This is one area, where I don't think the approach of discourse grammar
differs much with my traditional Hebrew training.  Both would agree that
a weqatal anchored in an imperative carries forward the imperative idea
and would therefore be appropriate in this context.  But both would also
(I think) allow for the construction we see here, possibly to give a
purpose statement " . . . that you may cry . . . ."  Another possibility
is that the imperative form is used to stress the urgency of the command.

Hope I didn't misrepresent things too badly.

Trevor Peterson
Bible/Theology Department
Washington Bible College
Lanham, MD

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