Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Randall wrote:
> david shalom,
> 
> (discussing isaiah 6.1 you wrote:)
> >I don't see any real evidence of the equivalence of "TAM" here.  A 
> >WP after a temporal clause is about as common a construction in 
> >BH as anything else we can find.  I suspect the key to its syntax is 
> >to be found in that fact, not in TAM.
> . . .
> >Again, it's common for a WP to follow a temporal clause in 
> >narrative, so I doubt this construction is marked in any particular 
> >way.
> 
> lo yaradta lesof da`ati
> "you didn't get to the end of my thought"
> 
> first of all, the examples did NOT follow a clause, just a fronted time
> margin.

Fine, call it a clause, call it a phrase, whatever.  It's still common 
for a WP to follow and expression of time; and since you refer to a 
"fronted time margin," isn't it common for a "time margin" to appear 
at the front of the clause in just this way?

> secondly, the author had a choice, following the time phrase, to use ra'iti
> or va'er'e.
> 
> va`ere is the more interesting because the vav in va'er'e is semantically
> quite superfluous.

Only if one sees it as a conjunction, which I don't as most folks 
here probably know by now.

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