Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Silberman, Alfred" <alfred.silberman AT lmco.com>]

>               -----Original Message-----
>               From: Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG
> 
>               I accept the danger of the hypothesis becoming meaningless
> or tautologous (e.g. X + qatal 
>               means past or present or future!) but I think it still has
> some meaningful and explanatory content.
> 
        An interesting example of this may exist in Iyyov 22:13:
        "Ve'amarta" here has the past tense form. While the accent on the
word is not clearly indicated - it is a 'dekhi" and not placed on the
accented syllable - the word has an ultimate stress (I infer this from the
metheg found in some manuscripts). The prefix vav is taken as a Vav
Hahippukh by the targum and the future tense in the Aramaic is used.
However, in English, the two translations I checked - JPS and Koren - use
the present tense for forming the proper English sentence.

Alfred Silberman
alfred.silberman AT lmco.com