Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Galia Hatav <ghatav AT aall.ufl.edu>]

Hi Bryan,

You wrote:

>Wayyiqtol can be used for past in the past, too, right?  E.g. Gen 31:34
>from veraxel loqxah and on.   If we interpret these cases as historical
>narratives (with the purpose of establishing a scene) which are embedded in
>a historical narrative, I think your model is safe!  ;-)
        The first clause 'and Rachel had taken the idols' is in qatal,
because it does not move the R-time introduced by the previous clause
forward. This clause starts a sub-narrative, whose all events occured in
the pa;st with respect to the main R-time. However, only its first clause
is in qatal; the rest of the clauses are in wayyiqtol, because they move
the time forward with respect to th subnarrative. English does not care for
the feature *time movement*. That is why there is no special form for that
purpose (and clauses off the time-line in the main narrative may also be in
past tense). It does care, however, about past-in-the-past, hence the
special tense-aspect form of the past perfect. Since sequence is not
semantically important for English, but past-in-the-past is, clauses on the
sub time-line would ALL be in past perfect (not only the first clause),
because they all are past with respect to the R-time of the main narrative.
Compare English and BH to French. French marks past-in-the-past by the
plus-que-parfait. Now in case of a subnarrative, the first clause would be
in plus-que-parfait. The rest of the clauses may be either with passe
simple, if the narrator is more concerned about the sub time-line; or in
plus-que-parfait, if the narrator is more concerned about the R-time of the
main time-line.
 [snip]
>Or there are cases when qatal in a dependent clause giving past-in-the-past
>information is continued by wayyiqtol as in 2Ki 17:7 wayir'u.  Again, I
>explain it as a "subordinate historical narrative."
        I think this is a problem. I understand the second clause in verse
7 as an elaboration of the first, and therefore I expect it to appear in
qatal.

[snip]
>In any case, there are quite a few wayyiqtols for which we might prefer an
>English past perfect *translation*.
        If they are like the example in Genesis discussed above, they would
not form a problem.

Galia



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