Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Dear Prof. Niccacci,

Many thanks for your help and for clarifying the issues here. I think 
the main clarification was that it is apparently only INITIAL x-yiqtol 
in direct speech becomes wayyiqtol in historical narrative. The word 
"initial" had somewhere dropped out of the discussion.

However, as far as I can see the parallel at Exodus 26:1 w-X-yiqtol || 
36:8 wayyiqtol is unique within these instructions (at least I have 
checked all the paragraph initial possibilities) and may be affected 
by the change of subject and the dislocation of the order of the 
parallels. It could easily be that 36:8 was originally initial and 
w-X-qatal and was changed into wayyiqtol when it was put into the 
context of 36:7 and so became non-initial. It would be interesting to 
see other examples of this parallelism which could not have been 
affected in this way.

I suppose the problem is that the only truly initial historical 
narrative is almost by definition Genesis 1:1. There at least we 
probably have X-qatal. We might then end up with a simple table 
something like:

                Historical narrative    Instruction

Initial         X-qatal (Gen 1:1 only)  X-yiqtol

Continuation    wayyiqtol               weqatal

Offline         X-qatal                 X-yiqtol

Habitual        X-yiqtol                X-yiqtol

How does this agree with your thinking? This is still material which 
we are considering "non-volitive" although I am not sure how well 
that fits into the idea of instruction. Presumably none of the 
X-yiqtols above will be apocopated e.g. we find non-apocopated 
T.A(:A&EH in 26:1 (initial) and 26:4 (offline), in contrast with the 
wayyiqtols, as always apocopated e.g. WAY.A(A& in 36:11. Can volitive 
material i.e. imperatives, jussives and apocopated weyiqtol be fitted 
into such a scheme?

Peter Kirk