Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Dear Prof. Niccacci,

You wrote to Lee Martin, "weyiqtol continues a preceding volitive 
verbform--i.e.  cohortative, imperative, or jussive-- in the sense 
that it carries on its volitive force."

Would it be correct to rephrase and generalise this "we+volitive 
verbform continues a previous volitive verbform..."? - with the 
understanding that a volitive verbform is cohortative in 1st person, 
imperative in 2nd person, and jussive (i.e. apocopated yiqtol) in the 
3rd person. This seems to be consistent with the examples you and 
others quote. This explains why there are no second person weyiqtols 
following imperatives: there is no second person jussive, the 
imperative is used instead.

I did a search on all 2nd person weyiqtol forms and came up with an 
interesting result. In all of the historical books I found only 
W:TAG."YD in Exodus 19:3, the double W:TI$:MA( W:TOW$IYA( in 2 Chron 
20:9, and W:T")FM"NW. in 2 Chron 20:20 [also W.T:HIY in poetry 2 Kings 
19:25 || Is. 37:26]. But there many examples in the poetic and 
prophetic books.

Presumably TO)MAR... W:TAG."YD in Exodus 19:3 must be considered 
non-volitive and instructional. In 2 Chronicles 20:9 the chain 
apparently starts with a cohortative and so this may be volitive. In 2 
Chronicles 20:20, we have a clear example of an imperative being 
followed by a 2nd person weyiqtol, but unfortunately it is not clear 
whether the volitive force is continued. I guess it would be safer to 
consider none of these cases volitive. But then it would be 
interesting to look also at the poetical examples.

Peter Kirk