Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Dear Rolf,

Thank you for your response. Let me first say a few things about 
scientific method. I appreciate your desire to work by falsification 
rather than confirmation, and your insistence that just a few 
counter-examples are sufficient to falisfy a theory. I am a little 
sceptical, especially because of textual difficulties. But with 
falsification you have to be very sure of your ground; you need to 
confirm your falisification 100%, not just 90%. What I am saying here 
is that your alleged falisifications are not at all certain because of 
possible alternative explanations. Even if the alternative 
explanations are only 10% likely, the falsification fails.

I do not accept that there are any wayyiqtols in Habakkuk with 
unambiguously non-past meaning. At least the examples you have given 
are not unambiguous. I understand your difficulty with the idea of an 
embedded past narrative in a prophecy; perhaps the answer is that 
wayyiqtol can be used for sequential narratives even when these are 
non-past. Alternatively, perhaps only v.6 is to be taken as predictive 
and the rest as desriptive of the Babylonians.

The BHS compilers have taken an alternative and quite possible view of 
the wayyiqtols in Habakkuk, that they are mistakes in pointing or 
copying for original weyiqtols. This would actually be a very probable 
copying error for scribes to harmonise the rare weyiqtol form to the 
common wayyiqtol. This is not an argument that these two forms were 
originally a single form.

Here is a possible translation of Habakkuk 9-11 (based on the one you 
sent):

9 they all come bent on violence.
Their hordes advanced like a desert wind
and gathered (WAYYIQTOL) prisoners like sand.
10 They were deriding kings and scoffing at rulers;
they were laughing at all fortified cities.
They built (WAYYIQTOL) earthen ramps and captured (WAYYIQTOL) them.
11 Then they swept (QATAL) past like the wind
and went on (WAYYIQTOL).
They are guilty men,
whose own strength is their god.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[2]: qumran (was ruth)
Author:  furuli AT online.no at internet
Date:    09/05/1999 17:35


Peter Kirk wrote:


>If we look carefully the Hebrew (MT - BHS) of Habakkuk 1:6-11, it is 
>quite possible to understand these verb forms according to their 
>regular Hebrew meanings, and not take them to indicate something 
>different from regular prose. This passage deals with the general 
>characteristics of the Chaldeans and so uses yiqtol and weqatal forms. 
>But in verses 9-11a there is an embedded chronological narrative of 
>their procedure used in each attack (advance - gather prisoners - 
>build ramps - capture them - sweep past) - this is probably thought of 
>by the prophet as past, as what the Chaldeans have already done to 
>other cities. Thus we have a miniature embedded narrative using 
>wayyiqtol and X-qatal forms. Further embedded within this are the two 
>yiqtol forms of v.10 (scoff - laugh) which are again habitual and so 
>yiqtol.
>
>I suspect that the LXX translators (not native speakers of Hebrew and 
>working from a consonantal text) missed the nuances and read weyiqtol 
>for wayyiqtol. As for the Qumran commentary, its writers reinterpreted 
>the Chaldeans as the Kittim or Romans, and so they had to reinterpret 
>the Hebrew text as entirely prophetic and future from Habbakuk's 
>viewpoint.
>

Dear Peter,

Your explanation above illustrates why an extreme use of discourse analysis 
with the meaning of the different forms fixed beforhand can do violence to 
the Hebrew text. The view that WAYYIQTOL is a past tense have in my opinion 
the same negative effect, particularly in a book such as Habaqquq where 
there are other WAYYIQTOLS with non-past meaning (e.g. 1:3; 2:5, and 3:19).

As to the intention of the writer, 1:5 explicitly says that what follows is 
a prophecy of the future.  I am not aware of any other prophecy in the 
Bible where past acts of the one the prophecy speaks about are recorded in 
the midst of predictions about the future. Note also that the compilers of
BHS had difficulties with the verbs of the verses, as is shown in the notes.

Would you please translate the verses to show us how the supposed 
embeddeness and past meaning show up in a translation. Are there other 
translations which are similar to this translation of yours?


Regards
Rolf


Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo




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