Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Matthew Anstey" <manstey AT portal.ca>]

Gday all,

Van der Merwe, Naude, and Kroeze in their recently published grammar note
that yasaph in the hiphil means "to continue" (20.1.3.ii) while
traditionally (BDB) it is rendered "to do again". The advantage of
"continue" is that it takes an infinitive complement to complete the phrase,
like the similar BH verbs chalal "to begin", yakal "to be able", 'abah "to
be willing" etc. In BH all these verbs take infinitive complements and can
be translated this way easily by these English equivalents. Likewise, yasaph
translated this way is easier to handle, as in Jon 2:4

        I have been banished from your sight, nevertheless I will continue 
(yiqtol)
to look toward (le+qetol) your holy temple.

My question is, which is more accurate "to continue" or "to do again". The
idea of "to do again" implies a period of non-activity between the Speech
Time and the Event Time, but "to continue" implies a continuous state of
activity between the two. More importantly, "to do again" usually is + telic
but "to continue" is normally -telic. That is, the two different
translations have different aspectual meanings.

An argument in favour of "to continue" is the presence of `od eight times
after this construction (Gen. 8:21, Exod. 14:13, Deut. 17:16, Deut. 19:20,
Ps. 77:8, Isa. 51:22, Jer. 31:12, Zeph. 3:11) where it seems to add the
meaning "a further time". If the verb means "to do again" why add `od in
these cases? Similarly, the -telic nature of the verb may be modified by the
accompanying verb, which would explain Gen 4.2. "to give birth" is very much
+telic, overriding the general -telic nature of "to continue". (So in Gen
4:2 Eve "again" gives birth, she doesn't give birth continually!).
Alternatively, since this verb is used so often with child-birth, it may
have an idiomatic meaning in that context. Either way, the case for
"continue" seems stronger to me.

This explanation also seems to make more sense of wayyiqtol uses of yasaph
without the infinitive such as 1 Sam 19:21:

        So he sent more messengers. And they prophecied also. So Saul 
continued.
And he sent messengers a third time.



What are your thoughts?

With regards,
Matthew Anstey
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