Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Peter,
> Sorry, partly my mistake, I meant to suggest that NIMCF) here could be 
> Qal "imperfect" 1st person plural. According to BDB this form is not 
> found, but this would be the correct form as the 3rd person singular 
> is YIMCF). It is presumably a mistake in BDB to list 2 Samuel 7:12 
> (where this verb is not found) rather than 17:12 as an occurrence of 
> the Niphal. 

Thanks for pointing out their typo: I've made the correction in my 
copy, and I suspect you've saved me a lot of hair-pulling.

Holladay's lexicon does not list this reference; you are 
> apparently referring to the form NOWTAR rather than NIMCF). 

Yes, you're right.  I got my verbs crossed.  Sorry.

The Hiphil 
> "imperfect" form here would surely be something like NAMCIY), so can 
> hardly be relevant to the pointed text here; and the meaning of the 
> Hiphil "cause to find" is hard to fit here. Your Qal meaning is 
> possible, as the object is similarly dropped after ):A$ER in an idiom 
> in Jdg 9:33, 1 Samuel 10:7, 25:8.

It seems to me that the choice between qal yiqtol and niph`al qatal 
will be determined in large part by our understanding of the verbal 
system, and hence by what presuppositions we start with based 
thereon.

> As for your "can you expand on this", I mean to say this: In all 
> languages there are pairs of morphemes (especially word roots, but in 
> principle the same can surely happen with affixes) which have the same 
> or very similar form but different meanings. From etymological 
> research we can sometimes, but not always, determine which of these 
> pairs are homonyms in the sense that originally different forms have 
> converged because of phonological changes, and which are in fact 
> derived from the same root but have acquired different meanings by 
> processes of semantic change. But where the etymological evidence is 
> insufficient (as may often be the case with biblical Hebrew), my point 
> is that it is impossible to tell which of these two is the case with a 
> particular pair of morphemes. That is correct, surely? I suspect that 
> the alleged two meanings of W:- (and of HA-?) fall into this category, 
> that there is simply not enough evidence to determine whether they are 
> variant meanings of one original morpheme or originally separate 
> morphemes which have almost completely fallen together in form but not 
> in meaning.

An excellent point, and I agree fully.  In the Hebrew cases, I would 
tentatively (and with great fear and trembling) suggest that the 
question we must ask is: for which can we develop a more likely 
scenario of development?  Since I don't buy the hypothesis of two 
original prefix conjugations, I lean toward the idea of two originally 
separate W- morphemes; perhaps you or someone else could 
suggest a scenario in which a single W- morpheme developed two 
separate meanings?  This is an idea I've never considered, and I 
think it bears further examination.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.