Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Paul Zellmer" <zellmer AT digitelone.com>]

Gday, Matthew,

I just posed your question to the first year Hebrew class that I teach.
The result of our investigation shows that this would have to be a
jussive, it cannot be a simple indicative.

You cannot determine this simply by a word level analysis.  You need at
least a clause level analysis to see that you are dealing with a clause
initial yiqtol (with no waw).  Had the indicative been meant in this
narrative passage, the harvesters would have either used a weqatal, or
put YHWH before the yiqtol.

HTH,

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: Matthew Anstey <manstey AT portal.ca>
To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, August 21, 1999 4:32 AM
Subject: Distinguishing jussives from imperfects


> Gday all,
>
> Are there any syntactic criteria for distinguishing jussives from
> imperfects? So in Ruth 2:4 it says, "May Yahweh bless you". But is
there any
> chance it could be "Yahweh will bless you"? What do you think?
>
> With regards,
> Matthew Anstey