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  • From: "Bryan Rocine" <brocine AT earthlink.net>
  • To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Expository discourse "profile"
  • Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 13:44:36 -0400


Dear Paul,

Thanks for your interest. BTW, it sounds like you are
feeling better than you were, and that some pressure is off.
Glad to hear it!

You wrote:
>
> I'm not quite sure I concur that Is 44:6-7 is distinct
from 8b-ff. It
> looks to me like 6-8 is mixed to serve as a transition
between the main
> purpose of the larger hortatory discourse and the specific
purpose of
> the expository discourse. The main purpose of the larger
hortatory
> looks to be part of the development of the thought begun
in Is 40, which
> runs to the end of the book--comfort for God's people even
while they
> are still undergoing hard times because of the promise
that God would
> eventually rescue them. The specific development here is
comfort
> through the assurance that, despite the severity of the
situation, God
> was going revive the people to a blessed state. The
doubly reinforced
> imperative of 8a is not furthering the hortatory; rather,
it is echoing
> again the imperative of verse 2. And, surrounding 8a is
the expository
> that there is no other God.

I think this point that 8a is an echo rather than an
advancement is a great point. As an echo it serves as a
reminder that we have not abandoned the over-all hortatory
purpose of the discourse just because we are in a lengthy
embedded expository discourse.

It may not make for a nice diagram, but
> does the theory not allow for an intermingling of thoughts
and types at
> transitional boundaries? If it doesn't, then it isn't
very realistic.

Well, the places where we have connectives, relatives,
contextualizers (i.e. structures that relate one section of
text to another), in this case the repeated exhortation of
8a, we are dealing with elements that probably do not belong
on the successive (horizontal) lines of my diagrams. Since
they are used to relate one part of a text to another
section, maybe we could put them on the verticle
(connective) lines in the diagram. (I can't type vertically
very well in e-mail, but) If you imagined that v. 8a was
written where the x's are in the diagram below, how does
that work for you? Would writing 8a on the verticle line
illustrate that it is used to create coherence in the text
rather than advance per se the hortatory?


__vv. 1-2 Hortatory Discourse begins
|
X __vv. 3-5 Embedded Pred. Narr.
X |__
X
X __vv. 6-7 Embedded Expository Disc.
X |__
X
X
X _vv. 8b-23 Embedded Expository Disc.
| |___
|___________Hortatory over



>
> I agree with your statement, "Once I understand a text, I
am not
> interested in parsing it any longer (just 'busy work'
then). I want a
> parse that aids accessing the text, ..." However, in
developing these
> aids to be used in other texts, sometimes we need to
continue parsing
> after we understand first text. How else do we see what
clues were in
> the first text that gave us the understanding that we
ended up with?

Randy picked up on this idea also. See my comments to him
in another post. I think they will apply here as well.

Shalom,
Bryan


B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13206

(office) 315.437.6744
(home) 315.479.8267






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