Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hey, Dave,

You wrote:

> If this is normal Hebrew for this sort of
> > recounting of events, then how can anything be read into Joab's use
of the
> > verb forms?
>
> Precisely the point!  Why do you want to read anything into it?  As
> someone wrote quite a while back, absence of the wayyiqtol is
> much more significant than presence of it.  It's the simple form, like
> the old commercial used to give for examples of the simple
> declarative sentence: "Headaches hurt.  Aspirin cures headaches.
> Brand X is pure aspirin."  What would you read into these verbs?
> And why?  If you read anything into them, you're putting something
> there that the author didn't.  Thus it is with the wayyiqtol: it's the
> simple declarative, and if you read something into it, you're putting
> something there that the writer didn't.

I know that you don't approach the text at the discourse level, but am I
misreading you when you seem to be positing that the Hebrew would
present the three sentences about headaches and aspirin as wayyiqtol?  I
would be interested to see what text and resultant translation you base
that on.

Now if, on reflection, you, like me, come to the point where you doubt
that the Hebrew would have used wayyiqtols to express these simple
English declarative sentences, then you need to ask yourself, "Are there
more than one pattern for 'simple declarative sentences' in the Hebrew?"
If there are, are there special contexts in which one tends to be used
and not another?  Would that not imply then that there is *some*
additional information beyond the simple declarative that is being
carried by the verbform, if only an indication of the context?  If there
are not more than one "simple declarative" pattern, then is the
wayyiqtol (and not the verbless clause or weqatal or weyiqtol or
whatever) really that pattern?  If it is not, then it must be something
more than "simple declarative," meaning that there is additional
information there.

I may not agree with all that Matthew is proposing here with his
musings, but I personally feel that asking the purpose for the selection
of a verbform is within line.  I know you have come to the point in your
examination where you reject the idea that wayyiqtols carry some concept
of sequence, but some of the rest of us might state with the same
conviction as you: if you flatly refuse to see any element of sequence
in the wayyiqtol, you are not reading everything in the form that the
writer expected the reader to see.  If you have matured in this point
beyond us, good, and perhaps you will allow us to examine and grow so we
can be at that point with you.  But, in case you are way off track in
this one area, perhaps you can point out the superiority of your
position with a bit less of an attack and a bit more of the explanation
why the examination of the text based on clause level possibilities is
*the* way to go.

Peace, and I really do mean that, Dave,

Paul