Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

PK:  >Is there a good reason not to translate this Moabite text as two 
>clauses: "Omri was king of Israel and he subdued Moab..."? 
RB: yes, 
melex, malax, malaxti examples in earlier context, 
haya would be expected here, 
and the construction also occurs in line 30.

PK:
> Or if this is an exception, maybe because it is 
>Moabite, not Hebrew?
RB: no. 
for one, it's judean hebrew, too, (cf. gesenius 111 f,g,h). here it's in
stone, so it can't be easily dimissed.

syntactically many 'discourse/rhetorical' structures of  judean hebrew
occur in this moabite text. 
with verbs one finds normal vayyiqtol plus a vayyiqtol as 'unmarked
overlay'. also normal veqatal as new paragraph, list, parenthesis,
chronological break, and even a sequential dramatic pause. 

braxot 
randall buth