Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryan Rocine" <brocine AT earthlink.net>]

Hi Galia,  You wrote:

<snip>.

I did not do any work on prophecy, but I
> started to think about the problem. In my last post to the
list I suggested
> to call <wayyiqtol> an R-building form. What I want to
check now is whether
> it appears in prophetic verses not only to report future
events but also
> other modals. If my guess is correct, we will NOT find it
in other kinds of
> modals, but only in future

Wayyiqtol is fairly common in habitual/gnomic (modal)
material in poetry such as in Pro 31's description of the
virtuous woman.  Although I think the register might be
rather more formal, poetic, I think it would be otherwise
possible in BH to translate your sentence, "2. (Every
morning) Mary gets up, takes a shower and goes to work." as
follows by taking Pro 31 as a template:

2a.  col boker qamah mari vattirxats vattelek la`avod

Would it be correct to label such cases as evidence that
wayyiqtol is an r-time builder and not a tense?  Now if were
to translate my BH 2a back into English I could do it as
follows (after I realize the expository nature of the
passage):

2c.  It is every morning that Mary is an ariser.  And then
she washes, and then goes to work.

Shalom,
Bryan


B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
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