Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

greg doudna wrote:
>If an ancient writer of biblical Hebrew wished to express a
>temporal period beginning in the past and ending in the
>future, what type of construction would naturally be used
>to express this?
>
>MN...'D, "from X....until Y", 
>...  e.g. an iterative action occurring
>throughout the temporal period, if it starts in the past, is
>presently ongoing, and is expected to continue until some
>endpoint in the future?
>
>This is not a simple question to answer even in English . . .


we'll start with the normal and then jump to something special.

both hebrew participles and yiqtols can signal something open-ended going
into the future in hebrew.
e.g. `ad matai atem posHim ... 'until when will you be hopping around ...?
' 1K18.21
`ad matai  titHamaqin 'until when will you be dodging ...? jer 31.22

those were 'normal'. but what happens when something complete is thrown in
the picture?
something that in english might sound like 
"until when will you have had been doing ...?"  
almost impossible english. i wonder if it could be done in hebrew?

from last week's parasha:
`ad matai me'anta lehe`anot ? 'until when will you have had been refusing
to submit before me?' ex 10.3

the refusal was complete in the past, habitual, and future. 
hebrew's underdifferentiated verb system can handle this.

braxot
randall buth