Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Cees van Veelen wrote:
> >Cees van Veelen (not being familiar with your language, I'd be 
> >interested in knowing how to pronounce your name),
> Cees - like Americans say 'Case'
> van - the 'a' sounds like the British say 'a' in the word 'after'
> Veelen: the letters 'ee' as in Cees, the letters 'en' like the English
> article 'an'

Thank you.  My view is that a person's name is an important part of 
their self-identification and sense of self-worth, so I try to both 
remember people's names and pronounce them right.  So "Veelen" 
is pronounced much like the vowel patterns in "Beethoven," 
correct?  

> >> How is this construction to be evaluated? The only thing I can imagine
> >> is that the chiastic word order and the shift from WAYYIQTOL to QATAL
> >> is to create (or emphasize) a contrast: God called the light Day, _but_
> >> the darkness He called Night.
> >
> >Yes!  And this is precisely what my approach to the verb forms 
> >predicts.  There's a syntactic connection in the use of the qatal, 
> >one of contrast enhanced by the chiastic structure (though on 
> >chiasmus in general, I tend to follow F. I. Andersen's view that 
> >chiasmus draws the two clauses together into a single 
> >semantic/pragmatic unit and tighten their association with each 
> >other - see the relevant sections in his "Sentence in Biblical 
> >Hebrew").  The wayyiqtol signals a syntactically independent 
> >thought that is not dependent or otherwise syntactically connected 
> >with the preceding clause, and the qatal signals a syntactic 
> >connection with the preceding clause - in this case, contrast.  
> 
> Yes, I understand your view. Before I wrote my original post I checked
> a lot of translations - nowhere I found the contrast between the two
> parts of the sentence, they all connect the first and the second part
> with the word 'and' (or german or dutch equivalents).

Agreed, and it's mildly irritating to those of us who know better ;-)  
Have you read Andersen's book?

> >Excellent observation, and since I haven't seen your name in a post 
> >before, welcome!
> 
> Thank you. (I have been reading a long time though)

I thought so, but I wanted to welcome you to the fray nonetheless 
:-)


Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name.
                                   Psalm 86:11