Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Jason,
     You write:

>I am curious about the use of the Perfect and the
>Imperfect in the first Psalm.  It is interesting (I
>noted it in class today) that when something is
>referring to the wicked or bad things in this chapter
>(indeed, not that it is consistent in the HB) it is
>written with an imperfect verse.  However, if
>something is speaking of the righteous, it is in the
>imperfect.  Is there something to this?  (There is one
>seeming disagreement with this: when it talks of the
>wicked being being blown away like the chaff it is
>Imperfect.  However, it must be noted that when the
>advice of the wicked is bad, their destruction is
>GOOD.  So this, too, fits the idea.)
>
>What do you think of this??
>
I wonder if you have a typo and meant to say "if something is speaking of
the righteous, it is in the perfect." You will learn the various uses of
these conjugations, for example in Waltke and O'Connor's  Biblical Hebrew
Syntax. The perfect verbs in verse one could speak of a person's past
practice (recent perfective or constative perfective): "he has not walked
in the counsel of the ungodly." The imperfect in verse 2 describes
persistent action in the present, as does that in verse 3. The same is true
regarding the wicked in verse 4. The imperfects in verses 5-6 probably
refer to the future.

                                        Yours,
                                        Harold Holmyard