Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Joseph,

I give my comments below:


>Shalom
>
>I have tried to read through the past posts concerning wayyitqtols. I have
>tried to condense what I read into the following 7 statements. Please
>provide remarks or corrections based on your understanding of wayyiqtols.
>
>Hainu Hach
>
>1. The situations most described with wayyiqtol are one's with temporal or
>logical sequences.

OK

>
>2. The most noteworthy use is that it traces the mainline of the
>narrative.

OK

>
>3. All uses of the wayyiqtol have a sense of consecution. (Expect
>epexegetical)


Wrong (I agree with Randall)

>
>4. In contrast to the suffix conjugation there are no possible examples of
>the pluperfect use of the wayyiqtol. (What about Num. 1:47-49 "Öhad said to
>Moses" or Gen. 12:1 "and the Lord had said")


Wrong (I agree with Randall)

>
>5. Wayyiqtol represents a situation subjectively as Perfective.

I would say that WAYYIQTOL is *imperfective* just as YIQTOL and represents
the subjective imperfective view of the reporter.

>
>6. Wayyiqtol may take on the range of meanings associated with the
>Perfective conjugation.

I will say "the imperfective conjugation".

>
>7. It is very rare that a wayyiqtol refers to a time other than the
>preceding verb.

Because most WAYYIQTOLs occur in narratives in more instances than not,
they usually have the same time reference as the preceding verb. But this
is due to the nature of the narrative account. To find the true nature of
WAYYIQTOLs, non-narrative texts are better to study. Look at the numbers
below which represent my study of all the WAYYIQTOLs of the Tanach. The
first row represents the number of non-past WAYYIQTOLs (reference time
coincides with the present moment or comes after the present moment), the
second, the total number in the particular book, and the third represents
the percentage of non-past WAYYIQTOLs (In Isaiah there are 88 non-past
WAYYIQTOLs out of 244, and the percentage of non-past ones is 33. If we
take away the narrative parts of Isaiah, the percentage of non-past
WAYYIQTOLs is 49 (according to my estimate).



JOB     85      258     33 %
PSALMS  111     327     34 %
PROVERBS        23      29      79 %
ISAIAH  88      244 (-NARR 176)  36 % (-NAR 49 %)
JEREMIAH        63      472     13 %
LAMENTATIONS    25      27      92 %
EZEKIEL 50      506     9,9 %



Regards

Rolf

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo