Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hi Jason,  you wrote:
>
> HYH cannot have a "direct object" relation, because it
> is intransitive.  Rather, it would have a subjective
> complement (forgive me for using English grammarian
> terms, but it fits).  HYH as 'become' generally has a
> lamed after it and attached to the predicate
> nominative (or subjective complement), which in
> reality would be considered the resultative state.
>
I toyed with using other terms, but I thought the quotation
marks indicated sufficiently that I know the two
constituents in question are not "really" direct and
indirect objects.  I was faced with naming two distinct but
related constituents in the predicate. "Complement" may not
be desireable because some folks use "complement
specifically for the complement of copula, which Iwas
clearly trying to show hyh is not.

> It must be conceded that HYH does *sometimes* mean
> 'become,' even when the lamed element is wanting.
> However, it seems that the reason for such a
> translation is clearly expressed in the fact that it
> is shown by the previous state as opposed to the
> resultative state of the subject.  For example, if I
> was a boy when I was younger and later I was a man,
> the
> tendency would be to say that I 'became' a man.  With
> David, he was _not_ Saul's armor-bearer before, then
> he was (hence, he 'became') one.  This applies to all
> of the above mentioned 'exceptions.'  Either they grew
> up and 'became' what they were not before (as a child)
> or they had an expressly mentioned former state
> contrasted with a different resultative state (woman
> --> salt; dirt --> gnats).
>

I don't follow.  The same can be said of the examples that
*do* contain lamed.  Lot's wife's prior state of humanity is
no more expressly stated than the Moabites' prior state of
freedom in 2 Sam 8:2.

Shalom,
Bryan



B. M. Rocine
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Living Word Church
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