Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Trevor & Julie Peterson" <06peterson AT cua.edu>]

Joe wrote:

> However, with a stative verb, the 
> hiphil is not causative, but instead tends to increase
> the state of the verb in Qal and make the verb transitive.   Thus the
> stative verb RWM "to be high" in the Hiphil does not mean "to 
> cause" anything, but "to increase the height of X, to raise 
> X." It increases the state of "high" and allows the verb to 
> take a direct object.

I don't know that this is a very good example of what you're trying to
show. If the C of RWM is viewed as "cause to be high," the sense of
"raise" fits quite well.
> 
> Once this is seen, it becomes obvious why HYH "to be" (a 
> stative rather than an active verb) would not have a Hiphil 
> form, since one would expect the hiphil would not mean "cause 
> to be" but "increase being for X."  The ocassions for 
> expressing that meaning would be so rare that it would be not 
> be likely to occur.

But it does in fact occur in Syriac, which has to be explained somehow.
> 
> If YAHWEH is a verb related to "to be" (as Exod 3:14 
> suggests) rather than pun/folk etymology, it is probably 
> based on an archaic form of HAYAH before the W became a Y in 
> later Hebrew (see original first vav verbs like YALAD which 
> were originally WALAD forms and the Aramaic form HWH "to be").

Could you elaborate on this? How does a shift from W to Y in the first
radical substantiate a shift elsewhere? In Akkadian, for instance, the
fate of W develops differently at the beginning of a word and elsewhere.
(The end result is that it drops initially but shifts to M medially.)
I'm not saying that there isn't evidence for a medial shift from W to Y
in Hebrew, but I don't think this argument works.
> 
> Yahweh would then be a Qal imperfect form.  The Qal normally 
> takes an /I/ vowel under the preformative YOD, but the /A/ 
> vowel is influenced by the gutteral HE that tends to prefer 
> /A/ vowels over the /I/ vowel of the paradygm for Qal 
> imperfects and caused the /I/ to gravitate to that /A/ vowel. 
>  Thus the /A/ vowel has nothing to do with the hiphil form, 
> even though it would be a homonym of a hypothetical hiphil 
> form, but has to do with the gutteral in the root.

But the regular Qal prefixal forms from HYH show an i-vowel. Even Qal
forms from the root XYH, with a stronger gutteral xet, show an i-vowel.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics