Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Thursday 28 August 2003 11:39, CS Bartholomew wrote:
> David orders the execution of the messenger reporting Saul's death.
>
> 2Sam. 1:15 wyqr) dwd l)xd mhn(ryM wy)mr g# pg( bw wykhw wymt
> 2Sam. 1:16 wy)mr )lyw dwd dmyK [dmK] (l r)#K ky pyK (nh bK l)mr )nky mtty
> )t m#yx yhwh s
>
> At the end of verse 15 and beginning of verse 16 we see a sequence of
> events which are carried along by a series of wy... verb forms. But the
> narrative sequence isn't strictly linear is it? At the beginning of verse
> 16 David isn't really speaking to a corpse  wy)mr )lyw dwd ...  is he?
> David's discourse in verse 16 does not appear to follow (temporal sequence)
> the last clause in verse 15 but describes something that takes place while
> the messenger is dying. Perhaps David's speech is just over the body of the
> man and addressed to someone else?
>
> Do we have a summary of the events in verse 15 followed by an expansion in
> verse 16 so that the temporal sequence which seems to march right along up
> to verse 16a is interrupted to tell us some more detail about what has just
> taken place?

It was just this type of context that drove me to try and find a different 
model for the verb system, because sequence simply does not work here.  Verse 
16 sounds like a formal pronouncement of sentence, not something that would 
be spoken over a person who has already been executed.  The TEV and NAB 
solutions you cited sound like cop-outs, since the text explicitly says that 
the man "struck him" and that the Amalekite "died."

I frankly think that the idea of "sequence" whether temporal or logical (a la 
Waltke-O'Connor) is not in the wayyiqtol.  Consider the following exchange:

Q: What was so bad about your trip to the store?

A: I stubbed my toe.  I bought the wrong frammistat.  I got the wrong change 
back.  I couldn't find a parking place within 2 blocks of the place.  I got a 
parking ticket.  It was impossibly hot.  My air conditioner didn't work.  The 
trip was a disaster.

There is no clear sequence in these clauses, yet I strongly suspect that they 
would have been rendered by wayyiqtol clauses in BH.  Each one is a 
self-contained declarative clause, and that's what I think the wayyiqtol is.  
Yes, it's the most common form in narrative prose, but that doesn't mean that 
sequentiality is built into the form.  IMO sequentiality (or lack thereof) 
comes from the context, not from the verb form.  Verse 16, following verse 
15's declaration, seems to bear out such a thought.

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"God does a lot of things in the Psalms
that He can't get away with in systematic theology."