Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Julie Devall" <krena_li_mara AT hotmail.com>]

Gentlemen,

Perhaps we should look at Jouon-Muraoka on this point:

"In prophecies a future event is sometimes regarded as having already been 
accomplished, hence the use of qatal.  This prophetic perfect is not a 
grammatical perfect, but a rhetorical device."  (The examples cited are Isa. 
9.1, 9.5.)

If we step back and consider these so-called prophetic perfects within the 
frame which the author/redactor constructs, we find these passages embedded 
within a larger discourse.  What JM calls a rhetorical device is perhaps 
just a function of pragmatics.  My instructor (if I correctly understood the 
lecture) asked our class to consider the mode of prophecy itself.  (Assuming 
continuity of Isa.)  Prophecy here comes in the mode of a Vision.  So, 
perhaps the use fo the qatal is a function of the vision which was past, Isa 
1.

Thoughts,

Julie :)

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