Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Yitzak:

So far all the books you cited are post-exilic ones.

Will the pattern of such “slips” also be found in pre-exilic books, or is 
this an indication that knowledge of Hebrew language was rapidly fading even 
during the exile? It will be interesting to know.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>

> Hello all,
> 
> To my understanding, BIblical Hebrew's conjuction (waw) connotes when
> attached to a verb a conjunction, a time order, and time reversal. 
> That is, a sentence that begins with "waw-verb ..." implies that the
> action happened after what had been told in the previous verses had
> completed, and also that the verb, if in future, refers to the past,
> and if in past, it refers to the future.  In various places in late
> books, we find that this waw is used without this time reversal
> property.  For example, in the end of Esther 9:20-, we have:
> wayyiktob, wayyi$lax, w:qibbel, w:hippil, w:talu.  Now in this
> particular portion of verses we have what seems to be past tense but
> the grammatical rules of analyzing this past tense shift in the
> middle.  This could be explained as part of the heavy Aramaic
> influence on the book of Esther, coupled with an attempt to write in
> ancient Hebrew when Hebrew was already losing this construct.
> 
> However, I have noticed that "slips" like this happen in places where
> that is less to be expected.  For examples, I Kings 4:7 "w:kilklu" is
> apparently a future verb, although it's context is decidedly
> historical and past tense.  Particularly, this verse happens in a
> section which appears to be in debate as to whether it is "Solomonic"
> or not.  In any case, it seems that this verse cannot be dated to the
> exilic period, so it seems odd to find a future tense here when one
> would expect past tense.  Even arguing that a "y" has fallen by
> accident from the text, would seem odd, since by the time it could
> have happened, there must have been many copies of Kings and so the
> odds that this accidental slip would survive are low.  Oddly, no one
> thus far in the various few articles I have read on this has paid any
> attention to this slip.  Perhaps I am misreading.
> 
> I was wondering whether there was any systematic study of "slips" like
> this and of the use and misuse of the waw- with verbs in the Bible. 
> Or, if not that, a "concordance" of grammatical structures whereby one
> could look up how common is the use of waw to denote past tense verbs
> and how often it is used for future tense verbs.  This could give some
> hint as to how uncommon the above verb is in Kings as opposed to
> Esther.  Any help would be welcome :-)
-- 
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