Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>]

In 2Sam24:1 there are two clauses

In the first clause, Yahowah's anger grows hot against Isreal.
Why?
In the second clause, someone incites David to make a census of Isreal.

The verb in question in the second clause is WaYYaSeTH and the subject 
of the verb is not implicit.
This entire discussion is based on the assumption that the subject for
the second clause is the same as that of the first clause. This does 
not make sense. Yahowah's anger is not a person!

NWT translates:

And again the anger of Jehovah came to be hot against Isreal, when one
incited David against them, saying "Go, take a count of Isreal and Judah."

This translation is grammatically legal as it allows the reader to decide
the subject of the second clause, while other translations force the 
interpretation that the subject is the same as in the first clause, which 
cannot be conclusively demonstrated to be true.
The composer of Chronicles, who had a much stronger command of the Hebrew 
language than any of us, evidently did not make this interpretation and so 
we are not justified to force this interpretation on our poor readers who 
remain ignorant about the translative decisions which have been made for them.

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