Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 05/08/2005 10:37, Read, James C wrote:

> 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. ...
>  

Wrong, James. The subject of a following verb, if not specified or ruled 
out e.g. by gender, is implicitly the same as that of the preceding 
verb. So, in this case, the grammatical subject of the second verb is 
the anger of YHWH.

> ... 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!
>  

But YHWH's anger is often personified and used as an agent. This is of 
course a metonymy for YHWH himself, when angry.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/