Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Sunday 14 August 2005 00:32, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
> I am not sure what Peter Kirk holds, I hold and think I have stated in
> this regard
> here that a series of "wayyiqtol"s or the wa- prefix, when applied to
> a verb, marks
> a sequential action that begins after the last action had completed.
> Gen 18:1-3 is a
> good paragraph illustrating the various ways this concept is put to
> practice.

Hardly.  See below.

> In Gen 18:2, Abraham raises his eyes, "and sees" ("wayar)").  It should be
> clear that he cannot see the three men before raising his eyes.  But the 
> linguistic sequence conveys that.  

No, the semantics of the verbs in question convey that, as you yourself just 
pointed out.  Nothing in the verb forms themselves conveys this idea, it's 
built into the accepted meanings of "raise eyes" and "see."  We have the same 
thing in the oft-repeated formula WAYYAQOM WAYY"LEK, "he arose and went."  
Obviously, one cannot went before one aroses (bad grammar deliberate), but 
that's a feature of the words themselves, not the verb forms.  It gets even 
worse, though; both "he arose and went" and "he raised his eyes and saw" are 
formulaic hendiadys-type expressions, and so really can't tell us anything 
about the verb forms themselves.

> Similarly, in the later part of 18:2, he 
> sees them, runs to them, and then bows before them.  He cannot run to them,
> before seeing them, and he bows to them only after he finishes running.  In
> both these cases we have a sequence of "wayyiqtol"s which convey sequential
> action.

Once again, we're dealing with the semantics of the verbs in question here.  
Your very statement, "He cannot run to them, before seeing them" etc. shows 
that.  It's the meanings of the words, not the form of the verb, that convey 
sequence.  You're not making much of a case here.

> But in 18:1 we do not have such a sequence.  In 18:1, instead of
> saying "wayye$eb"
> it says "and he sits."  Why?  Because if it said "wayye$eb" it would
> suggest that
> Abraham was standing idly by, and then, sequentially, God appeared to him,
> and then, sequentially, Abraham sat down.  Because 18:1 wants to suggest
> that Abraham
> was already sitting, it says "And God appeared to Abraham, and he is
> sitting."  The
> original line of events (consisting of only "And God appeared to
> Abraham") is broken
> and a new one is created.  We then follow this new one: Abraham is
> sitting outside the
> tent, he raises his eyes, he sees.  A perfectly sequential new line of
> events.

Surely you jest.  Where do you get the idea that a wayyiqtol would "suggest 
that Abraham was standing idly by"?  Nothing in the context or the text hints 
at such a thing, nor does anything in the verb form.  What we have here is a 
temporal clause: YHWH appeared to him while he was sitting.  There's no break 
in any "line of events" because we've only had one event up to that point, 
YHWH appearing.  That's an awfully short line!  And the business about "a new 
line of events" ignores the fact that the next verb, "he lifted," is another 
wayyiqtol.  What's it sequential to?  Abraham sitting?  Hardly.  To get that 
you'd have to assume that Abraham stood up and then lifted his eyes, but the 
text doesn't say that.  In addition, what's the first wayyiqtol in verse 1 
sequential to?  Ishmael's circumcision?  I think not.  It begins a new 
pericope, and isn't sequential to anything.  Nor is the wayyiqtol of "he 
lifted," unless you want to claim that it's sequential to either YHWH 
appearing or Abraham sitting, neither of which makes sense.  Any sequence 
that comes out of this passage is a feature of the words, not the syntax.

> But now, in 18:2, we see a break again.  "And behold, three men are
> standing before
> him."  These men did not run or sit down prior to his sighting them,
> and then stand
> *after* he looked up to see them.  The text suggests by its use of the
> verbs that by
> the time he looked up and sighted them, they were already standing before
> him. Because it is non-sequential it is conveyed with the verb no long
> immediately following
> "wa".

It's a participle.  And there is a "wa" but it's prefixed to HINNEH.  But 
I'll 
let that pass.  The participle, however, is not a verb, it's the head of an 
adjectival clause, "[there were] three men standing."  What we have here is a 
basic verbless clause with the participle functioning adjectivally.  You're 
still not making your case, because you haven't shown syntactically that 
there's anything in any of these wayyiqtols that requires sequence 
independent of the inherent meanings of the terms used.

> So again, a new sequence of events is started which states "And
> behold, three men
> are standing before him."  This sequence of events finishes very
> quickly because we
> immediately return to the first timeline with a repeat of "And he
> saw."  As I mentioned
> above, when we begin a new line of events we generally follow it.  In
> this case, in
> order to return to the first line of events the last verb from the
> first line of events ("and
> he saw") was repeated.

Okay, you still haven't explained how a form that is always sequential to 
something else can begin a new line of events.  You also haven't explained 
why, if it's true that "by the time he looked up and sighted them, they were 
already standing before him," he had to run to them.  Running to them 
suggests that they were  still a ways away.  So your whole sequence breaks 
down right there.  

> So in Gen 18:1-3, we have examples of how Biblical Hebrew generally conveys
> sequential action, sequential action that is broken by a new timeline,
> and sequential
> action that is broken by a new timeline and a return to the previous
> timeline.  

Actually, what we have is a fine example of shoehorning the grammar into the 
theory rather than the reverse.  What we have actually proven is that 
sequence in BH is inherently built into the semantics of the verbs themselves 
and into the pragmatics of the context, and has nothing to do with the verb 
form.  Oh, and you might want to talk with some of the discourse-analysis 
folks on this list, because they'll tell you that what you're describing is 
nothing more than foregrounding and backgrounding.  I don't necessarily agree 
with their analysis, but at least their terms make sense.

> All of 
> this is absent in 2 Sam 24:1.  There we just have sequential action.
> I don't know if
> there are any exceptions to this semantics of Biblical Hebrew, but it
> has worked for
> me anytime I used it, and it is based on a booklet written by a linguist on
> the differences between Biblical and modern Hebrew.

See my 1994 paper in Hebrew Studies.  I gave scads of exceptions, enough to 
bring the whole idea into question.  And the "sequential action" in 2 Sam 
24:1 is built into the verbs rather than the forms, as well.

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"Well, if I'd wanted a safe life, I guess I wouldn't have 
married a man who studies rocks." - Betty Armstrong (Fay Masterson)