Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> >>Genesis 32:32 "the children of Israel do not eat"
> >
> >would not eat
> >In Russian, that would be a regular future tense, не съедят
> >
> This is an imperfective present in Russian as in Hebrew, and
> in the Russian Synodal Bible is correctly translated не едят,
> imperfective present.
>

Russian Synodal Bible translation isn't worth discussion, and you are wrong
in basing your reasoning upon it. Synodal Bible is a garbled paraphrase.
Striving to translate close to the original, I would render не станут есть,
would not eat.

> >>Genesis 37:15 "What seekest thou?"
> >>
> >>
> >what would you like to find
> >
> >
> >
> I don't know what you think this means in English, but the sense is
> clear, that Joseph is already looking and continuing to look, a Russian
> imperfective present ищешь.
>

I agree. Rather than my earlier suggestion, now I think there is emphatic
deictic centre shift here. The inquirer saw Joseph wandering around, without
a chance of finding his brothers *now*, and the author had in mind the idea
of their future encounter, and that Joseph would *continue* seeking them.
Don't you think that any large book in English has several instances of
similarly irregular use of tenses?

> >>Past tense
> >>Judges 11:40 "the daughters of Israel went from year to year"
> >
> >would annually lament
> >
>
> But this use of "would" in English, while very correct, is not future.
>

"would" is a past reference from your viewpoint of detached observer. But
for the author, mentally transposed into the events, "would" refers to the
future.
The thing is, "would" in this and other examples denotes future tense, but
deictic shifts relativize the future.
Significantly, in every case of deictic shift, the shift is unambiguous from
the context.
Isn't that true also for the English usage of "would"?

Vadim Cherny