Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> >Present tense
> >Genesis 32:32 "the children of Israel do not eat"

would not eat
Grammatical future tense is used for repeated or continuous action.

> >Genesis 37:15 "What seekest thou?"

literary, What would you seek
This seems to parallel Spanish probable present, "I would say, he is at home
now"

> >1 Samuel 11:5 ""What aileth the people that they weep?"

The same ci-yiqtol as in Deut1:44 and 1Kings21:6 examples.
Perhaps, What is about the people, that they should weep?
Or, Saul though of continuous action, That they would weep [all the time]?

> >Past tense
> >Judges 11:40 "the daughters of Israel went from year to year"

Annually, the daughters of Israel would go
past continuous

> >Job 1:5 "In this manner used Job to do all the time"

Thus Job would do all the time
past continuous

> >Genesis 29:2 "out of that well they watered"

ci-yiqtol
they would water
past continuous

Nowm we may argue whether deictic shift is behind idiomatic usage of future
tense for past continuous. It well might be: narrators transposed to the
beginning of sequence, or even to its cause.
The point, however, is that past continuous sense of "would do" does not
impeach English tenses, and neither should similar use impeach Hebrew
tenses.

Vadim Cherny