Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 26/09/2005 09:11, Vadim Cherny wrote:

> > > Can we translate Gen37:15:
> > >  A man asked him, asking, "What dost thou will?"
> >
> >
> > Not into modern English, you can't. This should be: A man asked him, 
> > "What do you want?"
>
>
> That blurs the future tense inherent in "will."


There is no future tense inherent in "will", as an independent verb. It 
is simply a rare synonym of "want" or "decide", which would never be 
used in such a context.

...

> "What dost thou wilt?" is the closest to the future tense I could find 
> in English. ...


This is not a future tense in English. In fact this is ungrammatical, 
but "What dost thou will?" would be grammatical pre-modern English, or 
else "What wilt thou?". But in this case "will" or "wilt" is acting as 
an independent verb, and so is not a future tense or in any way 
"future-oriented".

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