Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 3/8/07, Peter Kirk wrote:

> But there are some suspicious cases in the parallel passages in 2 Samuel
> 22 and Psalm 18, where there is a WAYYIQTOL form in 2 Samuel but a plain
> YIQTOL in the Psalm, or vice versa. It is at least possible that the
> difference between these passages was originally the semantically minor
> one between YIQTOL and WEYIQTOL, but at a later stage the WEYIQTOLs were
> reinterpreted as WAYYIQTOLs. Indeed I wonder if all of the many
> WAYYIQTOLs in this poem were originally WEYIQTOLs referring to general
> or repeated events, but were later reinterpreted as WAYYIQTOLs to make
> parts of this psalm sound like a narrative of a specific event. But this
> must be highly speculative.

A search on this parallel brought this up:

Prof Carnagey at ANE provided this list:
http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/library/ane/digest/v03/v03.n015

yishma'  -  Ps 18:7        wayyishma'  -  2 Sam 22:7         "(and) he heard"
yashet   -  Ps 18:12      wayyashet    -  2 Sam 22:12       "(and) he
thundered"
wayyiggalu - Ps 18:16          yiggalu  -  2 Sam 22:16       "(and) . . .
were uncovered"
               (Note the reversal in the two passages with this verb)
yippelu  -   Ps 18:39       wayyippelu  -  2 Sam 22:39       "(and) I thrust
them through"
'emchatzem    18:39       wa'emchatzem          22:39       "(and) they fell"
tefalleteniy - Ps 18:44     wattefalleteniy  - 2 Sam 22:44    "(and) you
delivered me"

In some cases the yiqtol is poeticallyy parallel to a regular yiqtol.  Perhaps
all of these can be explained as a repointing of a new inserted waw in one
of the versions.

Rolf replied to these here:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/1999-February/001643.html

In general, I find Rolf's discussion of these lacking.  For example, the
possibility that there are two almost complete homonymous yiqtol forms
(which I would say are differentiable primarily when there is a short open
syllable prefix) is not dealt with at all.  Also the relevance of "textual
corruption" is dismissed without discussion even though Rolf himself
agrees that at times the choice of wayyiqtol over yiqtol relates to the
positioning of the verb in the sentence (that is, whether it follows an
atnach or not).  In my opinion, this should immediately alert us to the
possibility that the Massoretes may have repointed the verbs in the
entire section (since Massoretic considerations influence consonantal
spellings).

Yitzhak Sapir