Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Tory Thorpe <torythrp AT yahoo.com>]

--- JAMES CHRISTIAN READ <JCR128 AT student.anglia.ac.uk>
wrote:

> Isn't repetition the rule to be expected rather than
> 
> the rare exception to be debated in biblical hebrew?
> 
> James

It is not a rule in literary prose, and Gen. 24:16 is
essentially a prose statement by the biblical
narrator; but phonetic, repetitive, grammatical. and
semantic parallelism does recur (not as a rule) as a
standard literary technique in NW Semitic poetry. You
might find E. J. Revell's paper helpful: "The
Repetition of Introductions to Speech as a Feature of
Biblical Hebrew", VT 47 (1997), pp. 91-110. Repetition
in BH prose or discourse re-states similar ideas often
using the same words. In Gen. 24:16 new information is
introduced with the clause "and she did not know a
man" which helps move the narrative forward.

Tory Thorpe