Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

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Yigal Levin
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p.s. I'll let someone else actually answer the question.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sesamo m." <sesamox AT hotmail.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 11:38 AM
Subject: [b-hebrew] The tower of Babel and the Hebrew "tenses"


> "5And Jehovah cometh down to see the city and the tower which the sons of 
> men have builded; 6and Jehovah saith, `Lo, the people [is] one, and one 
> pronunciation [is] to them all, and this it hath dreamed of doing; and 
> now, nothing is restrained from them of that which they have purposed to 
> do. 7Give help, let us go down, and mingle there their pronunciation, so 
> that a man doth not understand the pronunciation of his companion.'
> 8And Jehovah doth scatter them from thence over the face of all the earth, 
> and they cease to build the city; (Gen 11:5-8, Young's Literal 
> Translation).
>
> Verse 5 seems to imply that the tower and the city had been already built. 
> But verse 8 shows that at least the city wasn't completely built.
> I'm not an expert in Hebrew, but I remember having read when I was a 
> student that the perfect aspect of the Hebrew verbs might be used for 
> something you haven't necessarily done, but that you are determined to do, 
> something you consider done. My explanation is not very academic, but I 
> hope you understand what I mean.
> And my question is, could this text admit the possibility that the tower 
> itself hadn't been built when Jehovah scattered the people?
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