Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear list-members,

Do we find any language in the world, ancient or modern, where a 
tense form is a preterit in one kind of material and present /future 
in another (say prose and poetry)? If no such language exists or has 
existed, why should we think that this is the case in Classical 
Hebrew?

A grammaticalized verb form has the same meaning in any context, but 
its use can be different. In some modern poetic texts a verb can be 
used in a contrafactual way or in a very strange way, in order to 
cause some effect. But that does not change the meaning of the verb 
form.

One possible explanation why YIQTOLs are used with past reference in 
punctiliar (non-progressive) past situations is that the WAYYIQTOL is 
a YIQTOL+the conjunction WAW.  This WAW is essential in narrative, 
but unnecessary in other contexts. This would mean that WAYYIQTOL 
and YIQTOL are semantically equivalent.

Anyone claiming that verb forms are semantically different in Hebrew 
poetry and prose should be ready to explain why YAQTUL(U) forms 
(morpologically equivalent to Hebrew YIQTOL) in the Ugaritic saga 
about Keret (Kirta) first are used with future reference (the story 
of what will happen is told), and then exactly the same forms are 
used with past reference (the story about what happened is told). 
There is no difference between poetry and prose here, the only 
difference is the temporal reference.

We should also keep in mind that Hebrew poetry is very different from 
English poetry; we simply cannot compare the two. An important 
problem in the text of the Tanakh is that so much of the text is 
narrative. And narrative is the worst possible place to find the 
meaning of verbs, because of the stereotypic nature of narrative-the 
narrative verbs must have past reference regardless of their semantic 
meaning. For example, can anyone think of a test by which we can know 
whether the narrative WAYYIQTOLs are preterits (grammaticalized past 
tense) or whether they only are used in narrative because of 
linguistic convention, and therefore have no tense meaning at all?

So I will turn the issue upside down and claim that it is in 
non-narrative texts (including poetry, which is such a great part of 
the Tanakh) that we find the normal use of Hebrew verbs.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
Univeersity of Oslo




> Dear List,
>
> I would like comments from the list regarding the wayyiqtol, yiqtol, 
> etc. found
> in the articles by Edward Cook http://ralphriver.blogspot.com/ which are found
> below.
>
> Rev. Bryant J. Williams III
>
> Toward a Theory of Hebrew Poetic Tenses
>
>
>
> Comments Please.