Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Kenneth:

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 8:46 PM, kenneth greifer <greifer AT hotmail.com> wrote:

>  Karl,
>
> I think Jeremiah 22:7 might be hophal or hiphil. I was just writing what I
> thought was the usual opinion. If I say anything against the usual opinion,
> no one will answer me.
>

LOL! It sounds like you would agree with the late astrophysicist Thomas
Gold, that the effect of the modern peer review system is to inhibit
original research.


> I also just wanted to know if what I call the present tense hiphil always
> has the extra yud in it or if sometimes it is not used.
>

When I used to follow the Masoretic points, I noticed quite a few examples
where they pointed verbs as hiphils that did not have the internal yod
expected of a hiphil. While I cannot do like Pere Porta and list examples of
such, I will say that it is more common that you may expect.

But now that I realize that the Masoretic points are often wrong, indicating
meanings that the spelling and context do not support, so I read a text that
has no points, and I look at the context and spelling to learn what the text
says.


> I know that those words might not be hiphil at all, but I wouldn't ask a
> question like that because most people on B-Hebrew seem very strict about
> things like this. Would you prefer that I rock the boat and not get answer?
>

Depends on the questions that you ask. I have asked simple, open-ended
questions like “I don’t understand this verse, what do you think it means?”
and have gotten no answer because apparently no one else knows either. Other
times I have rocked the boat and gotten responses. Then some questions
simply get lost in the fog of debate.

>
> Kenneth Greifer
>

By the way, it would be better not to call verb conjugations “tense” because
in Biblical Hebrew they did not have time reference as in tense or aspect,
so it is better to call the conjugations qatal, yiqtol, imperative,
participle, and so forth.

Karl W. Randolph.

>
>