Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

   George, if I understand you correctly, I agree...

  But I would like to add a point which may apply
 to similar discussions on similar topics: Ps. 1 
 is a poem.

    Somebody once calculated that a large
 part of the HB consists of poetic texts.
 Linguistic rules, including syntactical,
 which may apply to prose, do not necessarily
 apply to poems.

   Returning to Ps. 1, one must keep in mind that
 for over two thousand years readers of this poem
 in the original took its meaning for granted.
 Modern grammatical analysis does not 
 necessarily add to such understanding.

 Uri Hurwitz                                 Great Neck, NY



Yes, Galia's term modus irrealis captures the sense of the Yiqtol well for 
the most part. I'm not sure it's the best term for understanding the habitual 
past action that the Yiqtol can often convey, but it is a very good term, 
nonetheless.

I wouldn't equate the Weqatal with this, however. Weqatal is simply a 
continuation or adjunct verb, much like the participle in Greek. In my 
opinion it's actually just a Qatal with a plain conjunction on the front. The 
conjunction does something important syntactically, but the verb as a whole 
does not, in my estimation, convey modus irrealis. If it does, the Qatal 
itself must also convey modus irrealis. But it doesn't.


GEORGE ATHAS
Director of Postgraduate Studies,
Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)
Sydney, Australia