Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

I will answer a linguistic question here.

Because the Hebrew verbs do not conjugate for tense, that sometimes can
lead to misunderstanding. One of those is that sometimes when the writer
assumes that the audience understands that a certain event happened before
another, the writer then writes a rather abbreviated account that needs
context from other sources in order to understand the order of events,
especially when an earlier event is listed after a latter one. An English
writer (German also) would be able to indicate through tense the order of
events.

Here Haggai 2:18 is not clear as to the order of events, other sources
indicate that the foundation was laid well before the time of Haggai. The
context around Haggai 2:18 also seems to indicate that a certain amount of
time had passed since the foundation was laid. So linguistically, there is
no problem in recognizing that Haggai referred to the same event as Ezra.
It’s just that the Hebrew linguistic practice does not conform to English
practice.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 6:43 AM, George Athas 
<George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>wrote:

> You didn't break the rules at all, Peter. You asked a good question about
> Hebrew. Unfortunately, the answer to your question is not an issue with
> Hebrew per se, but rather with historiography. And since that is beyond the
> scope of the forum, we can't really explore it here (fascinating though it
> would be).
>
> Cheers!
>
>
> GEORGE ATHAS
> Director of Postgraduate Studies,
> Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)
> Sydney, Australia
>
>
> From: <ps2866 AT bingo-ev.de<mailto:ps2866 AT bingo-ev.de>>
> Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:13:14 +0200
> To: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org<mailto:b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> >>
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Haggai 2,8 + Ezra 3,10
>
> Dear Karl and George,
> thank you for your answers ! George, it was not my intention to break the
> rules of this list, so I'm sorry. I thought questions on word meanings in
> different contexts were ok, but it obviously went to far in historical
> issues. I've checked several commentaries befor posting my request, but
> they gave no answer to my question.
> Yours
> Peter M. Streitenberger
>
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