Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ken Penner <kpenner AT stfx.ca>]

Karl is right that these two are Hebrew participles. Hebrew participles, unlike Greek, are not inflected for aspect (or tense for that matter).

 

I should caution you, though, that Karl’s views on Hebrew tenses are unconventional.

 

Ken M. Penner, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Religious Studies

2329 Notre Dame Avenue, 409 Nicholson Tower

St. Francis Xavier University

Antigonish, NS  B2G 2W5

Canada

(902)867-2265

kpenner AT stfx.ca

 

 

 

From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of K Randolph
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2013 6:08 PM
To: Robert Campanaro
Cc: B-Hebrew
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Tenses in Isaiah 44:24

 

Robert:

 

Biblical Hebrew language has no tenses, rather time indicators are found in the contexts.

 

In the verse in question, the words you asked about are participles, in other words nouns. However, the translation into tense based Indo-European languages comes out much smoother by transforming them to past tense verbs.

 

Karl W. Randolph.

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 1:23 PM, Robert Campanaro <faithreason7 AT gmail.com> wrote:

My biblical language is Greek and other than a few words, I know no Hebrew at all. But I have a simple question I was hoping someone could answer. In the Septuagint of Isaiah 44:24, the verbs translated "stretched out" in regards to the heavens and "spread out" in regards to the Earth are aorists, but translations of the Hebrew seem to vary from aorists to presents. What tense are they in the original Hebrew?
Thanks.
Robert Campanaro