The first WEYIQTOL (§LX) of v 4 illustrates the importance of WAW. This is
the first WEYIQTOL in a chain, and as a conjunction it is therefore
superfluous (there are some examples of WAWs where the conjunctive force
even is used first in a clause; the meaning in such cases is "so"). It may
be used to signal that the verb is not modal. I see only two different
"events" expressed by the five WEYIQTOLs,i.e. two different RTs (reference
time): (1) "send","rise","go", and "write" ("Map"), and (2) "enter". It is
impossible to say that first Joshua would send them, then they should rise,
then they should go (throughout the land),and then they should map it, and
then they should enter the place where Joshua was.
But what are the WAWs doing? In all three instances the events are the
same, and it is very difficult, at least in my mind, to take them in all
instances as anything but conjunctions. The reason why the five WAWs of the
fiveWEYIQTOLs do not represent five events but just two,the reason why
three IMPERATIVEs connected with waw represent one event, and the reason
why seven WAYYIQTOLs represent three events and not seven, is the same,
namely lexicon. Because of the meaning of the verbs we can see that each
WAW does not signal a new RT (reference time),i.e. something occurring
after another event in a chain. There is of course a difference between
"going throughout" and "mapping", but still the verbs signal one event (if
we by event mean something with a new RT).
One may call some of these "hendiadys", something I will not do, but
regardless of what they are called, they are expressed by WAYYIQTOLs and
WEYIQTOLs, and these forms can express actions and states that occur
simultaneously.
We also find in these verses an example of a common procedure in Hebrew
that seemingly few persons have noticed, namely that when we have one or
more WEYIQTOLs in a context, and we, because of the same time reference and
consecution would expect another WEYIQTOL, we find a YIQTOL. The reason is
that there is a word before the YIQTOL, and the WE is attached to this
word. We find one example in the YIQTOL §LK in v 8. This is unproblematic,
as far as the number of verbal conjugations are concerned, because all
would say that WEYIQTOL and YIQTOL belong to the same conjugation.
However, this "common procedure" is also used in many cases, where we in a
context with WAYYIQTOLs, because of the same time reference and
consecution, would expect another WAYYIQTOL we find a YIQTOL. And exactly
the same is true when we expect a WEQATAL we find a QATAL. When I finish my
work, I will publish complete lists of the mentioned examples, and if we
did not have any other arguments, these lists alone would represent strong
arguments for the view that WAW is never anything but a conjunction, and
that there is no semantic difference between YIQTOL and WAYYIQTOL and
between WEQATAL and QATAL.
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