Gentlemen,
Perhaps we should look at Jouon-Muraoka on this point:
"In prophecies a future event is sometimes regarded as having already been accomplished, hence the use of qatal. This prophetic perfect is not a grammatical perfect, but a rhetorical device." (The examples cited are Isa. 9.1, 9.5.)
If we step back and consider these so-called prophetic perfects within the frame which the author/redactor constructs, we find these passages embedded within a larger discourse. What JM calls a rhetorical device is perhaps just a function of pragmatics. My instructor (if I correctly understood the lecture) asked our class to consider the mode of prophecy itself. (Assuming continuity of Isa.) Prophecy here comes in the mode of a Vision. So, perhaps the use fo the qatal is a function of the vision which was past, Isa 1.
Thoughts,
Julie :)
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