Hebrew verb theories

[Isaac Fried]

Concerning the "prophetic past", I recall that on the past-future form, נתתי NATATIY of Gen. 15:18
ביום ההוא כרת יהוה את אברם ברית לאמר לזרעך נתתי את הארץ הזאת
KJV: "In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land"
Rashi (1040 - 1105) says
אמירתו של הקדוש ברוך הוא כאילו היא עשויה
"God's promise is as good as a thing done."

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[kwrandolph]

Concerning the "prophetic past"…

The “prophetic past” is an invention of people who didn’t know Biblical Hebrew that well. Biblical Hebrew has no past tense. Nor a present nor future tenses. Therefore, this verse, as well as other verses called “prophetic past”, are really future, not past.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Isaac Fried]

The verbal form נתתי NATATIY = NATA(N)+ATIY = NATA(N)+ANIY, is with the attached personal pronoun אתי = אני ATIY = ANIY, 'I', identifying the performer of the act נתן NATAN as the speaker.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[Isaac Fried]

To the the "prophetic past" we may add the "polite past". An example for this is found in Gen 23:13
וידבר אל עפרון באזני עם הארץ לאמר אך אם אתה לו שמעני נתתי כסף השדה קח ממני ואקברה את מתי שמה
NIV: and he said to Ephron in their hearing, “Listen to me, if you will. I will pay the price of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there.”

The payment here is still in the future, predicated even on acceptance of the offer to buy, yet Abraham is politely using the past form נתתי to indicate that on his part the payment is ready, and the deal is as good as done.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[kwrandolph]

To the the "prophetic past" we may add the "polite past".

Isaac, there’s no such thing as a past tense in pre-Babylonian Exile Biblical Hebrew. That includes both “prophetic past” as well as “polite past” or any other past tense that you may dream up. The verbal conjugations were for neither tense nor aspect: in short, Biblical Hebrew didn’t conjugate for time. That’s modern Hebrew you’re applying to the text, which distorts the text.

“Tense” refers to conjugations that give point time reference (per Ruth at SIL).

The Qatal conjugation refers to a primary indicative mood or something similar.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Isaac Fried]

Karl says
Biblical Hebrew didn’t conjugate for time
Says I
True. The Hebrew verb became "conjugated" by the adherence (conjugation, joining together) to the verb of the, pre-positioned or post-positioned, identity markers, or personal pronouns, for the actors involved in the deed.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[Isaac Fried]

The question of "tense" arises in the translation of the flexible literary Hebrew of the bible into the rigid, spoken English, with its insistence on absolute adherence to timing. One can not enter a bank today and claim that he has paid שילמתי the money owed, all the while meaning that he is actually still under the obligation אשלם to pay it.
This is why the English translation has no other choice but to translate the נתתי of Gen. 23:13 as the future "I will pay". An English speaker would be otherwise greatly confused by the fact that Abraham is using the agreed past form of the verb נתן even before the deal is agreed upon. The Elders of XET were not confused at all, they understood very well what he means.
In Gen. 15:8 the same נתתי is translated as "have I given", since here even a speaker of English would agree that God's promise is as good as a fait accompli --- the "giving" consists here of merely placing the gift in the historical queue of things flowing on, waiting to happen.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[kwrandolph]

The question of "tense" arises in the translation…

Translation is a completely different art than understanding a language from within itself. If you depend on translation to get your understanding of Biblical Hebrew, then you don’t understand Biblical Hebrew.

The same holds true of those who know modern Israeli Hebrew—if you depend on your knowledge of modern Israeli Hebrew to tell you what is Biblical Hebrew, then you don’t know Biblical Hebrew. And what you read is a distortion of the meaning of the text.

Karl W. Randolph.

[kwrandolph]

Another update:

I have just read Nehemiah, and there it appears that the verbal patterns are different from those of pre-Babylonian Exile Hebrew. All the present referent sentences in conversation use the participle in a manner as if it were a present tense verbal conjugation. I see this most clearly in chapter six.

What this tells me is that either Hebrew was in the process of changing its grammar, or that it had already largely changed, by the time of Nehemiah.

Also Nehemiah’s Hebrew just feels a bit off, as if it were a second language to him, not his mother tongue.

Next book is Daniel. Daniel was a native speaker of Hebrew, possibly one of the last, and it shows. His first chapter is good pre-Babylonian exile Hebrew.

Now a question for those of you who have studied Aramaic, did Aramaic at the time of Daniel have a tense based conjugation? My first impression is that it did. And because it was the native tongue of those who returned to Judea and Jerusalem, they then applied a tense based understanding to Hebrew conjugations. Is that how you read it too?

A final point, when I read Chronicles this time, I may find a mixture of grammar styles—where pre-exile documents are quoted, there find pre-exile grammar, and where post-exile summaries, there find post-exile grammar. Should be interesting.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Isaac Fried]

We have just read today in Gen. 48:17
וירא יוסף כי ישית אביו יד ימינו על ראש אפרים
KJV: "And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim"
NIV: "When Joseph saw his father placing his right hand on Ephraim’s head"

The verbal form ישית = היא - שית YA-$IYT of the root $IYT (similar to the ישיר YA$IYR of the root $IYR, 'sing', of Ex. 15:1) is formally recognized as a future ("qal imperfect") reference. Its employment here is either archaic with a pre-positioned personal pronoun he, instead of just שת $AT, or comes to indicates that Joseph caught his father in the nick of time, just before the actual placing of the hand. To wit: "When Joseph saw his father was about to lay his right hand upon the head of Ephraim"

Isaac Fried, Boston University