question about noun adjective and tense + Isaiah 7:14 "conceiving"

[Isaac Fried]

Karl speaks in terms of English grammar which is sometimes not easily related to biblical Hebrew.
He is right in his persistent claim that Hebrew verbal "conjugations" are not for "tense".

Isaac Fried, Boston University
www.hebrewetymology.com

[kwrandolph]

Karl speaks in terms of English grammar which is sometimes not easily related to biblical Hebrew.
He is right in his persistent claim that Hebrew verbal "conjugations" are not for "tense".

Isaac Fried, Boston University
www.hebrewetymology.com

Slight correction: I use the terminology as found on the SIL website as used internationally for all languages. According to their definitions, Biblical Hebrew conjugations (Qatal, Yiqtol) code for neither tense nor aspect. I also use “conjugations” to refer to Qatal and Yiqtol as I was taught by my professor and the textbook by Weingreen. Though the terms I use are in English, as this forum is in English, my grammar reference is not English grammar.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Isaac Fried]

Karl writes

I also use “conjugations” to refer to Qatal and Yiqtol as I was taught by my professor and the textbook by Weingreen.

It is very correct. Conjugation (com-jugation) means the adherence to a verb of an inflected language, of a stunted addendum of some originally real word, leading to the creation of a meaningful new compounded word of added sense. In some languages the addition may have lost their original meaning and are left only as meaningless vestigial grammatical prefixes or suffixes to be learned by rote.
In Hebrew the original meaning of the adherents is mostly still clearly discernible, as in
שָמַרְתָּ - שמר-אתה , שָׁמַרְתְּ = שמר-את
It is still alive and shining even in multiple compounds, such as in Job 10:14
אִם חָטָאתִי וּשְׁמַרְתָּנִי
where שְׁמַרְתָּנִי is certainly the hurried agglutination of
שמר-אתה-אני
for the person אתה performing the act שמר, and then the person אני benefiting from the performance of this act.
In a naive narrative a person is more likely to relate about things that happened to him or that he already actually did, and is done with.

Isaac Fried, Boston University
www.hebrewetymology.com

[ralph]

Jason, looking through this thread it's distracting that you keep trying to bring theology into it. It is more respectful to keep theology out of it. So for example to interpret a word as future, is from fine from whatever religion's perspective or none. You keep stamping your foot saying it's not somebody 500 years later but nobody here claimed it was or wasn't. This is a question about grammar. Then you start talking about "Jewish translations" - totally irrelevant. I am asking about grammar here, regardless of the theology or national identity of the translators. And you are giving your opinions that the NJPS is better than the KJV.. The pros and cons of each are a different subject and would depend on what words you are looking at, and is not the subject of the thread.

Also, Randolph has controversial views regarding vowels.. If you want to debate that with him can you please make your own thread to do that? And if you don't want to then please don't use my thread for that purpose of yours

Clearly the future is a legitimate translation. And no that doesn't mean it is or has to be long into the future.

I do think the context makes it clear that the child would live during the events of the time(a point that you yourself have noted). But again, that's not the question.

[Jason Hare]

You're right on top of things, Ralph. If you hadn't said something, the thread would have just continued to spiral into disrepair! Oh, wait... this thread has been abandoned for three months. I don't get why you're raising it now as if you're going to correct someone's bad behavior.

[Jason Hare]

The kee tov example I gave does suggest that an adjective (tov), can be past tense, with the word it is associated with. I guess "kee" is a preposition

כִּי is a conjunction, not a preposition.

Forget theology. Forget surrounding passages. Forget the context of the verse. We can translate alma as young woman or forget the word alma. I'm not asking about the word alma. This is a grammatical question about the word hara.

If only you'd been here while the conversation was happening to insist that people stay on topic. This conversation died three months ago.

Is that translation ("is conceiving") legitimate grammatically, e.g. can a noun adjective pair be in a future tense relationship?

I don't see a "future tense" in this passage, except for וקראת, which appears after the phrase in question.

According to JPS 1917 they translate as "shall conceive".

Notably the most unnoteworthy translation that one could quote. There's a reason that the JPS replaced it in 1985. It should never been referenced (anywhere). Besides, as Karl will be quick to tell you, this is B-Hebrew. It's about the meaning of the Hebrew, not the (mis)translations of the several English versions.

If you have a noun and an adjective e.g. ish tov

Does it have to have the meaning of "is"?

It has no tense, so it would inherit tense from its context.

[ralph]

"shall conceive" is not a mistranslation.

It's reasonable from context to say that she is going to become pregnant and have a son.

If you look from the context, during the time the events of that book took place, which from that point of view is still the future.

Future doesn't have to mean WAY into the future. If somebody thinks a woman will become pregnant in the future, it could be she will get married next year and have a child soon after. There is nothing unusual about future tense there, infact it's very reasonable.

The JPS 1917 does say "young woman" in the same verse, so you can't claim it's copying that verse off the KJV. The JPS 1917 clearly took some care with that verse.

You mention the JPS 1985. Is the JPS 1985 online anywhere?

The Mechon Mamre website, which cares about accuracy, uses JPS 1917 too. If JPS doesn't make anything else available then we have what we have re translations from JPS and their ease of availability.

I just noticed that Bibleworks has the JPS 1985. The JPS 1985 has "is with child"/(is pregnant). Biblework's groves wheeler morphological index parses VeYoledet as a participle. (Participles also don't have tense). JPS 1985 has "about to give birth to a son".

So, JPS 1917 has Hara as future.. Not yet pregnant.

JPS 1985 has present, She is pregnant.

One could argue that future makes more sense "Behold the young woman is pregnant", vs "Behold the young woman will become pregnant".

If she's already pregnant the text doesn't really need to say it (/ that part, and particularly not with a behold. Though the next part, about the child being a sign and what will happen in his time, is an announcement and news.)

So, future makes sense, and from context i'd agree with you it's not talking about the distant future. But future is future.