An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

2a.
2b.
ץרֶ א֑ ָ֫
ָבּ עַ קֹבוּ ֵ חַ ֵלֹפ וֹמ ְכּ as one who plows and breaks up (Qal) the earth
׃ם ָלוֹקבּ ְ ץרֶ א֫ ָ ה ָ עקַ בָּ תִּ ַ
Ps 141:7
ו and the earth split (Niphal) with their sound
1 Kgs 1:40
A similar pair can be found with רבשׁ ‘to break.’
3a. םידִּ ַכּ ַ וַ
3b. ה ָב ְשּׁ ח ִ הָיּנ ִ אֳ הָ וְ
׃ר ֵב ָשּׁ הִ ְל
ה וּר ְבּ ְשִׁיּ And they (Gideon’s three hundred) broke (Qal) the jars.
Judg 7:20
And the ship threatened to break (Niphal).
Jonah 1:4
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The Niphal is used in conjunction with intransitive Qal verbs.
4. ךָבִ ְ יוֹא לֹפ ְנ ִבּ
וֹל ְשׁ כּֽ ָ בוּ ִ חמ֑ ָ ְשׂ תּ־ל ִ אַ
׃ךָבֶּ֫ ל ִ לגָי־ל ֵ אַ
When your enemy falls (Qal) do not gloat; when he
stumbles (Niphal) do not let your heart rejoice.
Prov 24:17 Qere
In fact, לשׁכּ normally occurs in Qal with the suffix conjugation and in Niphal
with the prefix conjugation, so that the two stems mutually complement (or supplete)
one another in the conjugation of that verb. 9
b One tool in understanding pairs like those cited for bq˓ and šbr is the concept of
ergativity. As noted earlier (21.2.2f n. 20), in many languages (e.g., Basque, the
Eskimo languages, those of European Georgia) the subject of an intransitive verb is
9
Some common Qal intransitives have no Niphal, notably hlk ‘to walk’ (save perhaps
in Ps 109:23), npl ‘to fall,’ ˓md ‘to stand,’ and qwm ‘to rise.’
20 In some languages of the world the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of
a transitive verb take the same case, the “ergative”; the “absolutive” case is used for
the subject of a transitive verb. Such languages are called ergative languages. See
John Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University, 1968) 351–52, 354–57. In other languages, some ergative features are
combined with standard Indo-European-type inflection (called, in this respect, an
“accusative” system); languages which are so mixed (e.g., Hindi-Urdu) are called
split-ergative languages. There were ergative languages in the ancient Near East
(Hurrian and its close relative Urartian; perhaps Sumerian), and it is not surprising to
find some signs of split ergativity in the Semitic N stems, as we shall argue below.
Ten years after our discussion was initially drafted, a parallel set of observations was
made independently by Hans-Peter Müller, “Ergativelemente im akkadischen und
althebräischen Verbalsystem,” Biblica 66 (1985) 385–417. An earlier discussion of
ergativity in Hebrew is provided by F. I. Andersen, “Passive and Ergative in
Hebrew,” Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William Foxwell Albright, ed. H.
Goedicke (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1971) 1–15, who focuses chiefly on
the anomalous verb yld ‘to bear, beget.’