An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

3a. ערַ ז־ל ֶ֫
ָכּ תא ֵ דבֵּ אַ תְּ וַ
׃ה ָכלָ ְמ ַמּ ה ַ
3b. שׁגֶ ֶנּ֫ ה־ת ַ א ֶ יתִּ דְ בַ אֲ הַ וְ
איהִ ה ַ
She (Athaliah) made destroyed (Piel) the whole royal
seed.
2 Kgs 11:1
I (YHWH) will cause that soul to perish (Hiphil).
Lev 23:30
Admittedly, for the sake of “good” English we would probably translate דבא in
both instances ‘destroy,’ but in doing that we would gloss over a fundamental
distinction in Hebrew. In the first example, the writer conceptualizes the object, the
royal family, as “accidentally” transferred into the state of perdition, but in the second
example, the lawgiver presents the object, that soul, as an actor in the event of
perishing. Without the causative notion of the Hiphil, the sentence would read as a
Qal, just as in:
3c.
םתֶּ דְ בַ אֲ ו ַ You will perish (Qal).
Deut 11:17
e Whereas the Piel represents the subject as transposing an object into the state or
condition corresponding to the notion expressed by the verbal root, the Hiphil
represents the subject as causing an object to participate indirectly as a second subject
in the notion expressed by the verbal root. 6 In fact, this notion probably accounts for
the Hiphil’s distinctive form. The Hiphil stem’s characteristic h preformative, derived
from a thirdperson personal pronoun, reflects a designation of a second subject’s
participation in the action. 7 In E. A. Speiser’s view the Hiphil originally signified: ‘X
(the subject) caused that Y (the second subject) be or do something.’ 8
6
Jenni emphasizes, too, that the Piel tends to be habitual, while the Hiphil tends to
refer to occasional or onetime situations; this difference is especially relevant to the
participles; Pi˓el, 55–65.
7
“The Semitic personal pronouns for the third person exhibit virtually the same
variations of initial sounds that we have found in the causative prefixes,” i.e., š in,
e.g., Akkadian ~ h in, e.g., Hebrew. See E. A. Speiser, “Studies in Semitic
Formatives,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 56 (1936) 22–46, esp. 23–33;
rpt. in his Oriental and Biblical Studies, ed. J. J. Finkelstein and Moshe Greenberg
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1967) 403–32, at 409, cited from the
reprint. See 21.1c n. 8. There may be some old causatives in š in Biblical Hebrew (as
there are š causatives in Aramaic, the result of loans from Akkadian; e.g., Biblical
Aramaic šêzīb ‘to rescue’). On these forms, see J. A. Soggin’s essay “Traces of
Ancient Causatives in š- Realized as Autonomous Roots in Biblical Hebrew,” in his
Old Testament and Oriental Studies (Rome: Biblical Institute, 1975) 188–202.
8
Speiser proposes: “The phrase ‘A orders (wishes, etc) that B build a house’ was
actually construed as ‘A orders, B builds the house.’ In such asyndetic that-clauses
particular emphasis was needed to make clear that a given action was to be performed
by someone, or that a given quality was attributed to someone or something. The