An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

monuments contributed funds of new data (29.4). The integration of this material is
only part of the ongoing efforts at comprehension (29.5–6).
29.2 Theories Based on Tense
a Time reference may be indicated in language in various ways. It may be lexicalized,
that is, expressed with individual words (such as the English adverbs ‘now, soon,
formerly’), or it may be grammaticalized, that is, expressed morphologically as part
of or in conjunction with verb forms. Grammaticalized time reference is called
tense. 15 English uses the category of tense, distinguishing present tense ‘I run’ from
past tense ‘I ran.’ Biblical Hebrew has no such simple tense forms, 16 but because
Mishnaic Hebrew 17 and most European languages do, for at least eight centuries, from
ca. 1000 C.E. on, the medieval Jewish grammarians and Christian scholars of the
Hebrew Scriptures thought that qtl, qôtēl, yqtl signified past, present, and future times
respectively. 18 Such a system is basically that of Mishnaic (and later) Hebrew, which
is thus a tense language. This view can hardly accommodate the facts of Biblical
Hebrew, and a stratagem was needed to explain the “past” reference of wayyqtl and
the “present/future” reference of weəqtl.
b The earliest Jewish grammarians (2.2) thought that the conjugations signified tense
and that a prefixed waw could “convert” the signification to its opposite. Japeth ha-
Levi,[Page 459] the tenth-century Qaraite grammarian of Jerusalem, calls the waw
with the suffix conjugation waw ˓atīdī, ‘waw of the future.’ David Qimḥi (1160–
1235), in his Mikhlol, “the Geseniust grammar of his age,” like his predecessors
thought in terms of tenses. He calls the waw that “substitutes” the past for the future
and vice versa the waw haššārût ‘waw of service.’ 19 Elijah Levita (1468–1549) may
have coined the term that became standard for this “type” of waw, waw hippûk, ‘waw-
15 Comrie, Tense, 1, 9–13.
16 This does not mean, as we shall see, that the verbs do not convey information about
time or that the Hebrews had no concept of time; contrast the passage from Herder
cited in 29.3b and Comrie, Tense, 3–4.
17 On the virtual loss of the special waw combinations, as well as the cohortative and
jussive forms, see M. H. Segal, A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew (Oxford: Clarendon,
1927) 72–73; on Mishnaic Hebrew as a tense language, see pp. 150, 155–56. The
situation in Qumranic Hebrew is not clear; see, e.g., E. Qimron, The Hebrew of the
Dead Sea Scrolls (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986) 45–46, but the participle is shifting
toward more strictly verbal use (p. 70). Note also the discussion of Qumranic Hebrew
in Beat Zuber, Das Tempussystem des biblischen Hebräisch (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift
für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 164; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1986) 147–52. The
waw combinations are found in Biblical Aramaic (Zuber, Tempussystem, 69–71), in a
few cases in Moabite, and perhaps in Phoenician-Punic.
18 McFall, Hebrew Verbal System, 2–20. No grammatical analysis of the Classical
Hebrew verbal system has a native-speaker basis; cf. McFall, p. 16.
19 William Chomsky, David Ḳimḥi‘s Hebrew Grammar (Mikhlol) (New York: Bloch,
1952) 62, 78. Chomsky’s modernization of grammatical terminology means his
translation must be used with caution.