An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

particles occurring with the “afformative aorist [i.e., qtl]” and the “preformative aorist
[i e., yqtl].
e Sperber’s and Hughes’s studies have the salient values of describing the text and of
correcting overgeneralizations. In the light of the lack of consensus regarding the
meaning of the text, Sperber’s appeal for a neutral, descriptive terminology based on
form rather than meaning makes sense. Accordingly scholars have taken up the terms
prefix conjugation and suffix conjugation. Moreover, “universal” is an apt term for
describing the range of the prefix conjugation. But Sperber’s profound skepticism
regarding the trustworthiness of the Masoretic vocalization and of the language’s
essential unity is unjustified (see 1.6). The phenomenon on which he based his
dissection of the text into dialects, namely, the mixture of the tenses in neighboring
lines of poetry, also occurs in Ugaritic. Is Ugaritic, too, a “mixed language?”
Furthermore, it is methodologically unsound to build a theory on isolated difficulties
rather than on a comprehensive synchronic and diachronic study of the verbal system.
The “universal tense” theories, whether[Page 463] defended by Herder or Sperber,
offer no final solution to the problem of the verbal system.
f Aspectual theory proper begins in the 1820s, contemporary with Samuel Lee’s
studies. Heinrich Ewald (1803–1875) in 1827 wrote of the two conjugations: “The
first aorist [qtl] conveys a completed (perfectam) thing, whether present, preterite, or
future. The second aorist [yqtl] conveys a non-completed (imperfectam) thing,
whether present, preterite, or future.” 37 Although he used the Latin terms modi
‘moods’ and tempora ‘tenses (lit., times),’ Ewald’s conception is aspectual. It was in
accord with Ewald’s views that the Hebrew conjugations became known as the
perfect and imperfect; 38 these, as he said, represent “the two grand and opposite
aspects under which every conceivable action may be regarded.” By the perfect
Ewald meant that the speaker represents the action as finished and thus before him;
the imperfect represents the action as unfinished and non-existent, but possibly
becoming and coming. McFall summarizes Ewald’s view of the perfect thus:
It is used of actions which the speaker from his present regards as actually past and therefore
complete. [And] it is used of actions which are regarded as finished but which reach right into
the present. 39
Regarding Ewald’s view of the imperfect, McFall remarks:
From the basic idea of Incompleteness there arise two distinct meanings which are very
widely different from one another. Firstly, what is stated absolutely to be incomplete refers to
and the Prefix Conjugation in a Few Old Hebrew Poems,” Journal of Northwest
Semitic Languages 6 (1978) 9–18, at 12; and see n. 88 below.
37 McFall, Hebrew Verbal System, 44; on Ewald generally, pp. 43–57
38 E. Rödiger took over the task of updating Gesenius’s grammar with the 14th edition
and “immediately adopted Ewald’s grammatical terms, Perfect and Imperfect”;
McFall, Hebrew Verbal System, 15.
39 McFall, Hebrew Verbal System, 45.