An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

j Moreover, Ewald is guilty of reductionism, for it is questionable whether the
abstraction “imperfect aspect” can include future-time references and modal nuances.
Thomas O. Lambdin rightly cautions, “It is not entirely accurate…to describe such
action [general, non-specific, habitual, potential, or to some degree probable] as
incomplete or unfinished, as is often done.” 46
k Finally, in our appraisal of Ewald, we take note of Péter Kustár’s allegations that qtl
can designate action which is not completed, as in יתִּ ְצ ַעָי ֫ (2 Sam 17:11), וּנרְ ַכ֫ ז ָ (Num
11:5), and תָּ ְבהַ ֫ א ָ (Gen 22:2), and that yqtl can designate completed action as in Job
3:3 (ד ֶלוָּ֫ א) ִ and Judg 2:1 (ה ֶל ֲע ַ
א). The observations cannot be wholly sustained, as
we shall see in the following chapters. 47
l The reception and popularization of Ewald’s theory by the influential British scholar
S. R. Driver (1846–1914) represents a setback. Though both a great scholar in his
own right and a major mediator of German scholarship, Driver made no considerable
independent contribution to the study of the tenses. 48 Driver largely accepted Ewald’s
view, except that, as noted by Carl Brockelmann, he sought to explain the two
conjugations in Hebrew by relating them to the aspects “perfect” and “imperfect” as
interpreted by G. Curtius for Greek. 49 This led him to claim that the imperfect always
signified nascent or incipient action, whereas Ewald had suggested such meanings as
only one possibility. Driver wrote:[Page 465]
It is…of the utmost consequence to understand and bear constantly in mind the fundamental
and primary facts…: (1) that the Hebrew verb notifies the character without fixing the date of
an action, and (2) that, of its two forms…, one is calculated to describe an action as nascent
and so as imperfect; the other to describe it as completed and so as perfect. 50
As might be anticipated from this citation, he accepted the concept of a “prophetic
perfect.”
[With] ease and rapidity [the speaker] changes his standpoint, at one moment speaking of a
scene as though still in the remote future, at another moment describing it as though present to
his gaze. 51
Driver demonstrated that qtl in its bound form (wqtl) lost its individuality and
passed under the sway of the verb to which it is connected. 52 In Driver’s view wayyqtl
46 T. O. Lambdin, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew (New York: Scribner, 1971) 100.
47 Péter Kustár, Aspekt im Hebräischen (Baser: Reinhardt, 1972).
48 McFall, Hebrew Verbal System, 60–77: Fensham (“Suffix Conjugation,” 11)
incorrectly attributes the introduction of aspectual theory to S. R. Driver.
49 Brockeimann, “ ‘Tempora’ des Semitischen,” 135–36; Brockelmann, Hebräische
Syntax (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1956) 38.
50 S. R. Driver, A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew (3d ed.; Oxford:
Clarendon, 1892) 5. Note the acknowledgment of Ewald: “By his originality and
penetration [he] was the founder of a new era in the study of Hebrew grammar” (p. 8).
51 S. R. Driver, Tenses in Hebrew, 5.
52 S. R. Driver, Tenses in Hebrew, 114–57.