An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

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11.
ןוֹל ְמ ר ָבּד ְמִּ
ַב ינִ ֵנ֫ תִּי־י ְ מִ
ה ָבז ְ ֶעאֶ ו ְ םיחִ רֹא ְ
ימִּ ַע־תאֶ 12. וֹל ה ָל ְכוּנ֫ ו ְ התֶּ ֻפְי י ַלוּא
׃וּנּ ֶמּ ֫ ִמ וּנתֵ ֫ ָמ ְק נ ִ החָ ְק נִ וְ
Isa 27:4
Oh that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers,
then I would leave my people.
Jer 9:1
Perhaps he will be deceived; then we will prevail over
him and take our retribution on him.
Jer 20:10
34.5.3 Pseudo-Cohortative
a The cohortative form is sometimes used where an appropriate sense is lacking. The
use of a single form to denote both the volitional and indicative moods cannot be
readily explained. Similar divergent patterns of yaqtula are attested in the Amarna
letters from Byblos; Moran cautiously offers this explanation: “We can only suggest
that in clauses of intended result the idea of actual accomplishment has begun to
supersede that of intention, not completely however, and thus (u [‘and’]) yaqtula, still
felt as indicating a willed result, expresses actual result only after a clause in the first
person.” 26 This use in early Canaanite rules out the suggestion of some earlier
Hebraists that in certain passages the cohortative does not denote internal impulse but
external compulsion and should be rendered by ‘must.’ (Driver had earlier ruled out
this suggestion as both unnecessary and unlikely.) 27
b The pseudo-cohortative (as we may call this form) can be used to refer to past time,
without waw-relative (## 1–3) or with it (## 4–6). 28 The latter combination is
relatively common (about ninety occurrences) and has an erratic distribution in the
Bible. The presence of this construction in a text cannot be used to date it because, on
the one hand, yaqtula is used in Byblian Canaanite for past tense, and, on the other
hand, the combination is used extensively in the Dead Sea Scrolls. 29 The combination
also occurs in some pre-exilic texts but not in some post-exilic books (and is even
26 Moran, “Early Canaanite Yaqtula,” 18.
27 Driver, Tenses in Hebrew, 55–56; see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia;
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 1. 161–62, for a defense of the earlier view.
28 Note also ˒erdepâ in 2 Sam 22:38 and ˒erdôp in Ps 18:38.
29 For biblical occurrences, see McFall, Hebrew Verbal System, 211–14; for Qumran,
see E. Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986)
44, cf. 45–46. S. Morag has recently argued that the w˒qtlh forms in Qumranic
Hebrew are to be taken not as archaisms but as reflections of a later stage of Hebrew,
“a continuation…not necessarily…literary”; see “Qumran Hebrew: Some Typological
Observations,” Vetus Testamentum 38 (1988) 148–64, at 163, cf. 154–55. Similarly
Revell, “First Person Imperfect Forms,” 423, argues that the biblical cases are not
archaizing. See also E. Qimron, “Consecutive and Conjunctive Imperfect: The Form
of the Imperfect with Waw in Biblical Hebrew,” Jewish Quarterly Review 77 (1986–
87) 149–61, esp. 161.