An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

c Clausal waw is a simple conjunction, that is, it places propositions or clauses one
after another, without indicating the hierarchical relation between them. Biblical
Hebrew frequently joins logically subordinate clauses to a main clause either
asyndetically or, more often, syndetically with this conjunction. G. B. Caird justly
censors philologists who have inferred from this feature of the language that the
Hebrews were intellectually naïve.
Yet there are eminent philologists who have drawn strangely faulty inferences from it. “The
Semitic sentence is a succession of short sentences linked together by simple co-ordinate
conjunctions. The principal mark, therefore, of Hebrew and especially of classical Hebrew
style is that it is what the Greeks called lexis eiromenê ‘speech strung together’ like a row of
beads.…It will, therefore, be readily understood that philosophical reasoning and sustained
argument were beyond the grasp of the Hebrew intellect or, at any rate, beyond its power of
expression” [G. R. Driver].
Driver is on sounder ground when he describes this as a feature of Hebrew style than when he
attempts to deduce from it the limitations of Hebrew thought. Hebrew possesses words for
‘if’, ‘because’ and ‘therefore’; and any language which has such words is capable of being
used for logical thought. 7
Although Hebrew relies heavily on waw, other indicators in the text’s surface
grammar sometimes mark out more precise logical values. Moreover, the patterns of
the use of waw allow for precision.
[Page 650] d We have already considered waw-relative clauses (Chaps. 32, 33); here
we primarily treat other types of clauses joined by w« ( ו). ְ A starting point is provided
by T. O. Lambdin, who analyzes clauses joined by w« into two types.
(1) conjunctive-sequential, in which the second clause is temporally or logically
posterior or consequent to the first, and
(2) disjunctive, in which the second clause may be in various relations, all
nonsequential, with the first.
The major device in Hebrew for signalling the difference between conjunctive and
disjunctive clauses is the type of word which stands immediately after the w«-:
w«- (or wa-) + verb is conjunctive [-sequential]
w«- + non-verb is disjunctive. 8
We have already seen that waw + the suffix conjugation can be purely conjunctive
(32.3) 9 and that relative waw with the verb can be epexegetical (32.2.3e, 33.2.2). To
7
G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1980) 1–17.
8
T. O. Lambdin, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew (New York: Scribner, 1971) 162.
9
Lambdin, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew, 165.