An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

hills,’ 27 suggests that the last word of Ps 50:10 is לא, while פּ is the conjunction; the
sense would be, ‘the animals are mine and so I know them all.’ there is a small
number of difficult passages for which similar arguments have been offered. 28 The
question of Biblical Hebrew p is not settled.
39.3 Clausal Adverbs
39.3.1 Adverbs in General
a The class of adverbs includes words that modify other words or clauses. In any
grammar the class presents numerous problems: “The adverb class is the least
satisfactory of the traditional parts of speech; [it is an] especially mixed
[class],…having small and fairly well-defined groups of closed-system items [cf.
English ‘very, well, yet’] alongside the indefinitely large open-class items [cf. English
‘briefly, largely, frankly,[Page 656] timewise’]” 29 Further, the items called adverbs
often fit into other part-of-speech categories, for example, English ‘round’ is not only
an adverb, but also a noun, an adjective, and a verb. 30 All of these problems are
especially acute for Hebrew (and the other Semitic languages); the class of adverbs is
extremely small, extremely heterogeneous, and its members are often used in other
ways. Many grammars of Hebrew in fact pass over the adverbs, treating some
important subclasses in detail while neglecting the class as a whole. 31
b The adverbial functions of various European languages afford no guide to Hebrew
adverbial use, for in Hebrew other syntactic approaches are taken to those functions. 32
The two most important are the “adverbial” accusative (10.2.2) and the “adverbial
27
Noted by P. Craigie, Psalms 1–50 (Waco, Texas: Word, 1983) 363.
28
Notably in Job 9:20; see the firm discussion of M. H. Pope, Job (3d ed.; Garden
City, New York: Doubleday, 1973) 72–73.
29
R. Quirk et al., A Grammar of Contemporary English (Harrow, Essex: Longman,
1972) 267, 47.
30
Quirk et al., Contemporary English, 271.
31
For some treatments, see Joüon §102 / pp. 267–73; K. Beyer, Althebräische
Grammatik (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1969) 67–85; H. S. Nyberg,
Hebreisk Grammatik (Uppsala: Geber, 1952) 53–55. A. B. Davidson, Hebrew Syntax
(3d ed.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1901) 87, is minimal, while on the Ugaritic side,
Aartun, Partikeln I is full. The best review of basic issues, though brisk, is provided
by J. Blau, An Adverbial Construction in Hebrew and Arabic (Jerusalem: Israel
Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1977) 1–18; note that he distinguishes, as we
do, “between ‘adverbs’, being a part of speech, and the syntactic [or functional]
notion ‘adverbial’ ” (p.2n-3)
32 e
Thus Joüon’s class of “adverbs of suppletion” (including, e.g., mar ‘bitterly,’ l bad
‘apart, hêṭēb ‘well’) is too mixed a bag to be useful; but our own classification is not
proof against the same criticism; see Joüon §102c g / pp. 268–70. The grammar of
GKC (§100b f / pp. 294–95) draws together adverbs and “forms of other parts of
speech, which are used adverbially”: the latter group is another mixed bag and
includes prepositional phrases, substantives in the accusative (10.2.2), adjectives
(notably feminines, 6.4.2; note, e.g., rabbâ ‘mightily’ in Ps 89:8), infinitives absolute
(35.4), etc.