In an essay entitled “The Biblical Hebrew qatal verb: a functional discourse grammar analysis,” Linguistics 47 (2009) 824-844, Matthew Anstey offers a tense-prominent analysis of the verbal system of Biblical Hebrew. This is the third installment of a review dedicated thereto.
According to Anstey, BH qatal “has
Past as its core meaning, for the following straightforward reason: in the
range of [its attested] functions . . . Past is clearly the default
interpretation in narrative and reported speech. The other uses occur in much
more restricted constructions and contexts” (827).
The more restricted uses of qatal Anstey has in mind are the
following: “hypothetical/ conditional, politeness, proverbial (gnomic,
tenseless), and future” (832). In this post, I look at Anstey’s “politeness,”
“proverbial,” and “future” categories.
Tense-switching out of “politeness” is attested in many languages. In
English: “What did you want?” “Did you need any help?” “What was your name?” According
to Waltke-O’Connor (1990:489):
An epistolary perfective
represents a situation in past time from the viewpoint of the recipient of a
message. To judge from the use of “epistolary aorist” in Latin and Greek, the
writer uses the perfective form in this context as a delicate courtesy – he
assumes the perspective of the recipient and thus regards the communiqué as
having been sent in the past. English idiom, however, employs a present
progressive form, a form that obscures the force of the Hebrew.
I’m not enamored with labeling an “epistolary perfect” a “polite” form of
speech, or “a delicate courtesy,” even if that is what it is. That’s because,
in an epistolary context, it was not as if the letter-writer had a choice
between being polite or less polite. “The epistolary perfect” was the universal
linguistic convention, part of the grammar of ancient Hebrew, no less than that
of Ugaritic, Akkadian, ancient Greek and ancient Latin. The following example
is typical (Anstey [2009:833]; Waltke-O’Connor [1990:489]):
וַיִּקַּח אָסָא
אֶת־כָּל־הַכֶּסֶף וְהַזָּהָב
הַנּוֹתָרִים
בְּאוֹצְרוֹת בֵּית־יְהוָה
וְאֶת־אוֹצְרוֹת
בֵּית הַמֶּלֶךְ
וַיִּתְּנֵם
בְּיַד־עֲבָדָיו
וַיִּשְׁלָחֵם
הַמֶּלֶךְ אָסָא. . . לֵאמֹר
בְּרִית בֵּינִי
וּבֵינֶךָ
בֵּין אָבִי וּבֵין
אָבִיךָ
הִנֵּה שָׁלַחְתִּי
לְךָ שֹׁחַד כֶּסֶף וְזָהָב
לֵךְ הָפֵרָה
אֶת־בְּרִיתְךָ אֶת־בַּעְשָׁא מֶלֶךְ־יִשְׂרָאֵל
וְיַעֲלֶה מֵעָלָי׃
Asa took all the silver and
the gold
that remained in the treasuries of יהוה’s temple,
and the treasures of the king’s palace,
and handed them over to his officials.
King Asa sent them . . . with this message:
“There is an agreement between you and me,
between your father and my father.
Look, I have sent you a gift of silver and gold.
Break your agreement with King Baasha of Israel,
so that he will withdraw from me.” (1 Kgs 15:18-19)
For epistolary perfects in ancient Hebrew in and outside of the Bible, see
Pardee (1983). For examples of the same convention in Ugaritic and Akkadian,
see Pardee and Whiting (1987). For the “epistolary aorist” in ancient Greek and
the “epistolary perfect” in Latin, see the standard grammars.
As far as “gnomic” qatals are concerned, S. R. Driver noted long ago
that they are similar to the use of the perfect and the aorist in Greek when
the object was to express general truths by means of a description of actual
occurrences. With respect to the gnomic aorist in Greek, he apparently cites a
Greek grammar rule by memory when he says: “‘a fact of the past is exhibited as
a rule for all time’” (1892:17, note 1). This is exactly what is going on in
Anstey’s QV Proverbial Clause example:
טָמַן עָצֵל יָדוֹ
בַּצַּלָּחַת
גַּם־אֶל־פִּיהוּ
לֹא יְשִׁיבֶנָּה
A lazy person buried his hand
in the bowl:
not even to his mouth does he bring it back. (Prov 19:24)
The qatal-yiqtol tense-switch encodes a sequence of events.
Event A: A lazy person buried his hand in the bowl. Event B: he doesn’t withdraw
it, not even to his mouth. Implied conclusion: how lazy can you be?
Nonetheless, English idiom more or less requires that a simple present be
employed in translation of “facts of the past” expounding “rules for all time” - as found in
ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, etc.
My point, however, is another: qatal
in ancient Hebrew is not “omnitemporal” or tenseless. In English, facts
described in omnitemporal or “simple present” terms are typically used to
expound rules for all time. In ancient Hebrew, facts of the past are typically
used to expound rules of omnitemporal validity.
In the example cited above, the imagery is vivid but not true to
life on the banal level – lazy people in fact have no trouble stuffing
themselves with food. The vignette effectively ridicules laziness by a reductio
ad absurdum.
A broadly-used convention is found in the ancient world: a
prototypical situation, a past set of circumstances, was recounted in
order to instruct. Qohelet, of course, transformed the recounting of past
occurrences for the purpose of expounding rules of omnitemporal validity into a
fine art. But the genre of instruction (so-called wisdom literature) majored in
the exposition of general truths by means of narration of “once upon a time”
occurrences long before Qohelet.
Anstey labels the final category he treats “future QVs.” His preface:
The final function of QVs to
be noted is the so-called prophetic perfect, in which the Verb has a
future tense meaning (Rogland 2003). The traditional explanation of these QVs
is that the future event is presented by the speaker as absolutely certain in
its occurrence.
The example he gives is instructive:
וַיֹּאמְרוּ בְּנֵי
יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶל־מֹשֶׁה לֵאמֹר
הֵן גָּוַעְנוּ
אָבַדְנוּ
כֻּלָּנוּ
אָבָדְנוּ
But the Israelites said to
Moses:
Oh boy. We are done for.
We’re fried.
We’re all fried. (Num 17:27 [Eng 17:12])
Admittedly, the translation I offer of Anstey’s example is a colloquial
rendering chosen in order to preserve the past tense presentation of a
yet-to-occur event, exactly what the source text gives.
There are certain pragmatic situations in which past tense presentation of
a yet-to-occur events crop up cross-linguistically. In English, half-way
through a sports event the conclusion of which is foregone, it is legitimate to
say, “We won,” or “We lost.” Likewise, in anticipation of a foregone conclusion
- the situation taken for granted by the Israelites in the passage cited - it
is legitimate to describe it as a done deal: “We’re finished,” “We’re dead,” "We've been had," etc.
Past tense presentations of yet-to-occur events of a more usual variety are
common in ancient Hebrew – of the kind English speakers tend to overlook, since
the “present perfect” and “simple past,” bona fide tenses according to
most grammarians, are used in identical fashion. Two examples:
וְנִבְחַר מָוֶת
מֵחַיִּים . . .
בְּכָל־הַמְּקֹמוֹת
הַנִּשְׁאָרִים אֲשֶׁר הִדַּחְתִּים שָׁם
Death will be preferable to
life . . .
in all the places to which I have driven the survivors. (Jer 8:3; cf. Jer 24:9)
לֹא־תָשׁוּב
לָלֶכֶת
בַּדֶּרֶךְ
אֲשֶׁר־הָלַכְתָּ בָּהּ
You shall not come back
by the way you came (1 Kgs 13:17)
In such contexts, אדיחם
/ “I will have driven them” and תלך
/ “you will have come,” while possible, do not represent standard diction. With
respect to English, the use of the simple past and present perfect to express
anteriority in non-matrix clauses is of course well-known, but grammarians do
not on that basis refrain from offering tense-prominent analyses of both forms.
Relative tense and anteriority are in any case affine if not identical
concepts.
Anstey’s example is well-chosen, but I’m not sure how it relates to the
so-called prophetic perfect. As Muraoka puts it (2006:335), the “prophetic
perfect” is not a grammatical perfect, but a rhetorical device (he cites Isa
9:1 and 9:5 as examples).
To summarize my review of Anstey’s essay: his thesis that BH qatal
has Past as its core meaning holds up better than his exposition suggests. He
understated its strengths.
On the other hand – but this observation exceeds the bounds of Anstey’s
essay in the strict sense – a tense-prominent analysis of the verbal system of
ancient Hebrew as a whole is not so easy to pull off, nor would it be salutary.
In particular, whereas wayyiqtol and weqatal have
Narrative Past and Narrative Future as their core meanings, respectively, Nonpast
is not in the same sense and to the same degree the core meaning of yiqtol.
Long and short Yiqtol, weyiqtol, eqtela
/ niqtela, weeqtela, waeqtela,
etc., on the contrary, have specialized uses beyond that of
tense-complementation vis-à-vis qatal, wayyiqtol, and weqatal.
Furthermore, the participle is without a doubt a component of the verbal
system. It is difficult to sustain that qotel’s core meaning is that of
Present, though that is one of its functions.
Bibliography
Samuel Rolles Driver, A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in
Hebrew and Some Other Syntactical Questions (London: Oxford University
Press, 18923 [1874]; repr. with an introduction by W. Randall Garr;
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); Paul Joüon
and Takamitsu Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Roma: PIB,
2006); Dennis Pardee, “The ‘Epistolary Perfect’ in Hebrew Letters,” BN
22 (1983) 34-40; Dennis Pardee and R. M. Whiting, “Aspects of
Epistolary Verbal Usage in Ugaritic and Akkadian,” BSOAS 50 (1987) 1-31;
Max Rogland, Alleged Non-Past Uses of Qatal in Classical
Hebrew (SSN 44; Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 2003); Bruce K. Waltke and
Michael O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax
(Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990)
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