The Prophet and His Day: Isaiah 1-39 - Free Bible Commentary

should clearly grasp, not so much the Latin or English forms which may be used intranslating each of the Hebrew Tenses, but rather the aspect of each action, as itpresented itself to a Hebrew’s mind.The name ‘tenses’ as applied to Hebrew verbs is misleading. The so-calledHebrew ‘tenses’ do not express the time but merely the state of an action. Indeedwere it not for the confusion that would arise through the application of the term‘state’ to both nouns and verbs, ‘states’ would be a far better designation than‘tenses.’ It must always be borne in mind that it is impossible to translate a Hebrewverb into English without employing a limitation (of time), which is entirely absentin the Hebrew. The ancient Hebrews never thought of an action as past, present, orfuture, but simply as perfect, i.e., complete, or imperfect, i.e., as in course ofdevelopment. When we say that a certain Hebrew tense corresponds to a Perfect,Pluperfect, or Future in English, we do not mean that the Hebrews thought of it asPerfect, Pluperfect, or Future, but merely that it must be so translated in English.The time of an action the Hebrews did not attempt to express by any verbal form”(preface and p. 1).For a second good warning, Sue Groom, Linguistic Analysis of Biblical Hebrew, reminds us,“There is no way of knowing whether modern scholars’ reconstruction ofsemantic fields and sense relations in an ancient dead language are merely areflection of their own intuition, or their own native language, or whether thosefields existed in Classical Hebrew” (p. 128).C. MOODS (MODES)1. It happened, is happening (INDICATIVE), usually uses PERFECT tense or PARTICIPLES (allPARTICIPLES are INDICATIVE).2. It will happen, could happen (SUBJUNCTIVE)a. uses a marked IMPERFECT tense(1) COHORTATIVE (added h), first person IMPERFECT form which normallyexpresses a wish, a request, or self-encouragement (i.e., actions willed by thespeaker)(2) JUSSIVE (internal changes), third person IMPERFECT (can be second person innegated sentences) which normally expresses a request, a permission, anadmonition, or adviceb. uses a PERFECT tense with lu or luleThese constructions are similar to SECOND CLASS CONDITIONAL sentences in KoineGreek. A false statement (protasis) results in a false conclusion (apodosis).c. uses an IMPERFECT tense and luContext and lu, as well as a future orientation, mark this SUBJUNCTIVE usage. Someexamples from J. Wash Watts, A Survey of Syntax in the Hebrew Old Testament areGen. 13:16; Deut. 1:12; I Kgs. 13:8; Ps. 24:3; Isa. 1:18 (cf. Pp. 76-77).D. Waw - Conversive/consecutive/relative. This uniquely Hebrew (Canaanite) syntactical featurehas caused great confusion through the years. It is used in a variety of ways often based ongenre. The reason for the confusion is that early scholars were European and tried to interpretin light of their own native languages. When this proved difficult they blamed the problem onHebrew being a “supposed” ancient, archaic language. European languages are TENSE (time)based VERBS. Some of the variety and grammatical implications were specified by the letterWAW being added to the PERFECT or IMPERFECT VERB stems. This altered the way the actionwas viewed.1. In historical narrative the VERBS are linked together in a chain with a standard pattern.vi