31 And
these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned
any king over the children of Israel.
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לא וְאֵלֶּה הַמְּלָכִים אֲשֶׁר מָלְכוּ בְּאֶרֶץ אֱדוֹם לִפְנֵי
מְלָךְ-מֶלֶךְ לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל:
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32 And Bela the son of Beor reigned in Edom: and the name of
his city was Dinhabah.
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33 And Bela died, and Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah
reigned in his stead.
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34 And Jobab died, and Husham of the land of Temani reigned
in his stead.
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35 And Husham died, and Hadad the son of Bedad, who smote
Midian in the field of Moab, reigned in his stead: and the name of his city
was Avith.
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36 And Hadad died, and Samlah of Masrekah reigned in his
stead.
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37 And Samlah died, and Saul of Rehoboth by the river
reigned in his stead.
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38 And Saul died, and Baalhanan the son of Achbor reigned in
his stead.
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39 And Baalhanan the son of Achbor died, and Hadar reigned
in his stead: and the name of his city was Pau; and his wife's name was
Mehetabel, the daughter of Matred, the daughter of Mezahab.
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First let's attempt a cultural translation of this into our own (English) language of today. The "genre" or text type is that of a list of kings, of the kind we do still find in history books, or rather we did when I was growing up, anyway. This type of "systematic" or "reference" information we consider ill-adapted to storage in a spoken medium; it is something we would expect to see in print (or on-line) rather than hearing it. Leaving aside the extra tidbits of incidental background information in vv. 35 and 39 (which would probably be put into footnotes in a book, or result in hyperlinks in a Wikipedia article), this would go something like this:
KINGS OF EDOM:
Bela ben Beor (from Dinhaba)
Jobab ben Zerah
Husham the Temanite
Hadad ben Bedad (Avith), etc.
i.e. a list or table. But in the Hebrew Bible passage this is not a written text: it is a list but it is presented in a different style, as befits its own genre.
Two things strike me about this passage as I have presented it here; one, which has to do with the Hebrew text, is not relevant to the point of today's post but I'm going to say it anyway. The second has to do with the translation I chose to show you (for that reason) and I will come to it in due course. First let's have the off-topic comment.
Did you notice what it says in v. 31? "Before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." This is about as direct a piece of evidence as anyone could ask for that Genesis was not written by Moses in any meaningful sense or construal of that proposition. How did Moses know Israel would one day have kings?. Of course, God might have told him. More likely God simply told Moses what to write down. Or perhaps He put Moses into a trance and used his hand to do the writing. If not, then Genesis was composed in a later era after kings had reigned over the children of Israel.
Now for something more pertinent but also rather entertaining. I don't know if I am the only one but I find that the wording chosen by the KJV drafting committee for vv. 33-39 causes a rather comical effect: "And Bela the son of Beor reigned in Edom: and the name of his city was Dinhabah. And Bela died, and Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah reigned in his stead. And Jobab died, and Husham of the land of Temani reigned in his stead. And Husham died..." Is it just me, or does this make it sound like practically the only thing these kings did during their time on the throne was to die? Yet all the KJV folks were doing is translating quite literally and accurately what the Hebrew text says. Or is it?
Many modern translations have carried out adjustments in this translation. So for example, what the Jewish Publication Society says is: "Bela the son of Beor reigned in Edom: and the name of his city was Dinhabah. When Bela died, Jobab son of Zerah, from Bozrah, succeeded him as king. When Jobab died, Husham of the land of the Temanites succeeded him as king. When Husham died..."
Some differences like the substitution of "succeeded him as king" for "reigned in his stead" are neither here nor there. The important "change" is that at the beginning of each statement about the reign of a king, the JPS has got rid of the two and's of the KJV, replacing the first and with when and simply omitting the second one: And Bela died, and Jobab... becomes When Bela died, Jobab.... So it no longer seems to be saying that Bela became king and then he died: NEXT! And it stands to reason that what the JPS version (and other translations, I should say) imply is what the text really meant. But is that argument (that it seems to make more sense) sufficient grounds for deciding to alter the sense of the text?
The whole point this is leading up to is that we are not altering the sense of the text. We are simply understanding the text. And this boils down to the need to take a good hard look at Biblical Hebrew's grammar, so geeks, here we go!
Now Modern Israeli Hebrew has three indicative tenses, which unsurprisingly for Europeans are the present, past and future: ani kotev 'I write, am writing', katavti 'I wrote, have written', ekhtov 'I'll write, I'm going to write'. This system developed out of an older one in which there were only two "tenses" (although some claim they shouldn't be called "tenses", hence the scare quotes). The present tense of the modern language is the intruder; it has originated from a participial construction, kotev being a nominal form, a participle; since the verb 'to be' is realised as zero in Hebrew, ani kotev is literally 'I + (am) + writing' or even 'I am a writing person'. This was not originally a present tense at all; it only developed in Mediaeval Hebrew.
In Biblical Hebrew, then, we just have the forms katavti and ekhtov. They exemplify two different paradigms of finite verb inflection known as suffixing and prefixing. The following table should make the difference clear enough:
KTB ‘write’
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HY(h) ‘be’
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DBR ‘speak’
|
|
Perfect
|
‘I wrote’ etc.
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‘I was’ etc.
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‘I spoke’ etc.
|
1st per. sg.
|
katáv-ti
|
hayí-ti
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dibbár-ti
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2nd per. sg. m.
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katáv-ta
|
hayí-ta
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dibbár-ta
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2nd per. sg. f.
|
katáv-t
|
hayí-t
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dibbár-t
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3rd per. sg. m.
|
katáv
|
hayá
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dibbér
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3rd per. sg. f.
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kat'v-á
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hayt-á
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dibb'r-á
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1st per. pl.
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katáv-nu...
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hayí-nu...
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dibbár-nu...
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Imperfect
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‘I will write’ etc.
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‘I will be’ etc.
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‘I will speak’ etc.
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1st per. sg.
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e-khtóv
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e-hyé
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e-dabbér
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2nd per. sg. m.
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ti-khtóv
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ti-hyé
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t’-dabbér
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2nd per. sg. f.
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ti-kht’v-í
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ti-hy-í
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t’-dabb’r-í
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3rd per. sg. m.
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yi-khtóv
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yi-hyé
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y’-dabbér
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3rd per. sg. f.
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ti-khtóv
|
ti-hyé
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t’-dabbér
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1st per. pl.
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ni-khtóv
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ni-hyé
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n’-dabbér
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Note to supergeeks: The co-existence of both prefixing and suffixing tense types goes back to Proto-Semitic, but their respective functions may have changed. In a yet deeper reconstruction, the original form of finite conjugation was apparently the prefixing type (with tense, aspect or mood distinctions marked by other features such as vowel endings that are largely lost by the time of the Hebrew that we know). The suffixing paradigm appears to be nominal in origin, with a participial predicate (the "root of the perfect") followed by morphemes that were possibly subject pronouns in origin.
"Perfect" and "imperfect" are the traditional labels of classical Hebrew grammar for katav and yikhtov respectively. The suffixing paradigm uses different endings (suffixes) to indicate the person of the subject: -ti, -ta, -t, zero, -a, -nu etc. The prefixing paradigm principally uses prefixes: zero (i.e. just the linking vowel), t-, y-, n-, although you will notice that some suffixes are also used. I have given incomplete paradigms and have randomly chosen three verbs to illustrate them, because the point here is not to provide a course in Biblical Hebrew grammar.
If you are studying Modern Hebrew, that is about all you need to know (maybe even too much). If you are studying Biblical Hebrew, we have hardly even begun to scratch the surface. While it is true that katávti means 'I wrote' or 'I have written', it is no less true that if the particle w- is placed before it, with a consonant mutation and a stress shift, thus w'khatavtí, it means 'I will write'! We can put another variant of this preposed particle ו, here pronounced wa- usually with gemination of a following consonant, in front of the imperfect (prefixed) verb form yikhtóv which gives wayyikhtóv and in this instance the effect is the opposite: yikhtóv means 'he will write' but wayyikhtóv means 'he wrote' (= katáv).
Sometimes the form of the verb varies a little when it is constructed with wa-: for example, the imperfect of the verb 'to be' is yihyé '(he) will be', as in the table above, but when it is preceded by wa- (and so means '(he) was') the form it takes is not *wayyihyé but way'hí. Here are the forms of the ten most frequent verbs in the Hebrew Bible (according to Van Pelt & Pratico, The vocabulary guide to Biblical Hebrew, Zondervan, 2003):
Suffixed
|
Prefixed
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ו +
prefixed
|
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hayá
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‘was’
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yihyé
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‘will be’
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way’hí
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‘was’
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amár
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‘said’
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yomár
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‘will say’
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wayyómer
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‘said’
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‛asá
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‘made’
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ya‛asé
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‘will make’
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wayyá‛as
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‘made’
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bá
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‘entered’
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yavó
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‘will enter’
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wayyavó
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‘entered’
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natán
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‘gave’
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yittén
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‘will give’
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wayyittén
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‘gave’
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halákh
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‘went’
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yelékh
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‘will go’
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wayyélekh
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‘went’
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raá
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‘saw’
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yir’é
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‘will see’
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wayyár
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‘saw’
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shamá‛
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‘heard’
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yishmá‛
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‘will hear’
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wayyishmá‛
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‘heard’
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dibbér
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‘spoke’
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y’dabbér
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‘will speak’
|
way’dabbér
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‘spoke’
|
yasháv
|
‘dwelt’
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yeshév
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‘will dwell’
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wayyéshev
|
‘dwelt’
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The morpheme ו w- is listed as by far the most frequent "word" in Biblical Hebrew, occurring over 50,000 times which is more than twice as often as the second most frequent word, ה ha- 'the', according to Van Pelt & Pratico.
So what is this ו element and when is it used? Well, it's complicated, because ו is also the conjunction that is usually translated 'and'. So for example: adám w'xawá 'Adam and Eve', esáw w'ya‛aqóv 'Esau and Jacob'. Actually it is almost a universal conjunction, so it can also be equivalent to 'but', 'or' and so on, and even subordinating conjunctions like 'when', 'if'. And it often appears where no conjunction at all seems to be called for. In Biblical narrations it occurs with such high frequency at the beginning of almost any sentence that it starts to look like it doesn't mean anything and it may make more sense to ask where it is not used.
In narration (as opposed to dialogues), when a clause begins with a verb (which is the usual and unmarked situation because Classical Hebrew word order is predominantly VSO, verb-subject-object), it is actually quite unusual for the verb at the beginning of the clause not to be preceded by the ו particle. When it is, the ו usually has the effect of flipping the verb's "tense" in the manner already described, but may not actually mean 'and'. But for various reasons that form the bread and butter of Biblical Hebrew syntax, sometimes the clause does not begin with a verb, and in that case, even if the clause begins with ו (and it often does), the verb, in non-initial position, appears without an immediately preceding ו and so has the "unflipped" tense value that corresponds to it without ו.
So for example, you can have way'hí ya‛aqóv... '(And) Jacob was...' with the verb first (unmarked order) or w'ya‛aqóv hayá '(And) Jacob was...' with the subject first (marked order). The form of the verb changes (from prefixing in wa-y'hí to suffixing in hayá) because of the tense-flipping effect of ו when prefixed to a verb (but not to a non-verbal element).
Got that?
Thus it looks like ו might be a conjunction, but that is itself open to some doubt because it doesn't always conjoin anything and in fact often doesn't seem to mean anything at all (not even the joining of clauses), it simply introduces clauses (and affects the meainings of the tenses). Even when it does seem to "join" sentences, the conjunction-meaning it expresses may not always be a specific one like and, because this translation is often inappropriate. The same particle is often found introducing both a topicalized adjunct such as a time clause (made formally verbal by the use of an initial way'hi 'and it was (perfect)' or w'hayá 'and it will be (imperfect)'), and the main clause on which it depends syntactically:
ויהי ביום השׁלישׁי ... ויעשׂ משׁתה לכל־עבדיו (Genesis 40:20)
way'hí bayóm hashlishí wayyá‛as mishté l'khol ‛avadáw
'On the third day, he made a banquet for all his servants',
literally '(and) it was on the third day (and) he made etc.'
והיה כי־יראו אתך המצרים ואמרו אשׁתו זאת והרגו אתי (Genesis 12:12)
w'hayá ki yir'u otákh hammitzrim w'am'ru ishtó zót w'har'gú otí
'When the Egyptians see you they will say, "This is his wife," and they will kill me...'
literally '(and) it will be that/when they will see you (and) they will say this [is] his wife and they will kill me'
Here the temporal meaning is assured by bayóm 'on the day' or ki 'when', but the temporal subordination may be only implicit, merely understood or open to free "interpretation":
ותרא האשׁה כי טוב העץ למאכל ... ותאכל (Genesis 3:6)
wattére haishá ki Tóv ha‛étz l'maakhal wattokhál
'The woman saw that the tree was good for food... and she ate.' or
'When the woman saw that the tree was good for food... she ate.'
literally '(and) saw the woman that good the tree for food... (and) she ate'
Indeed, we seem to reach a point here where the question that we want to answer (Is it a time clause? Is it two conjoined main clauses?) may not be a really pertinent question from the internal perspective of Biblical Hebrew but only from that of the European language into which we are translating or in which we are asking the question. In Hebrew it says what it says (namely: w-A w-B [w-C w-D...]). The syntax of the English (or French or Italian or Latin or Greek) translation is a problem for English (etc.), and no matter how long we stare at the Hebrew words they cannot always resolve it. What the verses "mean" is for the reader or hearer to decide. Perhaps (when we translate) we should let the reader do that! But European languages have a problem with this: it is "not their style" to refrain from specifying the syntactic or discourse relations between clauses and utterances.
The old translations such as the King James Version were actually "better" than most modern translations about not interpolating syntactic connectors in the translation that are absent in the original. But they are so literal that they tend to say and every time the text says w-, and the result is a peculiar kind of diction which later generations of English speakers and readers simply think of as "biblical English" but which doesn't necessarily always make a lot of sense, because it says and and in English and means and, usually (i.e. it is heard as an actual conjunction), and the presence of and in the text excludes the option of other readings such as implied subordinations. The trouble with saying 'and the woman saw the tree' is that it cannot mean 'when the woman saw the tree', whereas the Hebrew is ambiguous. The problem with 'and Bela died' is that it clearly doesn't mean 'when Bela died'.
Hence my solution of unstringing the necklace. This is my interpretation of what the Hebrew text with its ubiquitous waw-clauses does, for in reality ו is not a conjunction or a subordinator, it is mostly just an introducer of clauses, rather like the sentence-initial particles of Welsh (e.g. fe, which by an amazing coincidence sounds exactly like the Modern Hebrew pronunciation of w'-: [ve]).
In Biblical narrative texts ו may be said to act as a syntactic filler. The verb, in fact, cannot (save in certain special cases) stand on its own at the beginning of the sentence. It may be preceded by a topicalized argument (marked word order), by a particle such as the negator lo, a conjunction (e.g. im 'if', ki 'that, when, because'...)... or by the universal clause introducer ו, which the first time it's used just means "here's a clause" (or "here's a phrase"), and the next time it's used means "and here's another one".
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