@enegue Hi! I'm tied up at a conference for the next couple days, so not much leisure and seldom online. I'll get back to you on these a.s.a.p. but it likely won't be until later in the week. If this is helpful for you, don't hesitate to pile in any other questions arising. It's possible others among our Hebraists might join in the conversation, too! Bye for now.

@Dɑvïd No problems.

@enegue BLB is not parsing it correctly. It's a wayyiqtol, which is the dominant form in narratives and indicates an ordinary unmarked sequence of events in the past

hebrew.billmounce.com/bbh_wayyiqtol1.pdf

Also, intention is only one meaning that the imperfect can communicate. And when people say that it can mean intention, I suspect they're really talking about irrealis mood. Though that's just a guess on my part, and I haven't asked any experts about that

@curiousdannii Thanks. I'll have a look at the Mounce link.

@curiousdannii Is this correct?

@enegue Yeah pretty much, but modern ways of teaching Biblical Hebrew don't really consider the wayyiqtol a type of the imperfect, I don't think. It's form is taken from the imperfect, but the meaning is unrelated. Same for the weqatal (top right box)

@curiousdannii You say the BLB is not parsing it correctly. Do you know of an online resource that you trust to parse the Hebrew well?

@curiousdannii How does the meaning of the wayyiqtol differ from the imperfect? Should I have written "And he was XXX-ing" instead of "he XXX-ed"?

That should be "And he XXX-ed" at the end of the last question.

@enegue I used to recommend biblewebapp.com/reader but it's parsing isn't working properly anymore? I don't know what happened to it

@enegue Sorry, my Hebrew isn't really good enough to explain properly. I just know that the way I was taught it, they should be thought of as distinct categories, rather than the wayyiqtol being a modification of the imperfect.

I think with Hebrew it's often about the contrasts. A narrative will often be a perfect (qatal) followed by lots of wayyiqtols. It's when something doesn't fit the pattern that you pay more attention.

poetry has different rules though

@curiousdannii Thanks for your help. Your background puts you well in front of me. I'll check out biblewebapp.com to see what I can glean from there.

@curiousdannii Yeah, I can see the parsing is missing. However, it has a nice search feature with the Strong's numbers. For example, I was looking at 2 Kings 2:23 with KJV and WLC in parallel, and I clicked on וַיַּ֥עַל in the WLC. I chose to show all occurrences and it added a window with all the various forms tagged with Strong's number.

I then simply searched using the browser search (show all occurrences) for the Hebrew word. I then was able to scan down and see how the KJV translated that Hebrew word. Even though the characters and the vowel pointings are identical each time, the KJV was not consistent in the way it translated the word. Interesting!!!

@enegue @curiousdannii SHEBANQ is the go-to, but not user-friendly ← That link is shortened because "native" link too long for a chat box! Scroll dow to v. 23, and click for parsing.

This is MUCH prettier, and uses SHEBANQ data. Here's screenshot for first word of 2 K2:23:

Note "Wayyiqtol" in parsing panel on left. Spot on! Will chip in a few more comments tomorrow.

@Dɑvïd What a great resource. Thanks.