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Cornell University Library 
 PJ 4619.A21 
 
 Sermons in syntax or Studies in the He 
 
 3 1924 026 838 858 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026838858 
 
By the same Author. 
 
 Sermons in Accents : or, Studies in the Hebrew 
 Text. By Rev. John Adams, B.D. 4s. 6d. net. 
 Edinburgh : T. & T. Glabk. 
 
 From Press Notices. 
 
 Sqoisman.—" The book bears on every page the stamp of 
 scholarship and thought." 
 
 Jewish Chronicle.—" ^he volume may be very cordially com- 
 mended to Jewish students." 
 
 The Interior {Chicago). — "The work is of positive value, and no 
 American student can afford to ignore it." 
 
 The British Congregationalist.—"l>eBeT:v'm^ of special mention 
 is the feature of the book which gives it its principal title, and 
 which is most likely to excite the interest of preachers. The 
 author provides a ' Sheaf of Outlines' for sermons, showing how 
 the accents may often guide to the simplest, most natural, and 
 most illuminative analysis." 
 
 The Guardian.— "Whether the faculty is innate or the result 
 of education, Scotch expositors do excel in this dividing of the 
 word ; and Mr. Adams, thanks to his native gift, commends the 
 Masoretes persuasively as guides to a clear, terse, practical, and 
 affectionate theology." 
 
 British Weekly. — "It would be a public service if these pages 
 prompted ministers to keep up their Hebrew, as Mr. Adams, like 
 Thomas Boston, has kept up his. . . . The author is to be 
 congratulated sincerely on the lead he has given to his fellow- 
 ministers." 
 
 Expository Times. — " The author has been able to combine 
 scientific exactitude with homiletical hint without sacrificing the 
 one to the other. His book will do more than many grammars to 
 keep alive within us some knowledge and love of the Hebrew 
 tongue." 
 
SERMOJ^S I¥ SYNTAX 
 
 OB 
 
 STUDIES IN THE HEBREW TEXT 
 
SEEMONS m SYNTAX 
 
 OR 
 
 STUDIES IN THE HEBEEW TEXT 
 
 A BOOK FOB PBEAGSEBS AND STUDENTS 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. JOHN ADAMS, B.D. 
 
 Inverlceilor 
 
 AUTHOB OF " SERMONS IN ACCENTS," " THE MINOR 
 PROPHETS," ETC. 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 T. & T, CLARK, 38 Geoege Street 
 
 1908 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 The present series of studies has been designed 
 as a second or supplementary volume to the 
 author's former treatise on Hebrew Accentuation. 
 He began with the accents, not because they 
 were of greater interest or value to the Hebrew 
 expositor, but because historically the accentuators 
 preceded and prepared the way for the later 
 theorists and grammarians. As a mine of homi- 
 letical suggestion, the accentual system cannot 
 compare for a moment with the ever-varying 
 light and shade of Hebrew Syntax. Consequently, 
 if students and preachers have profited in any 
 measure, from the homiletical hints provided in 
 "Sermons in Accents," they may rest assured 
 that in the sphere of Hebrew grammar we enter 
 upon a field of biblical exposition that is far more 
 fruitful and suggestive. We offer them, in addi- 
 tion to a sufficiently accurate account of the 
 Hebrew Tenses and Moods, a Second sheaf of 
 expository outlines — persuaded, so rich and varied 
 is this practical side of Hebrew Syntax, that they 
 who deal with the minutiae of the text will never 
 lack sermons. 
 
viii PrefojCe 
 
 The field is so extensive and fruitful that, on 
 the basis of these two introductory volumes, the 
 author hopes in the near future to commence an 
 exegetical commentary which will aim at two 
 things — (1) Seek to further the interests of 
 expository preaching, and (2) encourage the 
 divinity student to keep up a knowledge of his 
 Hebrew. Anyone who succeeds in the latter 
 task need experience little difiiculty in accom- 
 plishing the former. For he who knows anything 
 of the wealth and beauty of the Hebrew tongue 
 must do something to make its treasures known. 
 The wonderful animation of its thought, and the 
 surprising richness of its imagery, will so colour 
 his own thinking and diction that it must become, 
 with the passing years, the warp and woof of his 
 teaching. It only requires to be known to be 
 preached. 
 
 Note. — To meet the needs of the Hebrew 
 student, a few blank pages have been inserted 
 throughout the volume. Additional examples 
 will constantly be met with in the course of his 
 Hebrew studies ; and if he has got into the habit 
 of noting these under their respective sections, 
 the inserted leaves may become, not simply a 
 record of his reading, but a valuable addition to 
 the present text-book. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAOE 
 
 The Value of Hebrew Study ..... 1 
 (1) The sifting of the text. (2) The exposition of the 
 thought. (3) A forecast and a conclusion. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Gbammaeians 19 
 
 (1) The Jewish. (2) The Christian. (3) Some 
 modern hand-books. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Hebrew Tenses 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Perfect 49 
 
 (1) In past time. (2) In present time. (3) In future 
 
 time. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Imperfect . 65 
 
 (1) The incipient imperfect. (2) The frequentative 
 imperfect. (3) The imperfect of modality. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Participle 83 
 
 (1) The character of its action. (2) The fixing of its 
 date. (3) The strengthening of its particular 
 nuance. 
 
 ix 
 
X Contents 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Hebrew Moods ... . . 101 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Imperative 107 
 
 (1) The simple imperative. (2) The energetic impera- 
 tive. (3) The negative imperative. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Jussive 123 
 
 (1) As imperative. (2) As optative. (3) As volun- 
 tative. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The Cohortative 143 
 
 (1) As intentional. (2) As optative. (3) Other uses 
 of the Cohortative. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Tenses and Moods with Conjunctive Vav . 161 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Vav consecutive with the Imperfect . . .171 
 (1) Its form. (2) Its nature. (3) Its use. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 Vav consecutive with the Perfect . . . 191 
 
 It continues (1) an imperfect in the sense of a 
 future ; (2) in the sense of a frequentative. 
 (3) Any other verbal form belonging to the 
 sphere of the imperfect. (4) Anything which 
 supplies the ground of a new development. 
 
Contents xi 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 PAQE 
 
 The Pbefbct and Impebsect with Weak Vav . 209 
 
 The perfect with light vav expresses (1) Co-ordina- 
 tion. (2) Contrast. (3) Historical association. 
 (4) The imperfect with light vav. 
 
 INDEX I 
 ScKiPTtTEE Passages 225 
 
 INDEX II 
 
 List of Texts more fully Tkbatbd for the 
 
 Preacher 228 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE VALUE OF HEBREW STUDY 
 
 " Things originally spoken in Hebrew," says the 
 grandson of Ben Sirach, " have not the same force 
 in them when they are translated into another 
 tongue ; and not only these, but the law itself, 
 and the prophecies, and the rest of the books, 
 have no small difference when they are spoken in 
 their original language." ^ As a general state- 
 ment this may be accepted by most readers ; but 
 when we come to apply it to the training of 
 divinity students, and enquire what is the value 
 of Hebrew study for the regular work of preach- 
 ing, the voices that claim to speak for the modem 
 pulpit are not so unanimous in their testimony. 
 According to some, a knowledge of Hebrew 
 grammar is not an indispensable requirement ; 
 for if, in other respects, the preacher has a good 
 grip of present-day problems, and addresses him- 
 self to the needs of his own age, he need never 
 
 1 See " Prologue to the Wisdom of Jesus, the son of 
 Sirach." 
 
 1 
 
2 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 waste a single serious thought as to whether he 
 knows the Hebrew Alphabet or not. The answer 
 to this is twofold. If a divinity student shirks 
 his duty in the Hebrew class, and does not try to 
 understand the sacred volume which is to be the 
 text-book of his ministry, he mai/, in after years, 
 begin to amend his ways, and apply himself with 
 diligence to some department of the Church's 
 work ; but the chances are that he will do nothing 
 of the kind. Having begun as a slipshod student, 
 he will either end in a respectable, easy-going 
 dependence on the labours of others, or show to 
 the community in which his lot is cast that he has 
 really a good grip of nothing. Besides, the lack 
 of Hebrew study may prove disastrous in another 
 direction. The Church in these days, we are 
 sometimes informed, is pained and bewildered by 
 the utterances of some, who, instead of cultivating 
 a first-hand acquaintance with the text, are con- 
 tent to retail at second or even at third hand the 
 latest speculations of the critics. These men, it is 
 said, know nothing of the reserve or moderation 
 which is ever the hall-mark of sound scholarship ; 
 and if the cause of truth is to be safeguarded 
 from the extravagance of pure insouciance, the 
 students of the future must sit down and verify 
 the results for themselves. The Church is not 
 trembling for the Ark of God because of the 
 
The Value of Hebrew Study 3 
 
 advent of the Higher Criticism. That can do 
 nothing but good in the hands of competent men. 
 But competence is not always forthcoming. And 
 what we ask, and what the sacred cause of Old 
 Testament study demands, is that our coming 
 teachers be thoroughly versed both in the sifting 
 of the history and in the elucidation of the text. 
 
 In fine, the Word of God has nothing to fear from 
 the closest investigation. It challenges our best 
 thought and keenest analysis in the sifting of its 
 problems. The one thing it suffers from is neglect. 
 And therefore, instead of yielding to the tempta- 
 tion of ayvwaUi, we would rather copy the devo- 
 tion of one like Ibn Janah, whose daily toil was 
 such, and even his nightly vigils, that he could 
 utter the unaffected avowal that he had " expended 
 twice as inuch on oil as another on wine." In 
 his eyes, indeed, the study of Hebrew philology 
 was a religious duty ; and that was, and ever 
 must be, the deepest spring of all devoted service. 
 Let the Hebrew student apply himself as Janah 
 did to the science of Hebrew grammar and to the 
 exposition of Hebrew thought, and he will yet 
 find, alike in the study of the language, and in the 
 treatment of Biblical Theology, that expository 
 preaching, like his native air, has become the joy 
 and strength of his ministry. 
 
4 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 1. The Sifting of the Text 
 
 By the " text " we mean the ordinary Masoretic 
 Text. This is at the basis of all true scientific 
 work. " The first duty of the student is not to get 
 behind the Masoretic Text, but to get back to 
 the Hebrew text as we have it— to sift its history, 
 weigh its problems, admire its diction, and assimi- 
 late its thought, and above all, to use it week by 
 week in the practical work of the ministry." ^ 
 When we wrote these words in 1905, they were 
 speedily verified, as only a great book can verify 
 them, by the appearance of Kittel's Prolegomena 
 to the "Biblia Hebraica" (vol. i., 1905). In 
 order to restore as far as possible the ipsissima 
 verba of the Biblical writers, he had decided that 
 it was not necessary to issue a continuous and 
 emended edition of the Hebrew text, but to 
 re-edit, as Baer and Ginsburg had done before, 
 the best edition of the Masoretic Text, with the 
 various readings and authorities for the suggested 
 emendations arranged in convenient footnotes 
 throughout. The Second Bomberg Bible was 
 accepted as the foundation of the new edition, 
 while every variety of Masoretic note or marginal 
 reference was explained in the Prolegomena or in 
 the extended apparatus at the foot of the page. 
 
 1 See " Sermons in Accents," p. 3. 
 
The Value of Hebrew Study 5 
 
 For anyone who has not as yet provided himself 
 with a critical Hebrew text, no better or more 
 reasonable purchase could be recommended than 
 these two handsome volumes edited by Professor 
 Kittel. 
 
 This, of course, does not mean that there is not 
 a legitimate field for textual emendation. No 
 one who is tolerably conversant with the facts 
 can entertain that notion for a moment. The 
 Masoretic Text is not immaculate. It has 
 anomalies both in punctuation and in grammatical 
 structure, and where the other criteria demand it, 
 the consonantal text itself, no less than the dual 
 system of vowels and accents, must give place to 
 a more satisfactory reconstruction of the Hebrew 
 original. On the other hand, it contains the 
 broad, massive groundwork of the language — a 
 groundwork which must always be mastered by 
 the youthful tyro before he can hope to advance 
 far in the subsequent studies of the experts. It 
 is not unlike the first few years in the study of 
 engineering. Enamoured with the idea of being 
 an electrical engineer, the young apprentice goes 
 to one of the acknowledged veterans of his craft 
 and asks for the benefit of his experience. He is 
 at once directed to the necessity of learning 
 ordinary engineering as the indispensable basis 
 for his career ; and he is told quite frankly that he 
 
6 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 need never hope to succeed in the line which he 
 has chosen unless he applies himself with devotion 
 to, and is well grounded in, the rudiments which 
 are at the foundation of the whole. In a similar 
 manner, the mastering of the Masoretic Text is the 
 primary task of the Hebrew student ; and no one 
 can profitably embark on the sea of conjectural 
 emendation until that initial training is acquired. 
 And in order to secure the observance of this 
 condition, the practical bearing of the subject, 
 not less than its future expediency, ought to be 
 duly impressed upon the student. 
 
 Let him turn, for example, to Deut. ix. 3, and 
 note the marvellous accuracy of the Masoretic 
 accentuation. The real point at issue is the 
 difficulty of construing the phrase " a consuming 
 fire." Should it be connected with what pre- 
 cedes, or with what follows ? If the student 
 refer to the rendering of the LXX, he will be 
 interested to find that they cut the knot altogether 
 by leaving the phrase as a separate clause. What 
 of the Authorised Version ? Evidently with the 
 desire of limiting the appalling figure to the 
 destruction of the ungodly heathen, it followed 
 the LXX in placing a semicolon after " thee," 
 and then reading, " As a consuming fire he shall 
 destroy them, &c." But is this the thought of 
 the immediately succeeding context, that Israel 
 
The Value of Hebrew Study 7 
 
 can ai3Eord to think of the devouring fire as limited 
 to the heathen ? Not so. " Not for thy righteous- 
 ness, or the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou 
 go in to possess their land." It is for other 
 reasons altogether, as detailed in ver. 5. Instead 
 of presuming on her own righteousness, Israel 
 might rather tremble as she beheld that con- 
 suming fire passing over before her ; for it would 
 burn in chastisement no less than in destruction, 
 and just because she was a chosen and peculiar 
 people, she might be brought all the more 
 assuredly within the sweep of its purifying energy 
 (c/. Amos iii. 2, Heb. xii. 29). This is the 
 thought which the Masoretic accentuation has 
 expressed superbly. It has brought the disputed 
 phrase into connection with Israel after all, 
 though at the same time it weaves the two con- 
 ceptions together (chastisement and destruction) 
 by bringing the whole of Zaqeph's clause under 
 the dominating influence of Athnach. Hence 
 the R.V. correctly : " Know therefore this day, 
 that the Lord thy God is He which goeth before 
 thee as a consuming fire ; He shall destroy them, 
 &c." The corrected punctuation suggests a two- 
 fold division. 
 
 1. To the nations, the fire would mean destruc- 
 
 tion, because of their wickedness. 
 
 2. To Israel, it would mean nothing more than 
 
8 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 chastisement, because of Jehovah's faith- 
 fulness. 
 " For the wickedness of these nations, the Lord 
 thy God doth drive them out before thee, aTid 
 that He m,ay establish ike word He sware unto 
 thy fathers." 
 
 2. The Exposition of the Thought 
 
 One writer, in reviewing " Sermons in Accents," 
 was quite positive that the author had made St. 
 Paul " misunderstand " Habakkuk in quoting that 
 prophet to the effect that " the just shall live by 
 faith." The passage referred to was the follow- 
 ing : — " In truth, we are reading too much about 
 the Bible, and too little in it. Not indeed that 
 one has any desire to revive the naive literalness 
 of the handy concordance plan. That method is 
 dead, and cannot be revived. The term 'faith,' 
 for instance, in Hab. ii. 4 does not mean the same 
 thing as in Gal. iii. 11 ; and it serves no good 
 purpose to write and preach as if it did " (Pref., 
 p. iv). Then at p. 57 it was added : " The ex- 
 pression n3^Dt<i is not faith but faithfulness — 
 a term equivalent to trustworthiness of character 
 or honesty in conduct ; and therefore diflfering 
 little from the cognate words integrity and 
 righteousness. Of. the marginal reading of the 
 
The Value of Hebrew Study 9 
 
 R.V., ' the just shall live in his faithfulness.' " 
 In a word, the prophet thought of " faithfulness " 
 in the sense of moral character or conduct, 
 whereas the Apostle, in using the same Old 
 Testament citation, thought of " faith " as an 
 active principle of life. And yet this is the thing 
 which we are gravely told would be equivalent to 
 ascribing to the Apostle a serious " misunder- 
 standing" of the prophet Habakkuk. But is it 
 so ? The answer strikes at the root of what is 
 known as Biblical Theology, and it may not be 
 amiss to vindicate as forcibly as we can the 
 essential character of its method. 
 
 One way of dealing with Scripture is what is 
 known as the handy concordance plan. Accord- 
 ing to it all our knowledge of divine things is 
 to be derived from the Bible. While the know- 
 ledge, however, is and must be biblical, it is not 
 so with the mould in which the knowledge is to 
 be cast, or the form in which it is to be expressed. 
 This is to be sought in the wisdom of the schools. 
 We are to begin with a carefully thought-out 
 scheme — a scheme so well balanced and propor- 
 tioned in all its parts that the various sections 
 fit together like a finely finished piece of 
 machinery. We then go to Scripture for our 
 texts— texts about " God," or " sin," " faith " or 
 " repentance," " death " or " immortality " ; and 
 
10 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 we fit these into the scheme which we have 
 previously prepared. It is like a man who pro- 
 poses to build a house. He commences by- 
 drawing a fully detailed plan. Then he goes to 
 the quarry for his stones, or to the brickyard for 
 his bricks, and he lays them row upon row, tier 
 above tier, until his house is finished. It matters 
 little which bricks he builds into the first course, 
 or which stones he may reserve for the last. 
 They are all much the same in shape and colour, 
 and therefore, in large measure, may be used 
 indiscriminately. And thus when we go to see 
 the result in any compendium of doctrine com- 
 piled in this way, we may find, as in the ordinary 
 marginal references, a passage from the Book of 
 Genesis and a text from the Epistle to the 
 Romans placed side by side. Habakkuk and 
 Galatians are both built into the foundation, while 
 Job and John are assigned an equal place of 
 honour at the capital or copestone. We are not 
 to conclude, however, that this systematic way of 
 treating Scripture is altogether wrong. There 
 are some good points about it. It is clear, well- 
 balanced, and scriptural, and well adapted in 
 every way for didactic purposes : and other things 
 being equal, it has no doubt helped to make us 
 what we in Scotland are, a nation of Systematic 
 theologians, who are able, or are supposed to be 
 
The Value of Hebrew Study 11 
 
 able, to give a reason for the hope that is in us. 
 This is one way of treating the Biblical writings : 
 we call it the method of Systematic Theology. 
 
 Alongside of it, however, and in comparatively 
 recent years, a second method has been gradually 
 taking shape ; and it ought not to be difficult 
 even for a plain mind to .appreciate the difference. 
 It is known as the method of Biblical Theology. It 
 is the mode of treatment which would derive every- 
 thing from the Bible — not simply the knowledge 
 which is to fill our Christian scheme, but the scheme 
 itself in which the knowledge is to be arranged. 
 The biblical way of conveying truth is not to be 
 likened to the erection of a building. Religion 
 was not built : it grew. Instead of going to the 
 schools for our illustrations, we are to go out to 
 nature where Jesus went, and hear Him say, as 
 in Matt. vi. 28, " Consider the lilies of the field 
 how they grow." The principle here is not 
 addition, but development. The acorn becomes 
 a plant, the plant becomes a sapling, and the 
 sapling in turn becomes a tree, until by the 
 process of inward expansion the tree has become 
 what- the house built of bricks could never be, 
 a living, fruit-bearing, and organic unity. This 
 is the story of religion as set forth in the biblical 
 records. It began as a tiny rill away up in the 
 Semitic highlands. It increased in volume and 
 
12 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 depth as it sped through the Mosaic age and 
 entered the period of the monarchy. It was fed 
 by priesthood and prophecy, psalm and proverb, 
 discipline and deliverance, until in the fulness of 
 the times it flowed a mighty river and poured 
 its waters into the sea of the New Testament 
 Gospel. Or better still, religion at first was a 
 little child. " When Israel was a child, then I 
 loved him and called my son out of Egypt." He 
 even taught Ephraim to walk (Hos. xi. 3); 
 " but they knew not that I healed them " — " pre- 
 sumably when they fell and hurt themselves."'^ 
 Religion was a mere child, but the child in time 
 became a youth, and the youth in turn became 
 a man, until in the Messianic fulfilment it came 
 to the fulness of its strength in the ideal manhood 
 of the Saviour. In fine. Old Testament religion 
 was given as all things in heaven and earth are 
 given, not as a completed scheme, but as essentially 
 a thing of growth. 
 
 3. A Forecast and a Conclusion 
 
 As to which of these two methods is to be 
 accepted as the right one, or whether there may 
 not be an element of truth in both, is one of the 
 questions which the rising generation will erelong 
 be called upon to settle. At the present stage in 
 1 Prof. Geo. A. Smith in loco. 
 
The Value of Hebrew Study 13 
 
 the controversy one party has always been found 
 to give its preference for the former method. It 
 maintains that, however the wisdom of God may 
 have acted in giving His truth from age to age, 
 we must rest content with the wisdom of man as 
 detailed in the time-honoured creeds of the past. 
 What was good for our fathers ought to be good 
 enough for us ; and even though dead bricks are 
 not so interesting as living flowers, still we know 
 where they are when once they have been placed 
 in position, whereas one never knows what may 
 happen next in the case of a thing that grows. 
 Another party, represented by the great mass of 
 educated people to-day, is equally convinced that 
 if a choice must be made between the two ex- 
 tremes — between a method which is as stationary 
 as a brick wall, and a system which has all the 
 vitality and spontaneity of a growing flower — 
 then there can be no hesitation in the matter ; 
 we must give our preference for the latter method. 
 For 
 
 The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 
 And God fulfils Himself in many ways, 
 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 
 
 But is it necessary to pit the one method against 
 the other, and to make our choice between them ? 
 We scarcely think that it is. The Church of the 
 future may find that there is a large element of 
 
14 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 truth in both sides, and that the one method no 
 less than the other is required for a due appre- 
 ciation of the facts. Systematic Theology is not 
 wrong when it aims at being concise and lucid, 
 and seeks to arrange the subject-matter for the 
 interest and instruction of the learner. It is only 
 m error when it ignores the plain principles of 
 growth so fully exemplified in the Sacred Writ- 
 ings. And Biblical Theology is not wrong in 
 emphasising the laws of development so observ- 
 able in ritual, literature, and doctrine, and in 
 enforcing the canons of language and history in 
 a careful analysis of the text. It is only in error 
 when it refuses to formulate the results of its 
 teaching in a system as concise and lucid as the 
 one it seeks to displace. There must be a golden 
 mean between the two extremes ; and it is along 
 this diagonal line that the theology of the future 
 must more and more travel. The coming age 
 must produce a manual of Christian doctrine as 
 clear and consistent as any of those that have 
 gone before, hut with each statement weighed and 
 tested in the light of history and context before 
 it is inserted in the scheme. In a word, the 
 Systematic must become Biblical, and the Biblical 
 must become Systematic ; and then the present 
 controversy between the two schools of thought 
 will have become an anachronism. 
 
The Value of Hebrew Study 15 
 
 Be this as it may, one conclusion which may be 
 tabulated even now is sufficiently obvious. It 
 has reference to the connection between St. Paul 
 and Habakkuk. To ask us to believe, that 
 because the. prophet used the term n31DM (LXX 
 TTt'o-Tt?) in the sense of trustworthiness of character, 
 the Apostle also must have used the word in a 
 precisely similar way ; or vice versa, that because 
 St. Paul employed the expression in the sense of 
 an active principle of life, this, in like manner, 
 must have been the meaning expressed by 
 Habakkuk, is about equal in perverseness. It 
 would mean, not indeed that St. Paul has " mis- 
 understood " Habakkuk, but that we who impale 
 ourselves on the horns of this dilemma are totally 
 incapable of understanding either the Old Testa- 
 ment or the New. Why should a term like 
 TTtcTTi? have the same spiritual contents to two 
 thinkers so far apart in time as Paul and 
 Habakkuk ? Had the unveiling of the divine 
 purpose, or the development of the human mind, 
 made no appreciable advance in the interval ? 
 Was it not rather the case that, in this one 
 transcendent particular, the greatest unveiling of 
 the Ages had intervened ? The Word had become 
 flesh and dmelt among us. And surely in the 
 light of that divine unveiling, to ask us to believe 
 
16 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 that the term " faith " acquired no newer or richer 
 meaning for the Apostle of the Gentiles, is from 
 the standpoint of Biblical Theology totally un- 
 thinkable. Neither the study of the language 
 nor the exposition of the thought necessitates any 
 such conclusion. Despite the naive literalness of 
 the handy concordance plan, each passage must 
 be weighed and tested in the light of context and 
 history. And when this is done with sobriety 
 and judgment, we can only leave our former state- 
 ment as originally written, that the term " faith " 
 in Habakkuk does not mean the same thing as in 
 the Epistle to the Galatians, and it serves no 
 good purpose to write and preach as if it did. 
 
 3ut leaving at this point the theological aspect 
 of the subject, we propose in the following chapters 
 to investigate the text grammatically. And cor- 
 responding to the sketch of the accentuators in 
 Chapter II. of " Sermons in Accents," we shall 
 begin with a short historical outline of the Hebrew 
 Grammarians. 
 
Additional Notes and Examples 17 
 
18 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE GKAMMAEIANS 
 
 In dealing with the history of the Text, we have 
 
 already sketched the labours of the Sopherim, 
 
 Masoretes, and Punctuators.^ The Sopherim 
 
 revised and finally settled the consonantal text. 
 
 The Masoretes introduced and perfected the dual 
 
 system of punctuation. The Punctuators, who 
 
 inherited and perpetuated the services of both, 
 
 became the producers of all the extant Hebrew 
 
 MSS., and thus provided the materials for a 
 
 subsequent systematic study of the language. 
 
 There was no conscious intention of investigating 
 
 phonetic and syntactical law as such ; but by 
 
 conserving the correct reading of the traditional 
 
 orthography, and furnishing not a few linguistic 
 
 categories which were incorporated later into the 
 
 grammatical terminology, the Masorah enabled 
 
 the new generation to determine the laws of 
 
 Hebrew etymology, and by its knowledge of 
 
 Hebrew idiom became the cradle proper of 
 
 1 " Sermons in Accents," Chap. 11. 
 
 19 
 
20 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 scientific Hebrew grammar. Even the term 
 " dikduk," which came to be applied to the gram- 
 matical investigation of the language, was probably 
 in use among the Masoretes at a very early date. 
 From the root p-j, to crush or pulverise (cf. 
 Ex. xxxii. 20), it would signify in their hands the 
 careful reading of the text, with all the subtleties 
 which were handed down regarding it. In later 
 times, when the study of Hebrew grammar grew 
 out of the Masoretic rules for reading, the ex- 
 pression, thus understood, would offer itself as a 
 suitable designation for the new science. Hence 
 Hebrew philology and Hebrew lexicography were 
 essentially products of the Jewish soil : the Tal- 
 mudists prepared the way for the later theorists 
 and grammarians. 
 
 1. The Jewish Geammaeians 
 
 That the beginnings of Hebrew grammar are 
 rightly sought in the Masorah may be illustrated 
 by two renowned scholars of the tenth century — 
 JR. ben Asher, the great Masorete of Tiberias, and 
 his contemporary Saadia, the noble gaon (or 
 head of the academy) of Siira, near Babylon 
 (d. 942). 
 
 All are agreed that Ben Asher was deeply 
 versed in vocalic and accentual lore, and was in 
 
The Orammarians 21 
 
 reality the connecting link between the Masoretes 
 and the grammarians. He not only fixed the 
 pronunciation of the text, as we now have it, but 
 dealt also with the twofold classification of con- 
 sonants and vowels which had been handed down 
 by his predecessors as a distinct Masoretic result. 
 In this great Palestinian Rabbi, therefore, " Heb- 
 rew grammar appears, as it were, in its shell, a 
 witness to the fact that grammar proceeded from 
 the Masorah." ^ The gaon Saadia, on the other 
 hand, was more independent in his treatment of 
 Biblical Hebrew. He wrote in Arabic, and under 
 the influence of Arabic philology, but sought to 
 explain, in the light of that excellent model, the 
 grammatical inflection of his own sacred tongue. 
 In particular, he introduced the distinction 
 between root and functional letters, emphasising 
 the root as the essential part of the word, and 
 illustrating the grammatical functions of the 
 other elements by the help of regularly formed 
 paradigms. These were the first paradigms ever 
 used in Hebrew grammar, and Saadia employed 
 as the paradigm-word the verb ^^^if. 
 
 The influence of Arabic, as seen in this Baby- 
 lonian gaon, is one of the most important elements 
 in the subsequent study of the language. It is 
 
 1 W. Bacher, in "Jewish Bncyolopsedia." 
 
22 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 found, however, in all its richness, not in Sura, 
 but among the Arabic-speaking Jews of Spain. 
 Witness such outstanding examples as Hayyuj, 
 discoverer of the system of triliteral roots; Ihn 
 Janah, the greatest Hebrew philologist of the 
 Middle Ages ; Ibn Ezra, the wandering poet and 
 thinker, who was the last of the great men who 
 formed the pride of Spanish Judaism ; and not 
 the least, Joseph, and David Kiinhi (father and 
 son), who had immigrated from Spain into 
 Southern France, but whose works became the 
 chief fountain of Jewish learning for the Christian 
 Hebraists of the sixteenth century. We may 
 briefly describe the services attributed to each. 
 
 Hayyuj was born in Fez, Morocco, about 950 ; 
 but went to Cordova, in Spain, at an early age, 
 and there appears to have remained until his 
 death. Before his time considerable confusion 
 seems to have prevailed on the subject of " weak " 
 verbs. His own teacher, Menahem ben Saruk, 
 was of opinion that Hebrew stems contained three 
 letters, two letters, and one letter respectively — 
 the vowel letters being entirely overlooked as 
 component elements in the verbal form. Hayyuj, 
 however, who applied the theories of the Arabic 
 grammarians to the elucidation of Hebrew gram- 
 mar, announced the doctrine that all Hebrew 
 stems are triliteral. They consist in every in- 
 
The Oramma/rians 23 
 
 stance of three letters ; but if one of these happens 
 to be a vowel letter, it may be regarded as con- 
 cealed in diverse ways in the various verbal forms. 
 There can be no question that the teaching of 
 Hayyuj on this and kindred topics exerted an 
 immense influence on succeeding generations ; 
 and in view of the treatise on which his fame 
 chiefly rests — "The Book of Verbs containing 
 Weak Letters " — he is fully entitled to the proud 
 designation, "the father of scientific Hebrew 
 grammar." ^ 
 
 Ibn Janah addressed himself to the task of 
 completing what Hayyuj had begun. Born at 
 Cordova about 985, he adopted medicine as his 
 profession, but speedily discovered, like his re- 
 nowned predecessor, that the main attraction of 
 his life was the science of Hebrew grammar and 
 the exposition of Hebrew thought. In his eyes, 
 indeed, as remarked above, the study of Hebrew 
 philology was a religious duty; and he allowed 
 the same high principle to regulate and deter- 
 mine his attitude towards others. If he criticised 
 and sought to rectify the observations of Hayyuj 
 on the subject of weak verbs, he never forgot 
 the respect due to the man who had first shown 
 him the way. " If we can criticise him," he re- 
 marks in the Introduction to his first book, " we 
 ^Caspar Levias, in "Jewish Enoyclopsedia. '' 
 
24 Sertnons in Syntax 
 
 owe our ability to do so to his teaching, and to 
 the good we have received from his writings." 
 The devotion with which he applied himself to 
 his own Hebrew studies was of the same high 
 character ; and it is not surprising that his chief 
 work, "The Book of Minute Eesearch" {Al- 
 Tanhit, the Arabic equivalent for " dikduk "), is 
 described as "a rich mine of information on 
 Biblical syntax, rhetoric, and exegesis." It was 
 the first complete exposition of the Hebrew 
 vocabulary and grammar. The author died at 
 Saragossa in the first half of the eleventh century. 
 Equally interesting and instructive was the 
 chequered career of Rabbi Ibn Ezra. Born at 
 Toledo in 1092, he afterwards resided in Cordova, 
 but set out from his native land in 1140, and for 
 the long period of twenty-seven years lived the 
 unsettled life of a wanderer. Becoming an exile, 
 in the first instance, in the hope of bringing back 
 to the true faith his son Isaac, who had become 
 a pervert to Islam, he found that his family grief 
 was divinely overruled in the wider interests of 
 mediaeval Judaism. He was able to bring to the 
 Jews of France, Italy, and even London full and 
 accurate knowledge of what was being done in 
 Arabic-Spain, both in the sphere of grammar and 
 of biblical exegesis. His own work may have 
 been based largely on his Arabic sources, but as 
 
The Qrammarians 25 
 
 the translator of the work of Hayyuj into pure 
 Hebrew, and the author of copious grammatical 
 notes in his different exegetical commentaries, he 
 was no unworthy member of the Arabic-Spanish 
 school which prepared the way for the most 
 serviceable of all the Jewish Hebrew grammars — 
 the " Miklol " of David Kimhi. 
 
 Born at Narbonne about 1160, the latter was 
 the younger son of Joseph Kimhi, who had 
 already marked an epoch in the study of Hebrew 
 grammar by introducing the new vowel system, 
 derived from Latin, according to which the vowel 
 sounds are divided into five long and five short 
 ones — a division which is quite different from 
 the traditional system of the Masoretes. David 
 did not inherit his father's originality, but he 
 possessed in a rare degree the genius for digesting 
 and assimilating the work of his predecessors; 
 and by adopting the paradigmatic method of his 
 brother, Moses, he became, both for Jews and 
 Christians, the greatest Jewish grammarian and 
 lexicographer for the next 650 years. His "Miklol" 
 (^■^1^3^, perfection) and his numerous com- 
 mentaries exercised an enormous influence on the 
 later Middle Ages. " Our own Authorised Version, 
 for example, bears the stamp of Kimhi on every 
 page." ^ Apart from his influence, indeed, the 
 ' Robertson Smith, in "Eney. Brit." 
 
26 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 cause of Jewish learning would never have 
 flourished as it did. It would have been strangled 
 on the Procrustian bed of Talmudical orthodoxy. 
 But, inspired by his learning and example, a 
 succession of sound scholars continued to carry 
 forward the torch of a revived Hebrew study 
 until, in the hands of Elias Levita and his con- 
 temporaries, it was handed over in the sixteenth 
 century to the custody of the Christian univer- 
 sities. 
 
 2. The Chkistian Grammarians 
 
 With the advent of the Reformation a great 
 change was naturally effected in the history of 
 Hebrew grammar. The study of the holy language 
 had now become a part of Christian scholarship ; 
 and though there were serious obstacles in the 
 way of placing a third learned tongue beside 
 Latin and Greek in the curriculum, the ultimate 
 establishment of a trilingual course in all the 
 European universities was simply a question of 
 time. It was the very genius of the new move- 
 ment to demand a return to the study of Holy 
 Scripture, and the importance of Hebrew as an 
 element in that discipline could no longer be 
 evaded. And yet, just as in the beginnings of 
 Hebrew grammar in the Masorah, so now, in the 
 earliest efforts of Christian Hebraists at the 
 
The Orammarians 27 
 
 Reformation, there was, for a time at least, a 
 close adherence to Jewish tradition, and a 
 simple, though scholarly, reproduction of Jewish 
 works. 
 
 Corresponding to Ben Asher, for instance, and 
 his contemporary, Saadia, allusion may be made 
 to two celebrated teachers of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury — Elias Levita (1469-1549), the broad-minded 
 Rabbi who taught at Padua, &c., and Johann 
 Reuchlin (1455-1522), the great German humanist, 
 who was " the father of Hebrew philology among 
 the Christians." ^ The former, who was the first 
 to question the antiquity of the vowel points, and 
 was in consequence accused of heresy, composed a 
 commentary to Moses Kimhi's brief grammar, 
 which through him became one of the most 
 popular manuals for the regular work of the class- 
 room. The " Rudimenta Hebraica " of the latter, 
 published in 1506, performed a somewhat similar 
 service for the " Miklol " of David Kimhi. Like 
 its prototype, it consisted of two parts — a grammar 
 and a lexicon — and notwithstanding its Latinised 
 terminology, was admirably adapted to introduce 
 Christians to the literary treasures of the Hebrew 
 tongue. 
 
 In the larger air of humanism, however, a more 
 independent treatment of the language speedily 
 1 Geseniua. 
 
28 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 arose. Beginning with a quickened interest in 
 classical literature as such, it instinctively felt the 
 importance of the ancient versions for the elucida- 
 tion of Biblical Hebrew. And despite the learned 
 efforts of the Buxtorf family (seventeenth cen- 
 tury), who sought to rehabilitate the integrity of 
 the Masoretic tradition, and even the antiquity of 
 the vowel points, the comparative method of 
 studying the language continued to advance in 
 favour until in the hands of Albert Schultens 
 (eighteenth century) it gave a new shape to the 
 study of Hebrew grammar by bringing it once 
 more into comparison with the kindred languages, 
 especially Arabic. Not that the laws of compara- 
 tive philology were already known in the Dutch 
 school of which Schultens was the acknowledged 
 leader, but in his epoch-making " Institutiones," 
 and notably in his dissertation on " The Use of 
 Arabic in the Interpretation of Scripture," he 
 vindicated the value of the comparative method 
 against those who regarded Hebrew as a sacred 
 tongue, with which comparative philology has 
 little or nothing to do. The line thus indicated 
 was assiduously followed by others, particularly by 
 the greatest of French orientalists, Silvestre de 
 Sacy (1758-1838). Alike for the study of pure 
 Hebrew, and as preparing the way for a scientific 
 treatment of comparative Semitic grammar, the 
 
The Grammarians 29 
 
 value of Arabic was conclusively settled by this 
 comprehensive scholar, who had chosen the whole 
 Oriental world as his domain. He placed Semitic 
 grammar on a broad and thoroughly scientifio 
 basis, and thus inaugurated the new method of 
 studying language as an organism, which, adopted 
 by most modern investigators, has set the 
 grammatical structure of Hebrew in a fresh 
 light. 
 
 In the first half of the nineteenth century, for 
 instance, we have the two German scholars, 
 Wilhelm Oesenius (1785-1842) and Heinrich 
 Ewald (1803-1875), the one excelling in method 
 and lucidity of expression, the other in the power 
 of grouping the broader features of language, and 
 of recognising the principles which underlie and 
 explain its phenomena. And since the latter, 
 especially, has mapped out the ground over which 
 all subsequent investigation must be conducted, 
 we may fitly close our present historical sketch 
 by adding some appreciation of these two scholars. 
 From the standpoint of the learner, the chaste 
 simplicity of Gesenius' grammar left nothing to 
 be desired ; but for an independent study of the 
 language, philosophic in its grasp and creative in 
 its fertility of ideas, the advanced student must 
 have recourse to the epoch-making " Syntax " of 
 Ewald's Lehrhuch. Ewald's interest in Semitic 
 
30 SerTTions in Syntax 
 
 grammar was very early evoked. As a youthful 
 graduate of nineteen, he devoted himself with 
 enthusiasm to the study of Arabic and Sanskrit, 
 issuing in 1825 a small treatise on Arabic metres, 
 the results of which were incorporated later into 
 his Arabic grammar; and in 1827 an equally 
 interesting essay on some of the older Sanskrit 
 metres, an indication that the young scholar had 
 already chosen as his domain the whole Oriental 
 world. In the same year he became an aspirant 
 to the Chair of Eichhorn at Gottingen, and this 
 led him into the special field of Hebrew grammar. 
 The older scholar, Gesenius, had stronger claims 
 than he both in philology and lexicography ; but 
 it is not too much to say that with his Kritische 
 Grammatik in his hand the young orien- 
 talist and theological tutor went forward and 
 won his professorship. It was at once seen that 
 while Gesenius might still retain his place as 
 the master of Hebrew lexicography, Ewald by 
 his originality and penetration had introduced a 
 new era in the study of Hebrew grammar. In 
 particular, he propagated that sound doctrine of 
 the so-called Tenses — "modalities of action," as 
 they have been called^ — which may be traced 
 back through his master Eichhorn to that 
 patriarch of Semitic learning, Albert Schultens. 
 1 Caspar Levias, in " Jewish Enoyclopsedia." 
 
The Orammarians 31 
 
 The dry rules of Syntax were now seen to be 
 intelligible and alive by being brought into 
 organic relation with the fundamental laws of 
 language and thought. So that, however arbitrary 
 and inattentive he might sometimes be in his 
 treatment of details, and however questionable 
 and fanciful in some of his results, he will always 
 have the honour of being called "the second 
 founder of the science of Hebrew language," ^ and 
 all modern Hebraists will hasten to acknowledge 
 the stimulus they have derived from his works. 
 
 3. Literature 
 
 In addition to the apparatus criticus, detailed 
 on pages 8-11 of " Sermons in Accents," the 
 following volumes on Hebrew Syntax may be 
 profitably consulted by the student : — 
 
 (1) The third part of Ewald's Lehrbiuih, trans- 
 lated from the eighth German edition by Dr. 
 James Kennedy, of Edinburgh, and described by 
 Professor A. B. Davidson as " a complete thesaurus 
 of the language." It is, indeed, a mine of wealth 
 for the O.T. student, and even the preacher who 
 burrows in its pages will never be at a loss for 
 homiletical suggestions. 
 
 (2) Miiller's 8chulgram7natik (1878), based 
 
 1 Hitzig. 
 
32 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 mainly, according to the Britannica, " on 
 Olshausen's method, with the addition of an 
 excellent syntax." The Syntax is excellent, and, 
 as translated by Professor Robertson, of Glasgow, 
 will not easily be superseded as a model text- 
 book for the regular work of teaching. 
 
 (3) Davidson's Hebrew Syntax, a volume better 
 adapted for the study than for the class-room. 
 Its deft phrasing of the rules, combined with a 
 wealth of well-chosen examples, makes it invaluable 
 to the Hebrew expositor, and, like Bdttcher's 
 Ausfuhrliches Lehrbuch, serves as a sort of 
 grammatical concordance to the Old Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 (4) Driver's Hebrew Tenses, a volume which, 
 for the ground covered by our present studies, is 
 the most elaborate and informing of all. The 
 more we have studied this book, the stronger the 
 conviction has grown that no greater service could 
 be rendered to Hebrew study than the placing of 
 its wealth of instruction, in some simpler form, 
 into the hands of all Hebrew students. At present 
 it is too massive ; but if anyone, with Mtiller's 
 power of arrangement, Davidson's lucidity of ex- 
 pression, and Driver's thought — and, withal, the 
 graphic touch of happy abandon which is not 
 always found within the trammels of grammatical 
 treatises — could but summarise its main positions. 
 
The Ora/mmarians 33 
 
 and issue it as an introductory primer on the 
 subject of the Hebrew Verb, many who are at 
 present overawed by its weight of erudition might 
 be led across the threshold, and revel in the 
 fulness of its teaching. The plan of the present 
 text-book forbade the cherishing of any such 
 ambition ; but if the following pages act as a 
 stimulus in the direction of any one of these 
 standard works on Hebrew Syntax, they will not 
 have been written in vain. 
 
34 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
Additional Notes and Examples 35 
 
36 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE HEBREW TENSES 
 
 It is only in the way of accommodation to the 
 usages of another language that we can speak of 
 " tenses " in Hebrew grammar. A tense indicates 
 the time at which any given action takes place. 
 It informs us whether it is past, present, or future. 
 In Hebrew, however, this specification of time 
 does not enter. It has no forms specifically 
 appropriated to indicate date. An action may 
 be conceived as occurring in any one of the three 
 simple time-divisions (past, present, or future) ; 
 but it is the connection of the whole discourse 
 and not the form of the verb that determines the 
 precise point at issue. Compare the use of the 
 perfect in each of the following passages : — " In 
 the beginning God created (t^"l3.) the heaven 
 and the earth " (Gen. i. 1) ; " He beholdeth (HSI'I) 
 all the sons of men " (Ps. xxxiii. 13) ; " And Leah 
 said, Happy am I ! for the daughters will call 
 
 me happy {'^Tn\Si^)" (Gen. xxx. 13). It is the 
 
 37 
 
38 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 same verbal form that is used in all the three 
 instances ; but it is a different temporal signifi- 
 cation that is attributed to each. The precise 
 reference is derived from the context, and then, 
 a more definite meaning having been assigned 
 to the verbal action, it is represented in each of 
 the three passages as an Aorist, a present and a 
 future respectively. Obviously the tense itself 
 is no sufficient guide for determining the date. 
 The precise point or order of time must be 
 deduced from the context. 
 
 It is the character of the action, and not the 
 time of its occurrence, which is the distinguishing 
 peculiarity of the Hebrew idiom. In Greek we 
 can express both character and date. We can 
 describe the verbal action as a momentary act 
 (aorist) or as a continuous activity (present) ; and at 
 the same time we can clearly specify the time of 
 the action by having recourse to the past, present, 
 and future tenses of classical or biblical Greek. 
 In Hebrew, on the contrary, the various verbal 
 forms are restricted to the former. They mark 
 the character of the action without fixing the 
 date. But since they do this in an exceedingly 
 animated and emotional manner, they can intro- 
 duce shades of distinction and a variety of 
 meanings that are far beyond the compass of our 
 more prosaic tense-specifications. In particular. 
 
The Hebrew Tenses 39 
 
 they can express the three fundamental concep- 
 tions of incipienoy, contvnuance, and completion • 
 The speaker, from his more imaginative stand- 
 point, can view the action — whether in the past, 
 present, or future — either as nascent or coming 
 into being, continuous, or extending over a de- 
 finite period of time, or completed — i.e., finished, 
 happened, past ; and as these three ideas are 
 suitably represented by the Imperfect, the Parti- 
 ciple, and the Perfect, we may profitably assign 
 one short chapter to each. 
 
 But before doing so, the preacher may find 
 an instructive practical illustration at Ps. xxxii. 
 5:— 
 
 My sin I began to make known (incipient imper- 
 iect), and mine iniquity have I not hid (present- 
 perfect) : 
 
 I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the 
 Lord ; 
 
 And Thou, Thou forgavest (aorist) the iniquity of my 
 sin. [Selah.] 
 
 Some of the details in this passage are so sug- 
 gestive that, while the tenses themselves paint 
 a picture, the order of the Hebrew words, the 
 emphatic character of the accents, and the aid 
 of the LXX all serve to give tone and colour to 
 a picture thus sketched in the rough. In a word, 
 it furnishes a good example of what we mean 
 by a " Sermon in Syntax " ; and as a specimen 
 
40 Serinons in Syntax 
 
 of what may be found in the Bible passim, we 
 will analyse its wealth of teaching a little more 
 in detail. 
 
 1. The Nature of Sin 
 
 ^ni^tsn, " my sin," is the first word in the 
 Hebrew text, and also the last, the musical addi- 
 tion, " Selah," not being regarded as an integral 
 part of the verse. It is placed first for the sake 
 of emphasis, for unlike Ps. vi. (the first of the 
 Penitential Psalms), which never mentions the 
 subject of sin at all, Ps. xxxii. (the second in the 
 group) introduces this topic as its leading and 
 characteristic note. So strongly did some of the 
 punctuators feel this, that they pointed the first 
 word with an emphatic Baseq} They wished to 
 represent to eye and ear what was already felt 
 to be present in reality, that sin was the dominant 
 idea in this Psalm, and that both melody and 
 Syntax might justly be requisitioned to emphasise 
 the truth. 
 
 And is this not the teaching of etymology? 
 In this one verse no fewer than three Hebrew 
 words are employed to designate moral evil. 
 And while, etymologically, they are all figurative 
 terms, transferred from the physical sphere to the 
 ^Wiokes, " Poetical Aoeentuation," p. 89. 
 
The Hebrew Tenses 41 
 
 ethical, they furnish in their combination a fairly 
 exhaustive summary of the Bible doctrine of sin. 
 Probably the most distinctive epithet is the 
 term yttJB, usually translated transgression or 
 rebellion, a conception which traces sin to its 
 fruitful source in the will of the individual. It 
 is not simply avofiia, in the sense of defection 
 from a prescribed law (as the LXX in ver. 1); 
 it is a voluntary act of self-assertion in opposition 
 to the will of a superior. It is withdrawal from, 
 or rebellion against the Lawgiver (Ps. li. 4). 
 Beginning with this as its starting-point, the 
 subsequent development of moral evil is not 
 difficult to trace. It is rtj^, iniquity. It is a 
 course crooked and perverse, and, therefore, well 
 chosen to denote the tortuous path of the rebel, 
 who, instead of following the straight route for 
 the attainment of man's chief end, wanders 
 zig-zag over the desert and never reaches his 
 destined goal. This is the precise thought intro- 
 duced by the third term riKton, sin (LXX, 
 
 dfiapria). The slinger has failed to hit the mark, 
 or the traveller to reach his destination ; for 
 having begun wrong he cannot end right, and 
 the forsaker is himself forsaken. Obviously, the 
 man who could multiply these terms in order to 
 depict his moral malady had no superficial views 
 
42 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 regarding its nature and influence. The dis- 
 turbing presence of moral evil had invaded the 
 sphere of the conscience. 
 
 2. The Confession of Sin 
 
 It is in this connection that we speak of the 
 Hebrew tenses as painting a picture. In verses 
 3, 4, the Psalmist had been forced to admit that 
 if he foolishly kept silence regarding his sin, 
 he was constrained to cry out because of his 
 misery. 
 
 When I kept silence, my bones waxed old 
 Through my roaring all the day long. 
 
 The cry of misery, however, is not always the 
 birth-throes of a deep and genuine confession. 
 Many a sufferer cries out in anguish who has no 
 intention of recognising the hand that smites 
 him, or of admitting the essential justice of the 
 visitation. Confession of sin is rendered possible 
 only when the afflicted one is made to feel the 
 depth of his demerit, and begins to acknowledge 
 to himself or others the grievous character of his 
 backsliding. And this is the exact meaning of 
 the incipient imperfect which is here employed 
 by the Psalmist. "My sin / began to make 
 known " — the tense of the verb graphically repre- 
 
The Hebrew Tenses 43 
 
 senting the nascent confession in the very act of 
 beginning. It had not as yet assumed the form 
 of a direct appeal to Jehovah ; for probably we 
 ought to read with the LXX, ttjv dfiapriap 
 fji,ov iyvwpiaa, where the Hebrew suffix Jea, " unto 
 thee," has been omitted. The man had only 
 reached the initial stage of his confession, as he 
 tried to make plain to his own heart and con- 
 science the peculiar heinousness of his sin. But 
 the second stage speedily followed. The more he 
 realised the presence of the foul intruder which 
 had usurped his innermost being, the more he 
 determined to drag it forth into the open, and 
 expose it to the searching glance of Him who is 
 of purer eyes than to behold evil. " I said, I will 
 confess my trangressions unto the Lord" — until 
 now, as the gracious result, he bows in the felt 
 presence of Jehovah, a guileless and transparent 
 life : " mine iniquity have I not hid " (present 
 perfect). This is the true nature of confession. It 
 includes the heart, the speech, and the life. It 
 begins with a secret resolution in the soul, which, 
 by and by, finds expression in a direct appeal to 
 Jehovah ; but the consequences of the completed 
 action are continued into the present, and the 
 Psalmist can speak of the blessedness of the 
 man "in whose spirit there is no guile" 
 (ver. 2). 
 
44 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 3. The Forgiveness of Sin 
 
 " And thou — thou forgavest the iniquity of my 
 sin." The student will note the Aoristic use of 
 the perfect, and the emphasis impressed on the 
 pronoun " thou." They combine to enforce the 
 truth that Jehovah was more willing to forgive 
 the returning penitent than the man himself was 
 to come and solicit the blessing. The Psalmist 
 was reviewing the various steps in his confession 
 — how behind the transparent attitude of his 
 present was lying the verbal appeal which he had 
 addressed to Jehovah, and behind the actual pre- 
 sentation of his prayer the initial resolution of the 
 heart — and there at the beginning of it all, like heart 
 answering heart in an inner sanctuary, the divine 
 response was granted to the silent appeal, and the 
 penitent entered into the blessedness of the man 
 whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is 
 covered. As in the teaching of the Pearl of 
 Parables, the Father had not waited for the 
 verbal confession of the prodigal son. He 
 beheld the lonely figure a great way off; and 
 before a single word had fallen from his lips, 
 the tears of an undying affection were falling 
 upon his neck. " I said, I will confess . . . 
 and thou — thou forgavest the iniquity of my 
 sin." 
 
The Hebrew Tenses 45 
 
 The nature of the forgiveness is fully set forth 
 in verses 1, 2. If no fewer than three Hebrew- 
 terms were required to describe the sin, no fewer 
 than three similar figures are necessary to depict 
 the remedy. It is at once the lifting of a burden, 
 the covering of a foul stain, and the cancelling of 
 a debt. The burden is removed, as in Bunyan's 
 immortal allegory ; the stain is hidden out of 
 sight, as by the love that covereth a multitude of 
 sins ; and the debt having been wiped out by the 
 exercise of sovereign mercy, is no longer reckoned 
 against the offender as a dreaded liability to 
 punishment. And as all this is described 
 at least in verse 1 by the use of the 'passive parti- 
 ciple, we have a form of expression which is 
 eloquent with meaning as to the origin and 
 continuity of the forgiven state. "The passive 
 participle describes the subject as having the 
 action continually exercised upon him, or at 
 least differs from the adjective in presenting 
 the state of the subject as the result of an 
 action." ^ 
 
 Blessed is the man who abides in this state of 
 forgiveness, for both in origin and result the two 
 lines of development approach and coincide. What 
 began as Aorists in the completed actions of the 
 past (" I said " . . . " thou forgavest ") is continued 
 
 1 Davidson's "Hebrew Syntax,'' p. 130. 
 
46 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 as present-perfects or passive participles into the 
 spiritual conditions of the present ; and the con- 
 tinuity of the one is reflected in the continuity of 
 the other, like the blue of sea and sky in their 
 unity. 
 
Additional Notes and Examples 47 
 
48 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PERFECT 
 
 The form indicating completeness is naturally 
 taken first ; for while, in every instance, the idea 
 of incipiency must precede and prepare the way 
 for the finished action, it is the finished act itself, 
 and not the thought of becoming (werdend, 
 yiyvo/ievov) which is the more easily grasped 
 conception of the two. Not that the meaning of 
 the Hebrew Perfect is either simple or constant. 
 Canon Driver has enumerated no fewer than 
 thirteen different applications of its fundamental 
 idea. It extends all the way from the pluperfect 
 in the remote past to the closely allied future 
 perfect in the yet unknown future ; and it fills up 
 the entire gap between the two with a series 
 of gradations that is full of interest for the 
 preacher. Of. Isa. vi. 6, where the action de- 
 scribed by the pluperfect is already a thing of 
 the past, when the seraph approaches the abashed 
 prophet with the symbol of his purification. Or 
 
 Isa. iv. 4, in which a similar collocation of actions, 
 4 49 
 
50 Sevmons in Syntax 
 
 but descriptive of the future, is expressed by 
 the use of the future perfect. " It shall come 
 to pass, that he that remaiueth in Jerusalem, shall 
 be called holy : when the Lord shall have washed 
 away (Vn"!) the filth of the daughters of Zion." 
 Similarly in Micah v. 2, the birth of the promised 
 deliverer is already viewed as a thing accom- 
 plished, when the time for the return of the 
 residue of his brethren has at last arrived — " when 
 she that beareth shall have home " (mb'^). These 
 are the two termini within which the wonderful 
 animation of the Hebrew Perfect can move through 
 its various gradations; and yet however impor- 
 tant and suggestive its different applications, it 
 will be sufficient for our present purpose to em- 
 phasise three practical distinctions. 
 
 1. The Perfect in Past Time 
 In past time, the perfect is used to express 
 ideas as widely differentiated as those of the Greek 
 Aorist and Perfect. In other words, it denotes an 
 action completed at a definite moment in past 
 time, with the no less significant addition that 
 while its inception and realisation belong to the 
 past, its consequences may be continued up to the 
 time of speaking and issue in a state or condition 
 that dominates the whole. Cf. Gen. xxxii. 11 
 
The Perfect 51 
 
 where the two senses are found side by side. 
 " For with my staff I passed over (aorist) this 
 Jordan; and now I am become, or have become 
 (LXX, yiyova), two companies.'' Or Ps. xxxii. 4, 
 where, instead of the A.V. " is changed," we must 
 read with the KV. " was changed (aorist) ; for the 
 context shows that the Psalmist was looking back 
 on a condition of things no longer existing. On 
 the other hand, the perfect " have forsaken " in 
 Isa. i. 4 indicates as no aorist could do the hapless 
 condition of a disobedient people. The forsaking 
 of Jehovah was indeed a thing of the past ; but 
 there, at the moment of speaking, the prophet 
 was confronted with the unutterably sad result — 
 Israel, on a lower level than the beasts that perish, 
 was seeking her own hurt (cf. vers. 3, 5). 
 
 For a practical illustration of this distinction 
 the preacher may turn to Ps. xxxi. 8 : — 
 
 Let me be glad and rejoice in thy lovingkindness : 
 
 For thou didst see my affliction ; 
 
 Thou didst take notice of my soul in adversities. 
 
 To render the last two verbs as perfects, and 
 thus to continue the consequences of a past 
 deliverance up to the time of writing, does not 
 do justice, either to the Psalmist's grief, or to 
 the depth of distress depicted in his present 
 suffering (vers. 10, 11). The tone of the latter 
 is so dejected that it has been suggested that 
 
52 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 the two passages could not have proceeded from 
 one and the same hand. The man who laments 
 saying, '' Mine eye wasteth away with grief, yea, 
 my soul and my body," could not have said, " For 
 thou hast seen my affliction ; thou hast known my 
 soul in adversities." The force of this objection, 
 however, is at once bereft of its seriousness the 
 moment we realise the probability that the verbs 
 in this passage are aoristic. The Psalmist is 
 thinking of a former condition or experience that 
 no longer exists. His past deliverance is as real 
 and precious a fact as ever ; but the consequences 
 of the action are not continued into the present 
 as by an act of appropriating faith. Memory, 
 with her fitful torch, may hie back across the 
 intervening gulf; but however helpful her light 
 may be, it is not sufficient to dispel the gloom, 
 or to give clearness to the eye that has become 
 bleared and dim through weeping. It may be 
 strong enough to lead the afflicted one to the 
 exercise of prayer (cohortative) ; but not to the 
 glad assurance of the R.V., " / will he glad and 
 rejoice in thy mercy." In the fitful gleam of 
 memory the man is not yet able to recover his 
 former trust ; but he can do something no less 
 pleasing in the sight of the Eternal. He can 
 look up even through his tears, and say, " Let me 
 he glad and rejoice in Thy lovingkindness." He 
 
The Perfect 53 
 
 can pray for deliverance. Hence a suitable 
 division of our subject would be : — 
 
 1. His present distress (vers. 10, 11). 
 
 2. The memory of a past deliverance (aorists). 
 
 3. A prayer for a repetition of former mercies 
 
 (cohortatives). 
 
 2. The Perfect in Present Time 
 In a second use of the Hebrew Perfect, the idea 
 of completion is best translated as a present. 
 This includes the so-called " perfect of experience," 
 or a class of actions so frequent in their occurrence 
 that they have come to be regarded as general 
 truths, and are accepted as axiomatic. Isa. i. 3, 
 " The ox knoweth his owner ; " xl. 7, " The grass 
 withereth ; " Ps. Ixxxiv. 4, " The sparrow findeth 
 an house ; " xxxiv. 11, " The young lions do lack 
 and suffer hunger." And especially Ps. xlii. 3 
 (Heb.), " My soul thirsteth (n^m) for God." This 
 is something more than conscious reiteration of 
 the act (like the imperfect " panteth " of verse 2) ; 
 it is the instinctive turning of the entire life to 
 God, even when the spiritual " hart " has no 
 occasion to pant. Panting for God in each time 
 of trouble is much j but a habit of the soul, which 
 has been generated by experience, is something 
 more and deeper. The soul turns to Jehovah, as 
 the ass to his master's crib. 
 
54 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 The main application, however, of this second 
 usage is found in connection with a class of verbs 
 (statives) which describe a condition of mind or 
 body that is looked upon as actually existing. 
 In these the emphasis rests, not upon the actions 
 which have produced the result, but upon the 
 result itself as their necessary terminus or ex- 
 pression ; and therefore unlike the Hebrew per- 
 fect, which still retains an echo of the preliminary 
 process, the ultimate effect is more adequately 
 represented by means of the English present. Of. 
 the use of ''i^J^'l'' = dlSa, properly " I have per- 
 ceived," therefore I know ; or ''il"l5^ — i^emini, 
 "I have borne in mind" (mens), therefore / 
 rem,em,her ; or the equally expressive phrase in 
 Ps. xxxviii. 16, where the oft-repeated exercise 
 of trust has developed into a state of mind and 
 heart whose patience is only excelled by its 
 confidence : — 
 
 For in Thee, O Lord, do I hope : 
 Thou wilt answer, Lord my God. 
 
 The use of nN7!3 in Ps. civ. 24 is no less 
 
 T : ix 
 
 suggestive in its imagery. It occurs in what 
 Oehler has so fitly described as "a commentary 
 on Gen. i. " ; but, as the stative verb so forcibly 
 reminds us, the poet is thinking, not so much of 
 the original filling of the earth, when all the sons 
 
The Perfect 55 
 
 of God shouted for joy, as of its 'present condition 
 of palpitating exuberance which fills it to over- 
 flowing, whether men come to stand within its 
 sanctuary or not. With this key in our hands, 
 does not the whole verse become luminous with 
 meaning ? The earth is full — 
 
 1. Of unlimited variety. 
 
 2. Of infinite wisdom. 
 
 3. Of inexhaustible beneficence. 
 
 " Lord, how manifold are Thy works ! " It is 
 like the " divers portions and in divers manners " 
 of divine revelation (Heb. i. 1). Nay more, " in 
 wisdom hast Thou made them all " ; so that, 
 however complicated the manifold system may 
 be, it is a system, each part subordinated to, and 
 yet a safeguard for, the perfect adjustment of the 
 whole. It is a beautifully arranged cosmos. And 
 therefore it is full of what Thou hast originated 
 — Thy creation (LXX, t^9 KTiaed)^ cov), Thy 
 possession (Vulg., tua fossessione ; Wycliffe, thi 
 possessioun), or. Thy untold wealth (R.Y., 
 riches). The term ^3''i(?, from Tl^p, to acquire, is 
 sufficiently comprehensive to embrace all these 
 meanings. As applied to Jehovah, who is the 
 Creator of the earth (Gen. xiv. 19), no less than 
 the Redeemer of His people (Deut. xxxii. 6), the 
 idea of acquiring or possessing shades off into 
 
56 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 the kindred conception of originating or creating ; 
 and since the creation, as already depicted, is 
 stamped with variety and wisdom, it at once 
 suggests the further application that what is thus 
 originated by the great Creator must be for the 
 creature's good. It is full of variety to please 
 the eye, of wisdom to satisfy the mind, and of 
 untold wealth of beneficence to bless and beautify 
 the life. And thus the whole theme is to be set 
 to music. It is to pass into the profound adora- 
 tion of the opening exclamation, " Lord, how 
 manifold," etc. For, as Calvin reminds us, " only 
 then do we ascribe due honour to God; when 
 seized with astonishment, we acknowledge that 
 our tongues and all our senses fail us in doing 
 justice to so great a subject." 
 
 3. The Perfect in Future Time 
 This third use of the Hebrew Perfect is best 
 seen in the higher forms of Old Testament litera- 
 ture. In impassioned descriptions of the future 
 the ordinary usages of prose narrative are fre- 
 quently abandoned for the more emotional and 
 idealistic idioms of inspired prophecy. At one 
 moment the speaker contemplates the future 
 scene from the real standpoint of the present, 
 and describes it in the imperfect or future tenses 
 of ordinary Hebrew prose ; but the next moment 
 
The Perfect 57 
 
 he is carried forward to an ideal position iu the 
 future, and looks back on the completed action 
 as though it were already past. In this way he 
 is able to diversify his style by a pleasing alter- 
 nation of perfect and imperfect tenses, and to 
 , reproduce with a certain touch of reality the 
 assured feeling of certainty with which he con- 
 templates the future. By the use of what is 
 called the prophetic perfect he vividly represents 
 it as already accomplished. Of. Num. xxiv. 17, 
 where the illuminated seer exclaims, "A star 
 hath proceeded (Tf'^'l) out of Jacob " ; though 
 the more prosaic English version has to render 
 "shall come forth," the allusion being to the 
 future greatness of Israel's golden age. Or recall 
 the prophecy of Isaiah regarding the shoot from 
 the stock of Jesse, in which it is added, " They 
 shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy moun- 
 tain ; for the earth shall he full (perfect, ilt^7J2) 
 of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover 
 the sea " (vii. 9) — lit., is full ; for the prophet 
 from his more idealistic standpoint is looking 
 back on the promise as already fulfilled. Even 
 modern languages are not constrained to employ 
 future tenses in these poetical descriptions. They 
 prefer the more energetic and definite present. 
 For while the events depicted can only be realised 
 
58 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 in the future, it is the function of the poet to 
 conserve the prophet's idealism, and to provide 
 a suitable medium for the unveiling of his 
 thought. Thus, " Howl, fir tree ; for the cedar 
 is fallen " (Zech. xi. 2) ; " Arise, shine ; for thy 
 light is come" (Isa. Ix. 1); "The people that 
 walked in darkness have seen a great light " 
 (ix. 1) ; " Righteousness and peace have kissed 
 each other" (Ps. Ixxxv. 11). 
 
 In all this, however, we have simply an expan- 
 sion of what is already found in the unimpas- 
 sioned diction of ordinary prose. Corresponding 
 to the prophetic perfect, we have the so-called 
 perfect of certitude — a form of expression which 
 is specially applicable to the promises and threats 
 of Jehovah, whose will is equivalent to His deed 
 (Gen. XV. 18 ; Isa. xlii. 1). Here the perfect 
 ''inJ^i is used to emphasise the reality of the 
 promise, that the giving of the land, or the 
 bestowing of the Spirit, will assuredly be realised 
 in the future. Still the same idiom is common, 
 even in human relation, as when Abraham 
 answers Ephron the Hittite, saying, " I give thee 
 (''J^Oi) tlie price of the field" (Gen. xxiii. 13)— 
 even though the silver is not weighed nor the 
 bargain concluded till verse 16. Indeed, in all 
 actions dependent on the unalterable will of the 
 
The Perfect 59 
 
 speaker, or regarded as inevitable from the mere 
 force of circumstances, or even confidently ex- 
 pected because of the fulness of the divine 
 promise, the accomplishment of the action may 
 be spoken of as having already taken place, and 
 the perfect of volition, as the formula of comple- 
 tion, be employed to ratify the truth. Boaz, for 
 instance, in speaking of Naomi's determination 
 to sell her land, says, "Naomi selleth (n'^Sp? 
 lit., has sold, or has resolved to sell) her field- 
 portion " (Ruth iv. 3). And the Psalmist, allow- 
 ing this feeling of certitude to pass over into the 
 perfect of confidence, exclaims, "Now know I 
 that the Lord saveth (y^tp"!!!) His anointed" — 
 i.e., will save him, or is sure to save him in the 
 future ; for he immediately adds : — 
 
 He will answer him from His holy heaven 
 With the saving strength of His right hand, 
 
 (Ps. XX. 7.) 
 
 A concluding practical illustration may be found 
 at Ps. vi. 8 :— 
 
 Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity : 
 For the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping. 
 
 The words occur in what is known as the first 
 penitential Psalm ; and no more fitting plaint 
 could be put into the lips of any pious sufferer. 
 
60 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 It is like the minor melodies of external nature. 
 The wail of the forest, the disconsolate accents 
 of ocean, the monotonous chant of the waterfall, 
 the bleating of flocks among the hills, and the 
 weird-like call of the moor-fowl among the 
 heather — all these seem to be pervaded with a 
 suggestion of autumn's sadness ; and we are made 
 to feel that the nearer we get back to nature the 
 more appropriate become the minor tunes and 
 plaintive melodies of these penitential Psalms- 
 In the present instance, we have a simple, three- 
 fold division — 
 
 (1) The Divine Chastisement 
 
 " Neither chasten me in Thy hot displeasure " 
 (ver. 1). As if to suggest the reflection that 
 the chastisement had already been carried too 
 far, the sufferer spreads out his wretchedness in 
 the sight of God's great pity, and paints it in all 
 the sad colouring of the autumn. " / aTn 
 withered away" — like a faded flower (ver. 2, 
 R.V.). As a fragile flower, bereft of the rain and 
 sunshine, I trail my drooping blossoms in the 
 dust. " And Thou, O Lord, how long ? " His 
 suffering was a deep he could not fathom ; but 
 he spreads it out in the presence of Him who is 
 at once justice and love — like a wounded animal 
 crawling up to the feet of its master, and looking 
 
The Perfect 61 
 
 up into his face with great eyes of pain. For, 
 after all, the divine mercy might triumph over 
 judgment; and the flower that was trailing its 
 blossoms in the dust, might once more unfold 
 its petals in the sunshine. 
 
 (2) The Divine Lovingkindness 
 
 " save me for Thy lovingkindness' sake " (ver. 
 4). This is Jehovah's covenant love. He delights 
 in mercy. He is ready to forgive. Let him be 
 true, then, to his own nature ! Let his self- 
 revelation in act be consistent with the inner 
 graciousness of his motive ! For to give another 
 turn to the Psalmist's thought, would not the 
 divine lovingkindness be deprived of a part of 
 its legitimate praise if the present prayer of the 
 singer should be left unanswered ? He would 
 not be found in the land of the living at all. He 
 would be given over to the gloomy abode of the 
 dead ; and then the days of praising God's mercy 
 would once and for all be ended (ver. 5). It is 
 a sombre reflection, and prepares one for the 
 truly Oriental description of grief contained in 
 verses 6, 7. Not only did he set his bed afloat 
 with his unmeasured weeping, but he melted his 
 couch and wasted away his eyes until they 
 became bleared and dim like those of an old 
 
62 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 man. The experience was bitter in the extreme, 
 yet it proved to be the darkness that precedes the 
 dawn. It prepared the way for the sudden burst 
 of sunshine with which this penitential Psalm 
 concludes. 
 
 (3) The Divine Deliverance 
 As a flash of light, the conviction has come to 
 the man that Jehovah has heard his prayer. His 
 bodily disease is not yet lifted, the dark prison- 
 walls of hostility are not yet removed ; but a 
 whisper from the eternities has visited the man's 
 soul, and he knows that the hour of his deliver- 
 ance has already come. None of his detractors 
 are aware of the swift advent of the dawn, but the 
 voice of the dawn is already in his heart ; and he 
 can gaze at the hill-tops now being flushed with 
 the coming glory, and say, " The Lord hath heard 
 the voice of my weeping." 
 
 In other words, like all sanctified affliction, the 
 song of penitence has ended in the assurance of 
 God's covenant mercy. It began quite otherwise. 
 Like a mountain stream it was turbid and broken 
 at the first, but gradually it has calmed and 
 cleared as it flowed, until now, at the close, it loses 
 the voice of its weeping in the assurance of the 
 divine compassion, just as the flowing streamlet 
 is stilled in the fulness of the sea. 
 
Additional Notes and Examples 63 
 
64 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE IMPERFECT 
 
 Unlike the Perfect which expresses the idea 
 of completion, the Imperfect denotes events and 
 actions that are still in the act of becoming. 
 It is wonderfully elastic and life-like. Instead of 
 being fixed and impassive like our own prosaic 
 tense-specifications, it is capable of assuming any 
 form which may be impressed upon it by the will 
 of the speaker or by the exigencies of the context. 
 It is really action in mnovement, and therefore 
 presents a picture of surprising brilliancy and life. 
 At the root of all its shades of meaning is found 
 the idea of what is nascent or incipient. It 
 indicates an event or action that is about to take 
 place, or enter upon a course of practical realisa- 
 tion. Of. the use of a-vveirX'rjpovvro in Luke viii. 
 23 — not, "they were filed" (A.V.), but "were 
 filling " (R.V.) — the incipient imperfect bringing 
 into prominence the process which introduced, 
 and was preliminary to, the complete execution 
 
 of the act. By a slight expansion of this thought, 
 5 65 
 
66 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 the idea of incipiency may easily pass over into that 
 of recurrency. For what is ready to take place 
 is liable and likely to occur more than once ; and 
 thus the idea of reiteration is readily superinduced 
 upon the more limited signification of the imper- 
 fect. Gf. Judges vi. 5, where the marauding bands 
 of the Midianites " came up " (175J1.) — i-S; used to 
 come wp, season by season, to waste and pillage 
 the country. On the other hand, the idea of in- 
 cipiency might have led us in another direction — 
 not to the element of reiteration in the past or 
 present, but to the possibility of events and 
 actions in the still unrealised future. It is at 
 this point that the meaning of the imperfect 
 shades off into the idea of modality. For what 
 is ready to come to pass is also that which may 
 or can come to pass; and since this is frequently 
 characterised by an element of uncertainty, it may 
 come to express, especially after particles denoting 
 purpose and the like, what Greek and Latin 
 denote, not by the indicative which is the mood 
 of certainty, but by the subjunctive, the mood 
 of contingency. Deut. iv. 40, " Thou shalt keep 
 His statutes, and His commandments, . . . that 
 ihoumayestprolong{^'^'\^T\ \ya^) thy days upon 
 the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
 The incipient force of the action may develop in 
 
The Imperfect 67 
 
 both of these directions. It may assume the 
 sense of reiteration, or the no less significant 
 nuance of modality. And as these are the three 
 main uses of this peculiarly elastic form, we may 
 profitably gather a few typical examples illustra- 
 tive of each. 
 
 1. The Incipient Impekfect. 
 
 As nascent or egressive in its action, it presents 
 a vivid contrast to the Hebrew perfect. Seizing 
 upon the action while it is yet evolving, and not 
 after it has been brought to completion, it pictures 
 it to the mental eye with peculiar vividness and 
 power. And it does this in all the three time- 
 divisions in which the perfect also is employed. 
 Alike in the past, the present, and the future, it 
 emphasises the distinction between movement and 
 rest. Of. passages like Ex. xv. 5 ; Job iv. 5 ; 
 Gen. iii. 15, 19, and the 'BtAAq passim. 
 
 In the first of these, the event or action belongs 
 to the previous history of the Hebrews. But 
 instead of bringing the past into his own present, 
 the writer transports himself back to the scene in 
 question, and portrays the event in all its thrilling 
 grandeur as evolving and transpiring before his 
 eyes. "The deeps cover them" (^Q'^p^'?), not 
 " have covered them " (A.V.), but surround and 
 
68 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 engulf them in their whirling fyam, even while 
 the Hebrews standing upon the shore gaze on the 
 appalling havoc of the sea. It recalls the majestic 
 ode of the prophet Habakkuk in chap. iii. 3-15, 
 where, by the help of a similar " historical pre- 
 sent," the great deliverances of the past are 
 vividly depicted as an evolving and progressive 
 present : — 
 
 God Cometh (i^'l^^) from Teman, 
 And the Holy One from mount Paran ; 
 
 — and the sun and moon both withdraw their 
 shining, outshone by the brightness of his glitter- 
 ing spear. 
 
 In Job iv. 5, on the contrary, Eliphaz is pictur- 
 ing an action which is conceived as really taking 
 place in the present: — 
 
 Behold, thou hast instructed many, 
 
 But now it is come unto thee, and thou faintest ; 
 
 It toucheth (j^SiJlj thee, and thou art troubled. 
 
 Lit., it is touching thee — the incipient imperfect 
 depicting the disease of the patriarch as still run- 
 ning its course. Just as in Ps. ii. 2, we read : — 
 
 The kings of the earth set themselves, 
 
 where the imperfect most graphically describes 
 the rebel leaders as actually forming into line. 
 The use of the imperfect in future time is the 
 
The Imperfect 69 
 
 natural expansion of this latter idiom. The future 
 is emphatically to /MeWov, and therefore the idea 
 of incipiency is peculiarly applicable to it. 
 Instead of being regarded as finished, the con- 
 templated event has not as yet begun to embody 
 itself in practical realisation. The possibility, 
 however, of such a development is confidently 
 expected ; and thus innumerable instances are 
 found in Scripture where the future and imperfect 
 coincide. "It shall bruise thy head, and thou 
 shalt bruise his heel." " In the sweat of thy face 
 shalt thou eat bread." And so on. 
 
 As a practical illustration of incipient action, 
 but in the past, the preacher may turn to Deut. 
 xxxii. 10. By a kind oi prophetic imperfect (as 
 we may call it) the writer transports himself, not 
 into the future, but into the past, and pictures 
 Jehovah's dealings with the infant nation as a 
 progressive or historical present. 
 
 He finds him ('irTfrjiiJTJ']) in a desert land, 
 And in the waste howling wilderness ; 
 He encompasses him, he cares for him, 
 He keeps him as the apple of his eye. 
 
 The finding of Israel is not to be regarded as a 
 completed action in past time, like the perfect 
 ''fl^^ittS in Hos. ix. 10. It is the august begin- 
 ning of a divine and age-long discipline. It is the 
 
70 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 commencement of a process which, as paraphrased 
 in the LXX, is intended to make Israel, even in 
 the wilderness, " independent of outward circum- 
 stances " (avrdpKrjaev)} And therefore it includes 
 significant steps like these : — 
 
 (1) The finding of the lost (c/. Ps. cxix.. 176). 
 
 (2) The instructing (jiratSevco) of the ignorant. 
 
 (3) The shielding of the weak, or it may be, 
 
 the safeguarding of the precious. 
 This latter idea is suggested by the expressive 
 figure, " the apple (lit., the little man) of his eye.'' 
 The pronoun "his'' is sufficiently ambiguous to 
 apply either to God or man. For this reason, the 
 devout Sopherim, in their efforts to remove all 
 anthropomorphisms, did not deem it necessary to 
 add this passage to the other eighteen " correc- 
 tions " or " emendations of the scribes." In Zech. 
 ii. 12, on the other hand, the phrase " my eye " 
 was considered too bold an expression to apply to 
 the Holy One of Israel, and therefore it was 
 changed by these devout scholars into " his eye," 
 so as to admit of the same twofold reference. It 
 is probable, however, that the thought of the 
 scribe was somewhat deeper. He was thinking of 
 something both divine and human, and resolved 
 to retain the ambiguous expression because it was 
 capable of reflecting both. What is seen in the 
 ^ Gf. Lightfoot's note on aimipKaa in Phil. iv. 11. 
 
The Imperfect 71 
 
 eye of a man is not the image of the man himself, 
 but the I'lti^'^N — the tiny reflected image of the 
 observer. The eye itself may belong to the 
 creature, but the image, the apple, the pupil, is 
 the reflection of another. And as this twofold 
 conception flashed through the mind of the Sopher 
 or scribe, the ambiguous expression was allowed 
 to remain to express the complexity and deep 
 spiritual suggestiveness of the thought. Justly, 
 then, may one speak of the safeguarding of the 
 precious ; for when one is thus found, instructed 
 and kept, he becomes not simply avrdpKrjt;, " inde- 
 pendent of outward circumstances," but bears also 
 the image or far-off reflection of the Eternal, and 
 is " kept as the |'Hy^S<J of his eye." 
 
 2. The Frequentative Imperfect 
 
 It is only in present or past time that the 
 element of recurrency is to be found or expected. 
 In future events, the mind of the speaker is so 
 engaged with the possibility or imminence of the 
 first occurrence, that the need is not felt of going 
 beyond that point, and of facing the question 
 whether the contemplated action is to be repeated 
 or not. The mind is satisfied with the simple 
 element of futurity, or at most with the varied 
 modifications necessary to indicate mood. It is 
 
72 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 quite otherwise, however, with incipient action in 
 present or past time. In these the single act 
 may be distributed over an indefinite number of 
 possible or actual realisations; and the idea is 
 introduced, either in the form of a general maxim 
 or as a clearly expressed habit, that the principle 
 of reiteration in disposition or conduct is the fully 
 recognised fact. Alike in present or in past time, 
 we can speak of a frequentative imperfect. 
 
 In present time, for example, we have a passage 
 like Ex. xiii. 15, where the pious Israelite is 
 enjoined to instruct his children with respect to 
 the redemption of the first-born. He is to point 
 them back to the tragic experience of the Exodus, 
 and say, " The Lord slew all the first-born in the 
 land of Egypt, both the first-born of man, and the 
 first-born of beast : therefore I sacrifice to the 
 Lord all that openeth the womb, being males ; 
 but all the first-born of my sons / redeem " 
 (rr^Diffl, lit., am in the habit of redeeming). The 
 idiom, as thus defined, ought never to be neglected 
 in the practical work of exposition. How much 
 more realistic the imagery becomes, when we read, 
 as in Isa. v. 11, " Woe unto them that are in the 
 habit o/ rising up early, that they may follow strong 
 drink " ; or when we turn to the picture of the 
 righteous man in Ps. i. 2, and render, " And in his 
 
The Im/per/ect 73 
 
 law doth he meditate, or, is in the habit of medi- 
 tating (nSrT^) day and night." Alas ! the practice 
 of backsliden Israel in the time of Hosea was 
 altogether different. "My people ask (tUu?"]) 
 counsel at their stock . . . and burn incense upon 
 the hills . . . therefore your daughters commit 
 whoredom, and your brides comm^it adultery" 
 (iv. 12-13). This was something more than the 
 completed act or moral condition denoted by the 
 perfect : it was the succession of acts or reiterated 
 occurrences by which the moral condition had 
 been reached. And while it is not always possible 
 or desirable to reproduce this distinction in 
 English, especially when the two verbal forms are 
 found side by side, it is in every way desirable to 
 keep the original difference in mind, and allow it, 
 wherever practicable, to enter into the work of 
 exposition. Gf. Ps. xxxviii. 11 : — 
 
 My lovers and my friends stand (imperfect) aloof from 
 
 my plague ; 
 And my kinsmen stomd (perfect) afar off. 
 
 His daily visitors treat him as a leper. They 
 make him feel by their repeated visits that a real 
 gulf of sentiment has suddenly opened between 
 him and them. While his kinsmen, like Job's 
 three friends, have only approached him from a 
 distance ; but biased in mind, because of precon- 
 
74 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 ceived opinions, they also stand, even on this first 
 visit, and affect to be dismayed at the spectacle 
 of his wretchedness. Contrast the language of 
 the first penitential Psalm, where the perfects 
 express the Psalmist's completed state of ex- 
 haustion, while the imperfects reproduce his 
 repeated acts. 
 
 I am wem-y (perfect) with my groaning ; 
 
 Every night make I my bed to swim ; 
 
 I ivater (imperfect) my couch with my tears. 
 
 (Ps. vi. 7.) 
 
 And may not a similar distinction be found at 
 Job iii. 17 ?— 
 
 There the wicked cease (perf.) from troubling ; 
 And there the weary be at rest (imperf.). 
 
 The former conception is negative, and therefore 
 completed ; but the latter is positive, and there- 
 fore continuous and progressive. The being at 
 rest is not necessarily the idea of cessation. It 
 is a positive conception, and big with the pro- 
 mise of what may yet be. Like a seed-corn, it 
 will grow as religion grows; and there may 
 spring from it in the coming years the doctrine 
 of a blessed immortality. The patriarch himself 
 did not see this ; but who can fail to feel that 
 in this graphic interchange of tenses we have 
 an element of animation and a flash of spiritual 
 
The Imperfect 75 
 
 insight which we can ill aiford to lose. It may 
 be simpler and less pedantic to render both verbs 
 by the English present ; but the difference in the 
 original is always to be noted, and allowed to 
 enter into the mind of the preacher as an essential 
 element in his thinking. 
 
 Judges vi. 5 has already been cited as a suit- 
 able illustration of frequentative action in past 
 time ; but the preacher will find an equally in- 
 teresting example at Isa. i. 21. A profound 
 moral declension is depicted in this verse ; but 
 as the imperfect ^h^, or the concluding parti- 
 ciple C^Jl-^^D, so forcibly reminds us, it is not 
 so much a contrast between two single acts, as 
 a comparison between two courses of action which 
 can only be described as habitual. Eighteousness 
 used to lodge (lit., pass the night) within the 
 city ; but now assassins (an intensive piel parti- 
 ciple = whose who murder by profession). A 
 similar degeneration is suggested by the parti- 
 cipial form n3Z3t^2 in the former half of the 
 verse. She that was characterised by faithful- 
 ness has become one who, like the assassin, is 
 a wrongdoer by profession. " The faithful city 
 has become an harlot ! " While, to complete the 
 picture, we are pointed to a similar result by the 
 teaching of an emended accentuation. Common 
 
76 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 editions, like Theile's, place a Zaqeph (instead of 
 B'bhia) on the term " judgment," as if this were 
 the chief logical pause in Silluq's clause (c/. the 
 semicolon in the A.V.). But the parallelism of 
 the sense is entirely ruined by this arrangement. 
 The antithesis in the first half of the verse is 
 between faithful and harlot, and in the second 
 half between justice (doubly expressed) and high- 
 handed oppression. Consequently the main 
 logical pause is not to be placed on "judgment," 
 as in our English version, but between the 
 acknowledged rectitude of Israel's past, and the 
 unwonted violence and unrighteousness of her 
 present. So that the whole verse may be arranged 
 in the form of a tetrastich. Thus — 
 
 How has become an harlot, 
 
 The city that was faithful ! 
 
 Full of judgment, righteousness used to lodge in her ; 
 
 But now assassins. 
 
 The passage furnishes a striking illustration of 
 the development of moral evil. 
 
 (1) Unfaithfulness towards God (first couplet). 
 
 (2) Unrighteousness towards man (second couplet). 
 
 (3) The whole passing into a deep-seated moral 
 
 condition through the influence of reitera- 
 tion. The continually repeated act of the 
 will has become the habit of the life. 
 
The Imperfect 77 
 
 3. The Imperfect op Modality. 
 
 In future events, as already indicated, it is 
 incipiency rather than recurrency that is the 
 dominant idea. The thought of incipiency, how- 
 ever, is wonderfully elastic. It is capable of 
 taking any direction or of assuming any form that 
 may be impressed upon it from without. And 
 as the idea of time is not inherent in the tense 
 at all, it can be used with the different nuances 
 of permission, capacity, command, volition, and 
 contingency in all the three time-divisions of 
 ordinary speech. It may be expressed by may 
 or might, can and could, will and would, shall 
 and should, and so on, according to the will of the 
 speaker, the subject of the verbal action, or the 
 sense of the context. Job xl. 25, " Ccmsf thou 
 draw out Leviathan with a fish hook ? " Jer. 
 xxiv. 2, " Figs, which could not be eaten, they 
 were so bad." Job xiv. 21, " His sons come 
 (better, may come) to honour, and he knoweth it 
 not." Isa. xl. 30, "Even the youths shall faint 
 (or, m,ay faint) and be weary." Gen. ii. 19, 
 " And brought them unto the man to see what 
 he would call them." 1 Sam. xxii. 22, " And 
 David said, I knew on that day, when Doeg the 
 Edomite was there, that he would surely tell 
 Saul." 
 
78 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 Similarly, after particles expressing purpose 
 and the like. Gen. xii. 13, " Say, I pray thee, 
 thou art my sister : that (]^u7) it may be well 
 with me for thy sake." Job vi. 2, " Oh that 
 (yf^) my vexation were but weighed, And my 
 calamity laid in the balances together." Isa. i. 
 18, " Though (Qi^) your sins be as scarlet, they 
 shall be as white as snow; though they be red 
 like crimson, they shall be as wool." 
 
 Or as a practical illustration at the close of this 
 chapter, we may turn to the use of the Imperfect 
 after "OM^ in Amos v. 15, " Hate the evil, and love 
 the good, and establish judgment in the gate : 
 peradventure Jehovah, the God of hosts, Tnay be 
 gracious unto the remnant of Joseph." What is 
 the meaning of this expressive particle ? The 
 rendering of the LXX — ottws eKe^^a-y — is not diffi- 
 cult to follow. Interpreting the first half of the 
 verse as a statement of the conditions, on the 
 fulfilment of which the favour of God would 
 assuredly be granted, they have introduced a final 
 or telic particle (like the IJ^tsb = ottcb? in Deut. iv. 
 40) to indicate the design or purpose of the pre- 
 ceding acts. '' Hate the evil, and love the good, 
 . . in order that Jehovah, the God of hosts, 
 may be gracious." But was this the thought of 
 Amos, the herdman of Tekoa ? Did he wish to 
 
The Imperfect 79 
 
 teach that, even at the eleventh hour, all that 
 Israel had to do was to practise private rectitude 
 and civil justice in order to wipe out the record 
 of her evil past ? Or did another consideration 
 flash through his mind, and instinctively modify 
 and mould his language ? — that Israel's sin being 
 so obdurate, and persisted in so long, the con- 
 ditions specified might not be sufficient to wipe 
 out the unhallowed past, but that a broader basis 
 for the exercise of forgiving love must be sought, 
 not in man, but in the divine mercy itself. True, 
 the clemency of love must be consistent with 
 the righteousness of law ; and this suggests 
 the further thought that in the coming purifi- 
 cation, only a " remnant " of the nation may 
 survive and outlast the storm. For this reason, 
 the utmost that the prophet will allow him- 
 self to affirm is the " peradventure " of a pro- 
 found humility — a word that leaves the way 
 open for all that the fuller light of a Messianic 
 fulfilment may yet bring to man — a word, at 
 least, which paves the way for the final reconcili- 
 ation of justice and mercy, when the claims of 
 righteousness having been fully satisfied, mercy 
 will open her alabaster cruse, and bind up the 
 wounds of the faithful remnant. Who shall say 
 that the instinct of the punctuator was at fault 
 when he pointed this suggestive particle with an 
 
80 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 emphatic R'bhia (''^Ib*) ? The whole verse sug- 
 gests a threefold division : — 
 
 (1) A call to repentance (whole verse). 
 
 (2) The human fruits meet for repentance — 
 
 (a) Private rectitude ; (b) Civic justice 
 (first half). 
 
 (3) The assurance of a divine forgiveness, which 
 
 is compatible with eternal righteousness 
 (second half). 
 " Peradventure Jehovah, the God of hosts, 
 may be gracious unto the remnant of 
 Joseph." 
 
Additional Notes and Exa/mples 81 
 
82 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PARTICIPLE 
 
 Like the two tenses already considered, the par- 
 ticiple indicates the character of the action 
 without fixing the date. It may, therefore, be 
 treated as a kind of third tense-form by the side 
 of the Perfect and Imperfect. In a variety of 
 instances, indeed, in which stress is to be laid on 
 the continuance of the action, the participle 
 admits of being used where neither of the two 
 special tenses would be available. Of. Ps. xxxii. 1 : 
 "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven 
 i^'W^), whose sin is covered ('"ID?)." The 
 participle in this passage is remarkably sugges- 
 tive and effective. It depicts not simply a state 
 of forgiveness, resulting from a completed action 
 in past time (present-perfect), nor a succession of 
 definite acts of forgiveness, presenting the appear- 
 ance of reiteration (present-imperfect) : it is the 
 picture of a man who has the blessing of forgive- 
 ness continuously exercised upon him — a bless- 
 
84 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 ing pressing everywhere for entrance, like the air 
 we breathe, and always seeking to incite and 
 invigorate the spirit with the promise and potency 
 of life. The descriptive power of the participle 
 is really unique. The narrative of the Old Testa- 
 ment may owe much of its life and variety to the 
 use of the bare imperfect ; but the conclusion 
 of Canon Driver is fully borne out by the facts, 
 that " in many of the instances the truthful and 
 animated representation of particular scenes is 
 enhanced by the appropriate use of the par- 
 ticiple." 
 
 1. The Character of its Action 
 
 In defining its particular nuance the par- 
 ticiple has to be sharply distinguished from the 
 closely allied frequentative imperfect. The par- 
 ticiple prolongs an action, the imperfect multi- 
 plies it. " The participle is a line, the imperfect 
 a succession of points." ^ Both the river and the 
 man may reach the sea ; but the one does so by 
 an uninterrupted flow, the other by a succession 
 of steps. Mere continuance, in the sense of dura- 
 tion, is never expressed by the imperfect — that is 
 the function of the participle. Cf. Isa. vi. 2, 
 where the two forms are found side by side. 
 "Above him stood the seraphim (participle, 
 1 Davidson's " Hebrew Syntax,'' p. 130. 
 
The Pa/iticiple 85 
 
 were stcmding — i.e., duriDg the whole time of 
 vision) : each one had six wings ; with twain he 
 covered his face (imperfect, nsed to cover), and 
 with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he 
 did fly (lit., used to fly, as when he went forth 
 on repeated occasions to fulfil Adonai's behests)." 
 The distinction, as thus expressed, is full of 
 interest to the expositor, though it is not always 
 reflected in the English translation. See Ps. 
 xcv. 10: — 
 
 Forty years long was I grieved with that generation. 
 
 Does this mean that Jehovah was grieved con- 
 timuoudy throughout the entire period of the 
 wilderness journey, or simply that He was dis- 
 pleased, at intervals, as Israel persisted in falling 
 into sin ? There is no such ambiguity in the 
 original. The term used is tO^pi^, a frequenta- 
 tive imperfect, and this is decisive for the 
 principle of reiteration. On repeated occasions 
 during those forty years, Jehovah had been 
 tempted to swear in His wrath that Israel would 
 not enter into His rest ; for, despite the fact that 
 He had dealt with them as the people of His 
 pasture and the sheep of His band, they had 
 neither listened to His voice nor set their hearts 
 upon His ways. Reiteration and not continuation 
 is the Psalmist's present thought. 
 
86 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 For an equally instructive passage the preacher 
 may analyse the teaching of Ps. xix. 1-2 : — 
 
 (1) The glory declared by the heavens. 
 
 (2) The way in which that glory is declared. 
 The glory itself is not simply the flashing of 
 
 light, the blending of colours, the vastness of 
 space, and the immeasurableness of distance — 
 the glory, in a word, of the mechanician who 
 dreams of size, and weight, and movement. The 
 great Creator is not a mechanician. God is a 
 spirit, and the glory stamped upon the heavens 
 is like Himself — spiritual. What, after all, is the 
 law of gravitation but the law of mutual co-oper- 
 ation for the benefit of the whole ? The moon 
 cannot say to the earth, "I have no need of 
 thee ; " or the earth to the sun, " I have no need 
 of thee.'' They are dependent on one another; 
 and because each has accepted the law of a 
 common service, a beautifully arranged cosmos is 
 the result. That is the glory which is stamped 
 upon the heavens — the illuminating fact that the 
 entire universe is kept in equilibrium through 
 each part being in subjection to the attainment 
 of a common good. And that, express it as we 
 may, is the law of the spirit of God. " By His 
 spirit the heavens are garnished " (Job xxvi. 13) ; 
 and the heavens declare His " glory." 
 
 The way in which this glory is declared is 
 
The Participle . 87 
 
 aptly expressed by the participle. It knows no 
 interruption or break. It goes on and on con- 
 tinuously. The stars never cease to shine ; for 
 that is the law of their being. But that is not 
 the law of the human. Man does not shine and 
 sing because he cannot help it. He can help 
 it. He is a star that may cease to shine. He 
 has the power of saying "no" to bis Maker. 
 Hence the rule of the participle does not apply 
 to him. He must pass on to the next verse, and 
 note the full force of the imperfect : — 
 
 Day unto day uttereth speech, 
 
 And night unto night showeth knowledge. 
 
 That is the principle which he obeys. He shows 
 forth the glory of God, not by involuntary con- 
 tinuation, but by voluntary repetition. And let 
 no one say that this is less than nature. Con- 
 scious reiteration is not less than unconscious 
 continuity. The part played by man is the out- 
 come of deliberate choice ; and though there may 
 be effort in the choice — much suppression of self 
 and resolute determination to walk in the path of 
 duty — the task will become easier as he advances 
 in the work. The repeated effort becomes habit, 
 and habit passes into second nature, until, like 
 the star after all, the glorifying of God becomes 
 the law of his being. Voluntary repetition of the 
 act has become involuntary continuity. 
 
88 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 2. The Fixing of the Date 
 
 This, as in the tenses generally, must be de- 
 duced from the context. The scene may be laid 
 in any one of the three time-divisions — past, 
 present, or future — but the precise temporal re- 
 ference can only be determined by the connection 
 of the whole discourse. In the following instances, 
 the allusion is clearly to the past. " Now Hannah, 
 she spake," lit., was speaking, or kept speakvng, 
 " in her heart," — viz., all the time that Eli watched 
 the moving of her lips (1 Sam. i. 13). " And the 
 Lord appeared unto him by the oaks of Mamre, as 
 he sat," lit., and he was sitting (iCJ'^ M1!T)), " in 
 the tent door in the heat of the day " (Gen. xviii. 
 1). Or Isa. vi. 1, " I saw the Lord sitting upon a 
 throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled 
 the temple," lit., was filling, all the time Adonai 
 was seated. In these and similar instances, the 
 writer is delineating past events, and the par- 
 ticiple is rightly regarded as a descriptive or 
 historical imperfect. In other passages, however, 
 the scene depicted is as clearly to be laid in the 
 present. Ps. iii. 2, " Many there be which say of 
 my soul, there is no help for him in God" — 
 better, are saying, the unceasing hostility of 
 backbiting tongues being suitably represented by 
 
The Participle 89 
 
 the participle. Gen. iv. 10, " The voice of thy 
 brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground " 
 — lit., is crying, not simply at the moment of 
 speaking, but continuously, calling day and night 
 for retribution. Or Deut. iv. 1, "And now, O 
 Israel, hearken unto the statutes . . . which I 
 teach you "^-better, which I am, teaching you, 
 viz., throughout the present series of addresses — 
 that ye may do them in the land " whither ye go 
 in to possess it " (ver. 5), lit., are going in, the 
 tribes of Israel being represented as actually on 
 the march, and approaching at length the border 
 of their inheritance. While to complete the cycle 
 of time-specification, there is no lack of instances 
 where the participle is legitimately referred to 
 the future. 1 Sam. xx. 36, " Find now the arrows 
 which I shoot " — lit., am about to shoot ('^p!lt^ 
 n^.'iD) ', for at the time of speaking, not a single 
 shaft had as yet left the string. Gen. vi. 17, 
 " And I, behold, I do bring the flood of waters 
 upon the earth " — better, I am bringing or am 
 about to bring, the participle, like the fut. 
 instans. representing the action as incipient, or 
 as absolutely certain in its approach. Or Isa. iii. 
 1, where the same idiom is specially applicable to 
 the assured purpose of Jehovah. " Behold, the 
 Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from 
 
90 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 Jerusalem . . . stay and staff" — i.e., is about to 
 take away; for the judgment, though still future, 
 was so near at hand, that it was ready, even while 
 they lingered, to burst forth upon the city. 
 
 Or the student may turn to Isa. vii. 14, and 
 investigate the much explained passage — "Be- 
 hold, a young woman -is with child (R.V.)> ^^^ '>'^ 
 about to bear (fut. participle) a son, and shall 
 call His name Immanuel." The participle tXlh^ 
 is best understood of the prophet's own age. The 
 event is not only near at hand : it is depicted 
 as already in process of being realised. It refers, 
 in the first instance, to a definite, verifiable event 
 in connection with the Syro-Ephraimitish war. 
 Certainly the king himself was in need of a 
 sign of present deliverance. Defeated and dis- 
 mayed before the combined attack of Rezin and 
 Pekah, his 'heart was moved, and the heart of 
 his people, as the trees of the forest are moved 
 with the wind (ver. 2). Isaiah, however, is sent 
 with a promise of divine succour. " Thus saith 
 the Lord God, it shall not stand, neither shall it 
 come to pass" (ver. 7). Let Ahaz but turn to 
 the Lord and ask a sign from Him, and these two 
 smoking firebrands would speedily be quenched. 
 But no ; the King was already hankering after 
 the rising power of Assyria (c/. verses 17, 18) ; 
 
The Participle 91 
 
 and therefore he began to quibble and temporise. 
 He would not presume to ask any pledge from 
 Jehovah, lest he should be found to tempt the 
 Lord his God. Not presume ! the prophet im- 
 mediately burst forth, not in words of promise, 
 as is generally understood, but in accents of 
 awe-inspiring doom : " Therefore the Lord Him- 
 self shall give you a sign; behold, the young 
 woman i'il'Dh^'n, probably the young king's 
 newly-wedded wife) is with child, and is about 
 to bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." 
 In other words, in short-sighted gratitude for the 
 brief respite to be won through Assyria, the royal 
 house will flatter itself with the idea that Jehovah, 
 the God of Israel, has been with His people after 
 all ; but if He be present in that ill-starred 
 alliance it will be in the sense of a divine mani- 
 festation in judgment — a judgment whose fiery 
 energy will lick up the life-blood of the nation. 
 For before the child shall know how to refuse the 
 evil and choose the good the whole land shall be 
 converted into jungle. The disaster would even 
 surpass the disruption of the tribes (ver. 17). 
 
 And is the prophecy exhausted by this his- 
 torical allusion to the times of the Syro- 
 Ephraimitish war ? Emphatically we answer no. 
 We have : — 
 
92 Seronons in Syntax 
 
 (1) The meaning of the prediction for Ahaz. 
 
 (2) Its significance for Old Testament prophecy. 
 
 (3) Its application to the divine child in the era 
 
 of New Testament fulfilment. 
 To the first, it might be nothing more than a 
 message of doom ; but to the second (to Isaiah, 
 for example, with " Shear-jashub " by his side) 
 it was a proof of the divine mercy (ver. 3) ; while, 
 to the third, it meant the divine ratification of 
 both ideas — the theophanic birth of the pre- 
 existent Christ,^ who alike in judgment and in 
 mercy is Immanuel, God-with-us (Matt. i. 23). 
 Hence to afiirm, as some do, that a contemporary 
 reference to the time of Ahaz precludes all allu- 
 sion to the Messianic fulfilment ; or conversely, 
 that because of this higher signification a con- 
 temporary reference is not to be admitted at all, 
 is about equal in perverseness, and fails to do 
 justice either to its original basis in history, or 
 to its subsequent development in religion. The 
 preacher, on the contrary, will prefer to view the 
 matter from all sides — historically, prophetically, 
 teleologically — and realise as he does so that the 
 profound appellation given to the promised child 
 admits, at least, of a threefold interpretation — viz., 
 that God is with us — (1) in judgment, (2) im, 
 chastisem,ent, (3) in salvation. Alike in the 
 
 1 See Briggs, " The Study of Holy Scripture," p. 526. 
 
The Participle 93 
 
 discipline of history, in the purifying of the 
 faithful remnant, and in the effecting of a world- 
 wide redemption, the God of Israel is a covenant- 
 keeping God : He is Immanuel, God-with-us. 
 
 3. The Stkengthening of its Particular 
 
 Nuance. 
 
 In at least two different ways the idea con- 
 veyed by the participle is rendered more em- 
 phatic and conspicuous. We have (1) the addition 
 of the substantive verb UTT, and (2) an excep- 
 tional or inverted grouping of the words. It 
 seems precarious to find in the first of these 
 modes a sign of decadence in the language ; for 
 while later writers use the idiom with the utmost 
 frequency, it is not by any means uncommon or 
 unsuitable in the earlier books. Of. Gen. iv. 17, 
 1 Sam. ii. 11, with Ps. cxxii. 2. "And he ivas 
 building a city (iliiil ''tl^l — i.e., the city was in 
 course of erection when the event took place), 
 and he called the name of the city after the name 
 of his son, Enoch." "And Elkanah went to 
 Bamah to his house. And the child did ininister 
 unto the Lord before Eli the priest" — lit., was 
 
 rrvmisteriTig (tT\^12 T\'V(), or continued to 
 
94 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 minister, all the time he remained at Shiloh. 
 Similarly in Ps. cxxii. 2 : — 
 
 Standing are our feet 
 
 Within thy gates, Jerusalem. 
 
 — not "shall stand" (A.V.), but "are standing" 
 (B..V.) — the toilsome pilgrimage (c/. Ps. Ixxxiv. 
 5, 6) being, for the time, ended, and the pilgrims 
 enjoying the rest and worship within the city of 
 the great King. In addition to the substantive 
 verb, the latter passage illustrates the second 
 mode of giving prominence to the verbal action — 
 viz., by an exceptional or inverted grouping of 
 the words. As a rule the subject precedes the 
 participle, but occasionally, for the sake of 
 emphasis, the opposite order is adopted. Gen. 
 xviii. 17, " Shall I hide from Abraham that which 
 I do?" — ''Jbi (iDD^il — i.e., shall anything oi con- 
 eealTnent characterise my dealings with Abraham, 
 whom I have chosen as an organ of revelation ?■ 
 Or Num. xi. 29 — "Art thou jealous for my 
 
 sake?" (nipt* i^3j2J?il). Is it not rather envy 
 for your own ? No true servant of God can 
 be jealous at such a prospect. I would have all 
 the Lord's people to be prophets. 
 
 Or for a practical illustration suggested by 
 this second way of emphasising the reading, the 
 preacher may turn to Jeremiah's inaugural vision 
 
The Participle 95 
 
 (chap. i. 11-12). "Jeremiah, what seest thou 
 (nWh nJn«)? And I said, I see a rod of 
 an almond tree (a Ipttj). Then said the Lord 
 unto me. Thou hast well seen : for I am watch- 
 ing (i^b;^ "Ti?.^) over My word to perform it." 
 In this passage, both ways of grouping the words 
 are found side by side. But what is the mean- 
 ing of the instructive play upon words, "TpCJ 
 and ^pi25 ? Canon Driver has suggested, in his 
 note on Amos viii. 1,^ that it may teach us some- 
 thing respecting the genesis and nature of visions. 
 The thought of Jehovah's watching (ipCJ) pro- 
 duces, by association of sounds, the image of 
 the almond tree (fp.ttJ) ; just as the term Vp, 
 an "end," brings before the prophetic gaze of 
 Amos the picture of the basket of summer-fruit 
 (V?l2)- ^^^ connection, however, as thus traced, 
 is too psychological for the simple rural life of 
 Tekoa or Anathoth. It is the creation of the 
 class-room rather than the product of the open 
 air. No doubt a correspondence does exist 
 between the two closely allied terms ; but it is 
 far more natural to suppose that the spiritual 
 application was suggested by the beautiful image 
 
 1 Cambridge Bible. 
 
96 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 than to fall back on the assumption that an 
 inward spiritual impulse gave birth to the striking 
 metaphor. Verses 4-10 show us the young 
 prophet waiting in his native village for the 
 divine message which was to send him forth as 
 a destroyer and builder up of nations. If we may 
 read between the lines, it was with no small 
 measure of impatience that he was awaiting the 
 Divine summons. This is the meaning of his 
 vision. Looking over one of the gardens at 
 Anathoth, about the close of winter, his eye was 
 arrested by one of the first, sure signs of return- 
 ing Spring — the rod-like twigs of the almond tree 
 covered with its fair white blossoms. The rest 
 of nature seemed to be asleep ; but there, true to 
 its Hebrew name, the almond tree had awaked 
 (l(2tt5, to awake). And as he stood and gazed 
 at the beautiful object, a voice within spake and 
 gave him the interpretation. The awakening 
 shrub was simply a picture of Him who neither 
 slumbers nor sleeps. Jehovah, the God of Israel, 
 was waiting, watching, and ready to act, even 
 though there was no sign among the nations of 
 the coming political upheaval (ver. 10). This is 
 the force of the expressive participle, "/ am 
 watching." The prophet might only gaze for a 
 moment on the beautiful flowers of the almond 
 
The Participle 97 
 
 tree ; but when is there an instant in the history 
 of Israel that the God of their fathers does not 
 watch over the fulfilment of His promise ? Hence 
 a suitable division of the subject would be : — 
 
 (1) A waiting prophet. 
 
 (2) A nature-parable. 
 
 (3) A divine worker. 
 
 "/ arn watching over My word to perform it.'' 
 
98 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
Additional Notes cmd Examples 99 
 
100 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE HEBREW MOODS 
 
 The idea of mood has been variously defined. It 
 is the "mode" or manner in which any given 
 action may be regarded, or the verbal form in 
 which the mental attitude of the speaker may be 
 expressed. The speaker can throw into his 
 manner of address the whole weight of his sub- 
 jective feelings and desires; and inasmuch as 
 these (like everything personal) vary greatly both 
 in degree and kind, there arises a multitude of 
 subjective moods, differing from one another, as 
 the feelings imparted by personal sympathy un- 
 ceasingly ebb and flow. Not that any language 
 has succeeded perfectly in coining forms of ex- 
 pression for all the shades of meaning suggested 
 by these unceasing fluctuations. A great deal 
 must be left to the intonation of the speaker, and 
 to the character and drift of the whole discourse. 
 As in the case of the Hebrew Tenses, so now in 
 the treatment of the Hebrew moods, the tone of 
 the context, and not so much the form of the 
 
 101 
 
102 
 
 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 verb, is the determining factor. Cf. Amos viL 12, 
 where the imperfect form b^l^^ "^"^^ ^® trans- 
 lated as an imperative. " O thou seer, go, flee 
 thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat 
 bread, and prophesy there." 
 
 Even in the Semitic languages, however, we 
 have sundry variations of the verbal form, which 
 correspond in part to the several moods of classical 
 Greek. In Arabic, for instance, the imperfect 
 tense possesses no fewer than four model forms, 
 each marked by its own termination, and serving 
 as the indicative, subjunctive, jussive, and energetic 
 moods, whilst the imperative has at least two 
 distinct forms, the simple and the energetic. 
 Thus from qatala ( = h'Qp) we get as 1st pers. sing, 
 imperfect : — 
 
 Indie. 
 'aqtulu 
 
 Subj. 
 'aqtula 
 
 Jussive. 
 'aqtul 
 
 Energetic. 
 'aqtulan (or, -anna) 
 
 Hebrew has not preserved so faithfully these 
 original Semitic forms — if they really did exist in 
 the primitive speech, from which both Arabic and 
 Hebrew have collaterally descended — and yet even 
 here there are several distinct traces of them. 
 There is no special form for the subjunctive as 
 distinguished from the indicative, but there are 
 
The Hebrew Moods 103 
 
 both jussive and energetic forms ; and alike in 
 verbal inflection and in the colouring of the con- 
 text, it can convey in the liveliest manner the 
 mental attitude of the speaker, and the various 
 shades of thought and feeling expressed by the 
 Indo-European moods. In Chapters VIII.-X. we 
 shall deal with three of the most important forms — 
 viz., the imperative, the jussive, and the cohorta- 
 tive, but before coming to these, and in illustration 
 of our remark that a great deal must depend on 
 the nature of the context, the preacher will find a 
 suggestive alteration introduced by the E.V. in 
 Prov. i. 5. 
 
 In the A.V. the verbs are translated as simple 
 futures — " will hear," " shall attain " — but the 
 unity of the paragraph (vers. 2-6), which deals 
 with the design of the whole book, is thereby 
 broken into two. The tone of the context, no less 
 than this unity of subject, demands another 
 rendering of the present text ; and the R.V. is 
 undoubtedly correct in treating the various verbal 
 forms as subjunctive. 
 
 That the wise man may heOfV, and increase in learning ; 
 And that the man of understanding may attain unto 
 sound counsels. 
 
 The design of the Book of Proverbs is to teach 
 wisdom — i.e., the sowing of good seed into prepared 
 soil — persuaded that where this is neglected, the 
 
104 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 whole life is in danger of running to waste. But 
 this means — 
 
 (1.) The Seed of Instruction for the Young 
 
 Gf. verses 2, 4. Instruction implies correction 
 or discipline (LXX iraihela) ; for, as Trench 
 remarks in his Synonyms, " all effectual instruc- 
 tion for the sinful children of men includes and 
 implies chastening, or, as we are accustomed to 
 say, out of a sense of the same truth, 'correc- 
 tion.' " 1 How important then must early hus- 
 bandry be ! The sooner it is commenced, the less 
 the element of correction will be required. 
 
 (2.) The Seed of Practical Efficiency for 
 THE Wise 
 
 Gf. especially " wise dealing " (ver. 3), and 
 " sound counsels " (ver. 5). The Hebrew word for 
 " counsels " has reference to the right steering of 
 a ship (from 7111, a rope, cf. 7in, a sailor — i.e., 
 a rope-puller) — an allusion which is preserved in 
 the LXX KvBepvqa-iv, and in the Vulgate guher- 
 nacula : and may be interpreted as " skill and 
 facility in the management of life " (Lange). 
 Consequently, in the second half of verse 3 it con- 
 sists of righteousness, judgment, and equity. 
 Righteousness, the inner principle that regulates 
 1 New Testament Synonyms, p. 105. 
 
The Hebrew Moods 105 
 
 the whole course of action, judgment, the same 
 principle embodied in actual life, and equity (or 
 plur. equities), the same principle wrought out in 
 particular cases. 
 
 (3.) The Seed or Subtilty for the Simple 
 
 Ver. 4. This is the flower of the other two, 
 for both words are here used in a good sense. 
 The simple are the single-hearted, not double- 
 minded (James i. 8), those without fold in their 
 character, the sincere or transparent, like 
 Nathanael, in whom there was " no guile." Still, 
 if such are not to be taken advantage of by an 
 unscrupulous world, they need the wisdom of the 
 serpent no less than the harmlessness of the dove — 
 i.e., subtilty. In fine, they are to follow the 
 example, not of Nathanael, but of Nathanael's 
 Lord — the Lamb of God, and yet the lAon of the 
 tribe of Judah. 
 
106 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE IMPERATIVE 
 
 The action, in this case, is not stated simply, as 
 in the indicative, but brought immediately before 
 a second person in the form of a command or 
 request. And since the personal sufEx is not 
 always needed in so direct and personal a state- 
 ment, it is dropped altogether or reduced to the 
 shortest possible form. Like the vocative in the 
 noun, the imperative is the most curt and abrupt 
 mood in the conjugation of the verb ; and assum- 
 ing as it does the character of a mere exclama- 
 tion, it is found almost always at the beginning 
 of the clause, as "1J2S Ty? — " Oo say to them, 
 Return ye to your tents " (Deut. v. 27). It is 
 the briefest and most emphatic expression of the 
 desire of the speaker that something should be 
 done. In the suggestive terminology of Ewald, 
 it is " the highest degree of the voluntative." 
 
 1. The Simple Imperative. 
 
 Viewed in this way, there are two main uses of 
 the simple imperative that are full of interest 
 
 107 
 
108 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 to the expositor. (1) In animated descriptions 
 of the future it is an appropriate and sub- 
 jective expression of the certainty of the event. 
 The speaker, in other words, moves forward in 
 thought to the scene itself, and beholding the 
 stirring events evolving before his eyes, he ad- 
 dresses himself to the actors ideally present in 
 the abrupt, impassioned accents of command. 
 Cf. Ps. ex. 2 :— 
 
 The Lord shall send forth the rod of thy strength out of 
 Zion : 
 
 Rule thou \TTXy in the midst of thine enemies. 
 
 Standing in thought at the actual moment 
 of fulfilment, and vividly realising the nature 
 of the divine interposition, the Psalmist calls 
 upon the theocratic king to assume his sover- 
 eignty, and fearlessly to exercise his power. 
 Similarly in Isaiah's promise to King Hezekiah 
 that the dreaded advance of Sennacherib would 
 not be permitted to endanger Jerusalem. " This 
 shall be a sign unto thee : ye shall eat this year 
 that which groweth of itself, and in the second 
 year that which springeth of the same ; and in 
 the third year" — as if the fulness had already 
 come, and the prophet were standing in Spring- 
 time beside the bursting sacks of the sower — 
 " Sow ye, and reap ; for thus saith the Lord con- 
 cerning the king of Assyria ... by the way that 
 
The Imperative 109 
 
 he came, by the same shall he return, aind he 
 shall not come into this city, saith the Lord " (Isa. 
 xxxvii. 30 _^.). Even in a statement like Job v. 22, 
 the same expressive idiom ought to be admitted. 
 The phrase employed by the poet is really a com- 
 Tnavd (K"1^]^"7^^) ; and though one may feel, 
 at first, that it is somewhat out of place in this 
 passage, being nothing more than the nervous 
 and energetic expression of what in prose would 
 be, "thou needest not be afraid," we have only 
 to suppose that Eliphaz, in his picture of the 
 righteous man, has moved forward in spirit to the 
 depicted scene, to realise that the idea of command 
 is no more inappropriate here than in the instances 
 already adduced — " Of the beasts of the field, be 
 not thou afraid." It is the graphic use of the 
 simple imperative interjected in animated descrip- 
 tions of the future. See also 1 Sam. x. 7, Isa. Ixv. 18. 
 (2) A second usage which ought not to be over- 
 looked by the careful student is the case of two 
 imperatives standing in the same construction 
 and connected by the simple conjunctive vav. 
 In this formula, according to the generally 
 accepted view, the first imperative expresses an 
 act or condition which carries with it the second 
 as a consequence. It is an idiom which repre- 
 sents in the briefest possible form the syntactical 
 
110 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 relations of conditional or consequential proposi- 
 tions. Gen. xlii. 18 — " This do, and live." The 
 living is dependent on the doing ; and therefore 
 the English rendering may be replaced by either 
 of the following — " do this that ye may live," or 
 " if ye do this, ye shall live," — i.e., we have a 
 final, conditional, or hypothetical imperative. 
 And doubtless in many of the instances, where 
 this pregnant formula is employed, the explana- 
 tion, as thus given, is sufficiently exhaustive. 
 2 Kings V. 13, "Wash and become clean." Jei\ 
 xxvii. 12, " Bring your necks under the yoke of 
 the king of Babylon . . . and live," — i.e., serve 
 him, that you may live, or, if you serve him and 
 his people, ye shall live. 
 
 It may be questioned, however, whether this 
 supplies in every instance the full force of the 
 Hebrew original. In Gen. xii. 2, for example, 
 where we have a closely allied use of the impera- 
 tive, it is not enough to say with the A.V. " I will 
 bless thee . . . and thou shall be a blessing." 
 The mood of command suggests another idea — 
 not the mere promise of blessing associated with 
 the election of Abraham, but the need of human 
 co-operation — the solemn obligation laid upon 
 Abraham and his seed, that they should realise 
 the greatness of their calling, and consciously 
 yield themselves as a means of blessing to all 
 
The Imperative 111 
 
 the families of the earth. Hence the E.V. renders, 
 " I will bless thee, and make thy name great ; 
 and be thou a blessing." It is a similar blending 
 of the divine and human factors that is set forth 
 in many of the passages where the double im- 
 perative is used. Isa. xlv. 22, " Look unto Me, 
 and be ye saved ; " Iv. 2, " Hearken unto Me, 
 and eat ye that which is good," and especially 
 Amos V. 4, not, " seek ye Me, and ye shall live " 
 (R.V.), nor, " seek ye Me, that ye may live " (i.e., 
 'I'^nin \^7, ver. 14), but, " seek ye Me and live " 
 — the second imperative being the expression of 
 a profound moral obligation, what Amos, the herd- 
 man of Tekoa would call, not ritual but justice. 
 " Seek ye Me (spiritually) and live (righteously)." 
 Both are needed. Both are theocratic obliga- 
 tions — paramount and indispensable. Let the 
 people turn to Jehovah, the God of Israel, and 
 not to Bethel (vers. 5, 6); and then let them 
 purge their civic life, and show kindness to the 
 poor ; for God and moral good are one, righteous- 
 ness is the alone essential thing in the world. 
 Hence a suitable line of thought is suggested for 
 the preacher. The elements of true religion are 
 mainly these two — worship and justice. 
 
 (1) The worship, or spiritual seeking, that 
 finds a God. 
 
112 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 (2) The moral rectitude and civic justice, that 
 
 alone can vindicate the worship. 
 " Thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, 
 Seek ye Me, and live." 
 
 2. The Eneegetic Imperative 
 
 Besides the simple imperative, we have another 
 'or emphatic form of the mood, which brings out 
 with additional clearness the subjective attitude 
 of the speaker. In at least three different ways 
 this strengthening of the verbal action is 
 attempted. 
 
 (a) By the insertion of the nv/ti energicum 
 between the verb and the pronominal suffix. 
 This is the epenthetic nun, having demonstrative 
 force, and is more common with the imperfect 
 tense than with any form of the imperative. For 
 the imperative, however, we have passages like 
 Job v. 27, Jer. xxxvi. 15, and especially 1 Sam. 
 xxi. 10, where David said to the priest of Nob, 
 referring to the sword of Goliath, " There is none 
 like that ; give it me " (il2|;]ll). 
 
 (/3) Still greater emphasis may be impressed 
 upon the words by the addition of the precative 
 particle ^3, which is variously rendered in 
 English, as, " Tell me, / pray thee " (Gen. xxiv. 
 
The Imperative 113 
 
 23), or, as adding a rare touch of admonition to a 
 much explained text, "Come now, and let us 
 reason together, saith the Lord " (Isa. i. 18). 
 
 (7) Probably, however, the commonest way of 
 strengthening the verbal idea is by the addition 
 of the paragogic or cohortative ending tl — , as 
 nnnttJ, "O keep" (Ps. xxv. 20), or the earnest 
 appeal of Ps. xxxv. 2 : — 
 
 " Take hold of shield and buckler, 
 And stcmd 'wp (tUS^Ip) for mine help." 
 Originally it expressed some subjective emphasis 
 on the part of the speaker ; though Prof. David- 
 son thinks that in passages like Judges ix. 8, 14, 
 and 1 Sam. ix. 23, it is difficult to detect any 
 essential difference between the two forms in 
 usage. Still in both of these passages a real 
 difference may be felt. In Jotham's parable to 
 the men of Shechem, the trees said unto the 
 olive tree, " Reign thou (n3??D) over us," but in 
 verse 14, " Come thou and reign {yp'd) over us." 
 Here the two forms are found side by side ; and 
 yet the latter or simple form being preceded by a 
 second imperative and the emphatic pronoun"thou " 
 — "TJTJ? tli^N Ijb — gives a sufficient strength- 
 ening to the oft-repeated request without the 
 addition of the paragogic T\ — - And in a similar 
 8 
 
114 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 manner with 1 Sam. ix. 23, Samuel said unto the 
 cook, " Bring (il3i]l) the portion which I gave 
 thee, of which I said unto thee, Set (Cto) it by 
 thee." The former imperative is much more 
 direct than the latter ; the latter, indeed, occur- 
 ring in what is virtually indirect speech. And if 
 it be granted that "the extended form seems 
 more courteous than the abrupt, shorter form," 
 the interchange in this verse is just what might 
 have been expected. 
 
 In seeking the origin of these energetic ex- 
 pressions, scholars are probably correct in bringing 
 them into comparison with the energetic mood in 
 Arabic, as seen in the forms already quoted, 
 'aqtulan or -anna. They are simply variations 
 of the demonstrative n, which occupies so promi- 
 nent a place in the formation of pronouns and 
 and other demonstratives, as ^il, nSH, and the 
 like.^ Even the cohortative n — and the precative 
 particle N3 may easily be recognised in the strong 
 Arabic termination -anna. Of. N3"(Tinib<. 
 "Let me now choose" (2 Sam. xvii. 1), or t^3 
 n3^''tp'in, " save, I beseech thee," — i.e., Eosanna 
 (Ps. cxviii. 25). Whether Hebrew possesses the 
 
 1 Wright, " Comparative Grammar of the Semitic 
 Languages," p. 193. 
 
The Imperative 115 
 
 original forms, and Arabic discloses the fulness of 
 a later development, or Arabic preserves the more 
 primitive idioms, of which Hebrew retains no 
 more than the merest detritus or fragments, is a 
 question that is still open to discussion. The 
 probability is that neither the Hebraic nor the 
 Arabic forms are the unimpaired survivals of early 
 Semitic practice. They are the collateral adapt- 
 ations and variations of a common aboriginal 
 type. Alike by the insertion of consonants and 
 the use of strengthening particles and termina- 
 tions, they have sought to emphasise the mental 
 attitude of the speaker by giving a more adequate 
 expression to the urgency of his appeal. 
 
 3. The Negative Imperative 
 
 As already indicated, the element of courtesy 
 may have been another influence in the moulding 
 of these expressions — the short, abrupt mood not 
 being considered sufficiently becoming in the fram- 
 ing of so personal and pointed an address. And 
 doubtless the same feeling contributed, in some 
 degree, to the production of a second idiom, to which, 
 under a closing paragraph, some necessary allusion 
 may be made. Anything of the nature of a nega- 
 tive entreaty or command is to be expressed, not by 
 the imperative or abrupt mood, but by the appro- 
 
116 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 priate forms of the voluntative. And these co- 
 hortative or jussive forms may be of any person or 
 number, as Ps. xxv. 2, " Let me not be ashamed " 
 (tlttJ'ilN'T'ijI). The student, in this connection, 
 must carefully distinguish between the two nega- 
 tives hi^ and ^^. As an adverb of negation, the 
 former denies, not objectively as a fact (like ^^ = 
 ov), but subjectively as a wish (like /j^ij). Hence 
 while ^^ appears generally in negative commMnds, 
 as in the Decalogue (Ex. xx.), 7t<l is more usually 
 employed to express dissuasion or deprecation. 
 Jer, iv. 3, " Break up your fallow ground, and sow 
 not {l^'!r\XPr7'i^ among thorns '' ; or Ps. xli. 3 
 (Heb.), which the expositor will find a most 
 interesting passage in the practical work of 
 preaching. 
 
 Rendered in the A.V., it is brought into line 
 with the preceding context and read as a simple 
 prediction, " Thou wilt not deliver him unto the 
 will of his enemies.'' The adverb 7b^, however, 
 cannot thus stand in simple declarative clauses. 
 It denotes a negative wish, and must be trans- 
 lated as in the R.V., " deliver not thou him " 
 (inj3]^J)T7Sl). No doubt a certain abruptness 
 or lack of continuity seems to be introduced by 
 this mode of expression ; and in order to obviate 
 
The Imperative 117 
 
 the difficulty a certain latitude is conceded after 
 all to this adverb of negation. It is suggested 
 that 7N may occasionally occur in mere pre- 
 dictive sentences, though even in that case it 
 always expresses a more hearty sympathy on 
 the part of the speaker. But when, from the 
 analogy of the imperative, one speaks of the 
 jussive as issuing a command, and not simply 
 a negative wish, he unnecessarily aggravates 
 the difficulty in this particular passage. What 
 if the suffix in ^HJiriJ^I refers, not so much to 
 the compassionate man, of whom the poet has 
 been speaking, as to the Psalmist himself, who in 
 the day of his distress was hungering for sym- 
 pathy, both human and divine ? Would not this 
 justify the passing of the language of prediction 
 into the language of prayer ? The change, as 
 thus desiderated, is the key to the whole subject. 
 
 The poet, in verse 2, enunciates the general 
 principle under which all individual cases are to 
 be brought : — 
 
 Blessed is he that oonsidereth the poor ; 
 The Lord will deliver him in the day of evil. 
 
 But now, as he lingers fondly over the various 
 elements in the blessedness— how God would keep 
 him alive, prosper him in the land, and deliver 
 him from all his fears — these different ideas react 
 
118 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 upon himself, and find a suitable expression in 
 the language of intercession. This is the reason 
 why the verbal forms are ambiguous, and why 
 even the R.V. is not able to determine whether 
 the Psalmist is simply stating facts, or proffering 
 an earnest prayer in his own behalf (see margin 
 to ver. 3). His language is ambiguous, because 
 he is trying to express two different ideas. And 
 would that all our meditation in divine things 
 were characterised by the same far-reaching 
 ambiguity, that every time we muse upon God's 
 gracious dealings with His people the prayer 
 might spring to our lips unbidden, " May the same 
 divine favour descend upon me." For the main 
 element in the blessedness has yet to be noted. 
 If the statement of fact (or promise) is made the 
 basis of intercession, this in turn passes into the 
 language of assurance (ver. 4). The Hebrew 
 tense (nipi^) is best understood as a perfect 
 of certitude, and pictures the desired result as 
 already attained. As in Ps. vi. 8,^ the dark 
 prison walls of trial are not yet broken down, but 
 a great confidence, begotten by the Spirit of God, 
 has visited this man's soul, and he knows, as by 
 the certainty of a divine inspiration, that the 
 hour of his deliverance has at last struck. Our 
 
 1 Page 62. 
 
The Imperative 119 
 
 subject, then, is The Beatitude of the Compas- 
 sionate Man, and these are its natural divisions. 
 
 (1) His compassion, or a heaven-taught con- 
 
 sideration for the poor (ver. 2"). 
 
 (2) His blessedness, or the receiving from 
 
 Jehovah, in no stint measure, the same 
 treatment which he has tried to mete out 
 to others. He visited the fatherless and 
 widows in their affliction; and now, in 
 the day of his distress, a divine visitor 
 comforts and inspires him (ver. 4). 
 
 (3) The personal application, or the passing of 
 
 prediction into prayer (ver. 3"), until in 
 the rapture of assured faith he can sing, 
 like the writer of the first penitential 
 Psalm, " The Lord hath heard the voice 
 of my weeping." 
 
120 Additional Motes and Examples 
 
Additional Notes and Examples 121 
 
122 Additional Notes and Exa/mples 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE JUSSIVE 
 
 By the Jussive is meant a modified or shortened 
 form of the Imperfect. Instead of the normal 
 n^"T^., "the Lord will provide" (Gen. xxii. 8), 
 we have in chap. xli. 33 the apocopated form 
 t^'^]] (in common editions, ^^l), " let Pharaoh 
 look out a man, and set him over the land of 
 Egypt." Similarly in place of the Hiphil Q'^p\ 
 " the Lord will raise up a prophet like unto me " 
 (Deut. xviii. 15), we find in 1 Sam. i. 23 the 
 modified form D&'>, " the Lord establish His 
 word " : just as in Arabic the indicative yaqtulu 
 becomes, in the jussive, yaqtul. It is no ex- 
 ception to this rule to find the unmodified forms 
 occasionally used where the abbreviated or jussive 
 forms might have been expected. Rhythm no 
 less than logic may have required the heavier 
 term in order to give distinction to the reading. 
 Of. Job iii. 9 (rrN-!vS«) with xx. 17 (Nn^'riSi). 
 
 123 
 
124 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 The two passages are not by any means identical. 
 The Masoretes felt the difference so acutely that 
 while they marked the former with a disjunctive 
 accent (R'bhia mugrash), they allowed the latter 
 to appear with a conjunctive accent (the servant 
 Mer'kha). What was the difference between the 
 two ? In the former passage the weight of the 
 reading falls on the subject of the verb — the night 
 which proclaimed the patriarch's birth — and there- 
 fore with the dichotomy impressed upon it, he 
 exclaims, " Let it not behold (or refresh itself with) 
 the eyelids of the morning." In the latter, how- 
 ever, the main emphasis rests on the object of the 
 verb — the various tokens of the divine favour 
 'which ought not to be conferred on the evil-doer — 
 " Let him not look upon the rivers, the flowing 
 streams of honey and butter." It was more than 
 euphony then that led to the retention of the un- 
 modified imperfect. It was euphony that reflected 
 thought. 
 
 The origin of the apocopated form has been 
 sought in various directions. In all probability it 
 is to be traced to the cognate forms of the impera- 
 tive. It would arise naturally in the hurried 
 pronunciation of a person issuing a command. 
 And yet the term, as thus defined, is not in any 
 sense exhaustive. It obsbures as much as it 
 illumines. Not in commands alone, but in the 
 
The Jussive 125 
 
 more general nuance of desire and will — in the 
 optative no less than in the imperative, and in 
 the voluntative no less than in the optative — the 
 shortened forms of the jussive mood indicate the 
 quickened utterance of the speaker. Gen. xxxi. 49, 
 " Jehovah watch (^2^.) between me and thee ! " 
 Job xiii. 27, " Wherefore hidest thou thy face ? 
 . . . that thou writest bitter things against me, 
 and puttest (tDtom.) my feet also in the stocks " — 
 i.e., deliberately or intentionally puttest my feet 
 in the stocks — a far more lively image than the 
 mere statement of a fact. It is the graphic 
 delineation of the mental attitude of the subject, 
 and is therefore rightly classed under a wider 
 application of the voluntative. We may look at 
 each of these three nuances in turn. 
 
 1. The Jussive as an Imperative 
 
 It is mainly in negative sentences, and par- 
 ticularly in the second person, that the modified 
 or jussive forms are used in the sense oi command 
 (Deut. iii. 26, Job v. 22). In any other expression 
 the idea of command tends more and more to 
 shade off into the meaning of admonition. Hos. 
 iv. 4, " Let none find fault, and none upbraid ; 
 for thy people have rebelled against me." ^ In 
 
 1 Cf. Robertson Smith, " Prophets of Israel," p. 408. 
 
126 Servnons in Syntax 
 
 verse 15 the two senses are found side by side. 
 " Though thou, Israel, play the harlot, yet let not 
 Judah offend (Qf^i^'^'hi^) ; and come not ye 
 (^Nin"7!5<tl) unto Gilgal . . . nor swear, As the 
 Lord liveth." See also Job xvi. 18. 
 
 The element of courtesy, as previously suggested, 
 may have been the determining influence in mould- 
 ing these expressions. It seemed more respectful 
 to address a second person in this particular way 
 than in the abrupt terms of the imperative. And 
 even in the absence of the negative 7S the speaker 
 was occasionally led to a somewhat similar idiom by 
 the innate delicacy of his thinking. Cf. Ps. Ixxi. 21, 
 where the jussive forms are used in preference to a 
 direct command in the language of intercession. 
 And 1 Sam. x. 8, in which Samuel said unto 
 Saul, " Seven days thou shalt wait (S'll'in), till I 
 come unto thee, and shew thee what thou shalt 
 do." The sense is not that Saul had to do this 
 thing whether he desired it or not, but rather that 
 Samuel wished him to do it, and expressed the 
 hope that he would accede to this proposal, that 
 it might be well with him on the day appointed, 
 when the prophet himself should draw near to 
 sacrifice unto the Lord in Gilgal. Even in this 
 case the verbal expression is not necessarily a 
 
The Jussive 127 
 
 direct command. It is one that easily passes over 
 into the language of admonition. Accordingly, 
 while the precise shade of meaning is slightly 
 different from the force associated with a direct 
 prohibition, the jussive form is used all the same 
 to give urgency to the seer's advice. In both 
 instances a jussive of the second person is employed 
 without the preceding adverb of negation, but there 
 is nothing peculiar or anomalous in its usage. It is 
 a legitimate adaptation of the modified imperfect 
 to denote the mental attitude of the speaker ; and 
 as such it is a worthy and adequate rendering of 
 the thought. 
 
 Closely allied to this idiom is the use of the 
 jussive after ^^. Gen. xxiv. 8, " Only tfiou shalt 
 not bring (iCJn is?) my son thither again." This 
 is so much more courteous, because less pointed, 
 than the direct command, lttJ]T7i^, that the 
 interchange of the negative adverbs is entirely 
 justified. The statement is still admonitory, and 
 therefore jussive in the highest degree, but it is 
 not necessarily a naked prohibition in the sense 
 of an unqualified command. Gf. also 1 Sam. xiv. 
 36, and especially 1 Kings ii. 6 : " Do therefore 
 (Jl''toi^'l) according to thy wisdom, and let not his 
 hoar head go down to Sheol in peace " ("TliiT^bl.). 
 
128 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 Truly a grim command as rendered in the English 
 version ! But is it justified ? Surely if a direct 
 and pointed command had been the intention of 
 the writer, he could have used the imperative in 
 the first clause (not vav perfect) and 7^ with 
 the jussive in the second. We need not make a 
 rough age rougher still by forcing a harsh, abrupt 
 meaning into words that may easily convey a 
 softer implication. " Thou knowest what Joab 
 did unto me. . . . Thou wilt therefore do accord- 
 ing to thy wisdom, and thou wilt not cause his 
 hoar head to go down to Sheol in peace." No 
 doubt it breathed vengeance against the man who 
 had slain Abner, the son of Ner, but the king did 
 not express this fact in the cold, ruthless way 
 suggested by the English version. It was a 
 darkly veiled admonition which had taken the 
 place of a positive command. 
 
 2. The Jussive as an Optative 
 
 Not more clearly has the idea of command 
 passed over into the nuance of admonition than 
 does the latter, in turn, assume the meaning of en- 
 treaty, request, or wish. In prayer, for example, 
 the right form of address is neither injunction nor 
 admonition, but the submissive and deferential 
 accents of desire. Addressed to an inferior, the 
 
The Jussive 129 
 
 verbal form might easily convey the meaning of 
 an emphatic mandate; but to a superior, and 
 most of all to the Deity, it passes into the 
 language of appeal. Gen. xviii. 30, " Oh let not 
 the Lord be angry" (')tV' i^a"'?^) ; 1 Kings xvii. 21, 
 " May the soul of this child retv/rn " («3"lUJn) ; 
 
 ^ T XT' 
 
 and for the preacher Ps. cxxi. 3, as rendered in 
 the margin of the R.V. : — 
 
 " Let him not suffer thy foot to be moved." 
 
 Thus interpreted, the jussive becomes the link 
 by which the entire psalm is bound into an ex- 
 pressive unity. The personal conviction in verse 
 2 is made the basis of an earnest entreaty for a 
 fuller realisation of Jehovah's keeping (ver. 3) ; 
 until rising on the wings of heartfelt desire, the 
 singer passes, in verses 4-8, into the spirit-taught 
 language of assurance. Conviction — prayer — 
 assurance : the 7S! of verse 3 has become in 
 verse 4 the ^^ of fully realised fact : — 
 
 Behold, he that keepeth Israel 
 Shall neither slumber nor sleep. 
 
 — jttj''^ )Ah) DIS'^ i<h. 
 
 In a passage like Job xiii. 5, we have the intro- 
 9 
 
130 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 duction of another idiom which is full of interest 
 to the expositor : — 
 
 Oh that ye would hold your peace ! 
 That it might he yT}ty\) to you for wisdom. 
 
 In addition to the optative, ?In'^""'P, Oh that, we 
 have the use of jussive with light vav, to indicate 
 the connection of the second stichos. This con- 
 struction is of very frequent occurrence in Biblical 
 Hebrew; and the preacher who is sufficiently 
 attentive to its ever-varying light and shade will 
 be richly rewarded for all the labour he expends 
 in the elucidation of the text. After an impera- 
 tive or anything with imperative force, or after 
 any form of expression suggestive of a wish or 
 hope, the jussive (or cohortative) with light vav 
 will be found in a great variety of passages to 
 denote the closely allied nuances of design, pur- 
 pose, and even effect. Gen. xxvii. 4, " Bring to 
 me, that I may eat" (n73't^'l). Isa. Iv. 3, 
 " Incline your ear, and come unto me ; hear, and 
 your soul shall live : that I Tnay make an ever- 
 lasting covenant with you' (tin'^it?'!, like the 
 oTTw? du of Acts iii. 19 — " Repent ye . . . that so 
 there may come seasons of refreshing from the 
 presence of the Lord ") ; or Hos. ii. 4 (Heb.), 
 " Plead with your mother, plead . . . and let her 
 
The Jussive 131 
 
 put away (better, that she may put away) her 
 whoredoms from her face . . . lest I set her as in 
 the day that she was born, and slay her with 
 thirst." 
 
 The idea of design expressed by this construc- 
 tion has been illustrated by its interchange with 
 the infinitive and ^. Cf. 1 Kings xii. 6 with 
 verse 9. Kehoboam asked the old men, saying, 
 " What counsel give ye me to return answer to 
 this people ? " (littjny). But to the young men 
 he said, " What counsel give ye, that we may 
 return answer, etc." (littJ^l). The two passages 
 are not exactly parallel. Rehoboam's desire to 
 associate himself with the younger men, with 
 whom he had grown up, very naturally suggested 
 the pronoun we for the latter passage ; just as in 
 chap. xxii. 7, Jehoshaphat said to Ahab, " Is there 
 not here a prophet of the Lord, that we might 
 inquire of him (nttj'112'l) ? " — whereas in verse 8 
 the King of Israel answered, "There is yet one 
 man to inqui/re of the Lord (ttJ^lTlS)" — a very 
 different statement ; for Ahab had no wish to be 
 associated in the business at all. Design or 
 purpose may have been expressed by both forms 
 of the verb, but they are not to be regarded, on 
 that acoount, as used indiscriminately. 
 
132 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 For a practical illustration of this expressive 
 idiom the preacher may turn to TO'!''! in Job 
 xvi. 21. Instead of an indefinite expression of 
 the afilicted man's longing — "0 that one might 
 plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for 
 his neighbour ! " (A.V.), the Revisers interpret 
 it as the design of the preceding act — the definite 
 form and substance of the patriarch's prayer, 
 " Mine eye poureth out tears unto God, that He 
 would maintain, etc." A brief paraphrase of 
 the immediate context will indicate the character 
 of this appeal. Beginning at verse 9, we have a 
 graphic picture of the persecution, divine and 
 human, to which the patriarch had been sub- 
 jected. His adversary had gnashed upon him 
 with his teeth, sharpened his eyes upon him, 
 taken him by the neck and dashed him to pieces, 
 and broken him with breach upon breach. Hence 
 his face was red with weeping, and on his eyelids 
 was the shadow of death. And yet in all this he 
 was suffering wrongfully. He was no more 
 deserving of this cruel treatment than the right- 
 eous Abel, whose blood called for vengeance on 
 the sullen fratricide Cain. That insistent cry 
 (ver. 18) would not be disregarded. " Even now 
 my witness is in heaven, and He that voucheth 
 for me is on high." Friends might deride and 
 
The Jussive 133 
 
 persecute him as God (c/. xix. 22) ; but his blood- 
 avenger, his divine goel, would listen to his cry 
 and deliver him from the archers who were 
 arrayed against him (so Cheyne, who reads '^7^3 
 instead of ij'']^ in ver. 20^). In other words, 
 the surprising idea which comforted him in xiv. 
 13-15, has again flashed forth like a star to 
 illumine his darkness. The Wrath of God might 
 be hurrying him to Sheol, but the Love of God, 
 which longed to triumph over judgment, was 
 ready to espouse his cause and vindicate his 
 innocence ; and, therefore, appealing from the one 
 to the other, from the Wrath to the Love, he 
 prays (1) that He would maintain his right 
 with God ; and (2) defend him from the asper- 
 sions of his fellows. The subject, then, is the 
 martyr's vindication, and these are its three 
 natural divisions : — 
 
 (a) His martyrdom (ver. 18). 
 (/8) His avenger (ver. 19). 
 (7) His prayer (ver. 21). 
 
 " That He would maintain the right of a man with God, 
 And of a son of man with his neighbour." 
 
 And all this here, and now : — 
 
 " For when a few years are come, 
 I shall go the way whence I shall not return." 
 
134 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 3. The Jussive as a Voluntative 
 
 Under this division we may glance at a few 
 of the passages in which the use of the jussive 
 is felt to be anomalous. The language used is 
 imperative or optative, but the context seems 
 to demand nothing more than the mere state- 
 ment of a fact. If the form be jussive, the 
 sense is indicative : and therefore at this point] 
 as we are often reminded, we have a wide and 
 legitimate field for textual emendation. The 
 
 forms used are 7ipp^ and 7ipp^^ — i.e., the jussive 
 without or with simple vav ; yet since they 
 appear to be employed in the sense of the 
 ordinary imperfect, they ought to be emended 
 into 7'^tpp^ and 7*'^p^'!, or even into the cor- 
 responding forms with vav consecutive. Of. Isa. 
 Ixiii. 3, where the jussive t|'_'l must be pointed as 
 the indicative T^"!, " their lifeblood is sprinkled 
 upon my garments." Yet, on the assumption 
 that the margin of the E.V. gives an equally 
 admissible rendering of the whole paragraph, 
 the jussive form may be retained after all, and 
 is no less instructive in its imagery, " I will 
 tread them in mine anger, and trample them 
 in my fury; yea, let their lifeblood bespatter 
 
The Jussive 135 
 
 all my garments, for I will stain all my 
 raiment." ^ 
 
 It may seem a waste of ingenuity to try and 
 fit some known jussive sense on every case as it 
 arises in the work of exposition: but it is not 
 necessarily so. And in all fairness the attempt 
 ought to be made before resorting to the drastic 
 method of textual emendation. Cf. Ps. Ixxxv. 
 14. There is no necessity for rendering Dto'^T 
 as an ordinary future — pointing it Qto'^'l (defective 
 for Q^Sp'''!) — and translating as the R.V. : — 
 
 Righteousness shall go before him ; 
 And shall set (us) in the way of his steps. 
 
 The jussive " let it set " is no less expressive in 
 its symbolism. Some would even carry the 
 jussive sense back to the first line in the par- 
 allelism, and read, " Let justice go before him, 
 etc. ; " but this is no improvement on the deep 
 spirituality of its teaching. Whether the verse 
 is to be sung by the priests alone, or by the 
 whole choir, they are fully assured that righteous- 
 ness, as a herald, shall go before Jehovah ; it is 
 only when they come to the second thought — 
 the following of the divine footsteps on the part 
 of Israel — that they instinctively pass into prayer. 
 
 1 Or see below, pp. 164-168. 
 
136 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 In regard to other passages, the whole question 
 turns on what is meant by " some known jussive 
 sense." Probably our definition of the term 
 "jussive" is too narrow to begin with. As dis- 
 tinguished from the cohortative — e.g., which is 
 defined as expressing the desire, will, and inten- 
 tion of the speaker, when he himself is the 
 subject of the action, is it enough to say that 
 the jussive expresses the speaker's desire, will, and 
 comtYMnd when others are the subject of the 
 verb? May it not be possible that like the 
 cohortative, though in the second and third 
 persons, the jussive can express the deliberate 
 intention of the subject, whether it be in the 
 intensity of his mental attitude, or in the inten- 
 tional and premeditated character of his action? 
 In short, that at times it denotes no more than 
 the general idea of the voluntative. Gf. Job 
 xiii. 27 (quoted above) and xxxiv. 37. In the 
 latter passage there is no need to point simple 
 vav as vav consecutive. It makes good enough 
 sense to say : — 
 
 For he addeth rebellion unto his sin, 
 
 He clappeth his hands among us, 
 
 Yea, he deliberately multiplieth his words against God. 
 
 This is something more than the bare state- 
 ment of a fact : it is the delineation of a mental 
 
The Jussive 137 
 
 attitude. Cf. also "irip^l. in Micah iii. 4. The 
 R.V. renders, " Then shall they cry unto the Lord, 
 but He will not answer them : yea, He will hide 
 His face" from those ruthless spoilers of His 
 people. But it would be equally fitting to render, 
 " let Him hide," or " He will intentionally hide," 
 His face from those robbers, a sentiment which, 
 on the lips of Micah, the peasant-prophet from 
 Moresheth-Gath, is exceedingly graphic and life- 
 like. 
 
 As a practical illustration of this usage, the 
 preacher may turn to Isa. Iviii. 10 : — 
 
 n:i:y3 cJsai ^jirai isr-il? psm 
 
 The E.V., like the LXX, renders the first two 
 verbs as the continuation of TiDiTDt^ in verse 9 
 
 — i.e., as subjunctive. " If thou take away the 
 yoke . . . and bestow on the hungry thy bread 
 (reading ^I^H? instead of 'T'tt^Oi with Cheyne, 
 etc.), and satisfy the afflicted soul ; then shall thy 
 light arise in darkness, and thine obscurity be as 
 the noonday." This, however, would seem to require 
 two ordinary imperfects in verse 10, like "VDI^ 
 in verse 9, or two modified forms, like pon. The 
 
138 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 similarity in sense would naturally suggest a 
 similarity in form. Still the difficulty, as thus 
 expressed, may not be so serious as it looks. On 
 the assumption that both verbs are subjunctive, the 
 extended form J^iSLtori might still be explained, 
 both by its distance from the simple vav, and 
 the weight of the disjunctive accent. In view 
 of these considerations the rendering of the Greek 
 and English may easily be accepted. On the 
 other hand, a suggestive remark by Canon Driver 
 is not to be overlooked, that the sequence of 
 thought in this passage is in several respects 
 unique, and has been passed over too lightly by 
 the commentators.^ A closer attention to the 
 Masoretic pointing suggests a truer appreciation 
 of the present jussive form, and a deeper insight 
 into the syntactical evolution of the thought. 
 Translate the initial tPOn as a true subjunctive 
 or voluntative in the sense indicated above ; but 
 begin the apodosis with the second clause by trans- 
 lating ;y^3ltori as an ordinary future. In this 
 way we conserve the normal pointing of both 
 forms, and give a deeper and more suggestive 
 turn to the teaching: "If thou take away the 
 yoke . . . and intentionally or volunta/rily 
 fv/rniah thy bread for the hungry; then shalt 
 
 ^ Hebrew Tenses, p. 194. 
 
The Jussive 139 
 
 ^^,016 satisfy the afflicted soul, and (as for thyself) 
 thy light shall arise in darkness, and thine 
 obscurity be as the noonday," — i.e., a vohinta/ry 
 ckbty and a twofold rewa/rd. In fine, blessed 
 is he that considereth the poor, for (1) he shall 
 have the satisfaction of knowing that his prac- 
 tical beneficence has really blessed and benefited 
 his brother-man, and (2) this shall be as the 
 flashing forth of heaven's own light on his own 
 path and problems, for he who is helping to lift 
 the burdens of humanity is helping to remove 
 his own. " Blessed are the merciful, for they 
 shall obtain mercy." 
 
140 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
Additional Notes and Examples 141 
 
142 Additional Notes and Exam/pies 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE COHORTATIVE 
 
 As a rule, the jussive or shortened form of the 
 imperfect is confined to the second or third 
 persons. Only in a few instances is it found 
 
 with the first, as l^aJr^':''! (1 Sam. xiv. 36), 
 or tON't^bl. (Job xxiii. 11). Instead of this 
 latter construction, we have the more usual 
 form of the cohortative. This is formed, not 
 by apocopation, but by adding the termination 
 n — to the ordinary form of the imperfect, 
 as rrj'ittJM, "Let me sing" (Isa. v. 1). To 
 balance, however, the few passages where the 
 jussive appears with the first person, sundry 
 cases are referred to, in which the cohortative 
 is used with the third (cf. Isa. v. 19, Ps. xx. 4). 
 The termination il— in the second passage 
 may be explained by the following Maqqeph. 
 The examples on either side are not numerous, 
 but they may be sufficient to suggest that the 
 
 143 
 
144 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 two modified forms of the imperfect are not so 
 widely differentiated as might be assumed. If 
 the imperative be the fundamental idea of the 
 first, and the intentional the main characteristic 
 of the second, they constantly tend to approxi- 
 mate the one to the other, in the ever varying 
 applications of their usage. In other words, if 
 the jussive is found to pass through the three 
 stages of the imperative, optative, and inten- 
 tional, a similar development, though in inverse 
 order, may be found to characterise the cohorta- 
 tive. In fine, both forms are rightly included 
 under the more general designation of the volun- 
 tative. 
 
 1. The Cohobtative as Intentional 
 
 In this sense, it indicates the will or intention 
 of the speaker in reference to his own action. 
 He is moved by a strongly felt inclination or 
 impulse, and if he possesses the power to carry 
 his desire into execution, we may translate the 
 verbal form by I will, or less strongly, I would. 
 So Gen. xviii. 21, "I will go down now, and 
 see ; " or Ex. iii. 3, " I will turn aside now, and 
 see why the bush is not burned" (NSTI^DM). 
 Cf., however, Deut. xii. 20, where the people are 
 not necessarily able to carry out their own in- 
 
The Cohortatvue 145 
 
 tention or desire. Not " I will eat " (R.V.), but 
 "I would eat," or "let me eat, flesh"; just as 
 in chap. xvii. 14, "I would set," or, " let me set 
 a king over me." Similarly in Isa. v. 1, we 
 may render H'Y'ttJt^ " I will sing," or " let me sing " 
 — the translation expressing, in either case, the 
 resolution or intention of the speaker to celebrate 
 the praise of his beloved, touching his vineyard. 
 
 As a practical illustration of this particular 
 nuance, the expositor may turn to Hos. vi. 3. 
 Not "then shall we know, if we follow on to 
 know the Lord" (A.V.); but, as continuing the 
 exhortation of verse 1 — " And let us know, let us 
 follow on to know the Lord ; His going forth is 
 sure as the morning " (R.V.). It professes to be 
 an earnest resolution or intention on the part of 
 Israel to turn to Jehovah the God of their fathers : 
 and thus understood, it is beautifully paraphrased 
 for all time in the sacred hymnody of the Church 
 (see Paraphrase xxx.). The context, however, both 
 in thought and language, points clearly to a 
 different conclusion. They had a vivid enough 
 sense of being under divine discipline ; but they 
 had no appreciation of the moral malady that 
 had made so drastic a measure necessary. In 
 chap. V. 15, Jehovah said, "I will go, and re- 
 turn to My place, till they feel their guilt, 
 
 10 
 
146 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 and seek My face: in their affliction they will 
 seek Me soon enough." And yet even while they 
 felt the severity of the discipline, they had no 
 adequate conception of the gravity of the sin. 
 They therefore adopted the easy confidence of 
 the superficial, saying, " As soon as we seek Him, 
 we shall find Him." This is the luminous emen- 
 dation of the second clause suggested by Well- 
 hausen. He arranges the consonants thus : — 
 
 ** X : • I ■■ -: - tl 
 
 In truth, not more confidently did the farmer 
 look for the former and latter rain, at the 
 autumnal and vernal equinoxes, than did Israel, 
 that easily moved people, look to, and depend 
 upon, Jehovah. " He hath torn," they said, 
 " but He will heal us ; He may smite^ but He 
 will bind us up" (ver. 1). A beautiful and 
 naive confidence, and well worthy of the object 
 to which it was directed, if only it had been 
 securely rooted in piety and righteousness. 
 Otherwise, it was the merest vanity and super- 
 stition. Consequently in verse 4, Jehovah re- 
 ceived their professed penitence with impatience 
 and disapproval. " Ephraim, what shall I do 
 unto thee ? " " What other means can possibly 
 
 1 The jussive 1y\ It is not necessary to read IJ^T 
 as if it were a perfect like " He hath torn.'' 
 
The Gohortative 147 
 
 be employed to move thee to a serious repent- 
 ance?" Their temporary contrition was both 
 ardent and artless; but it did not touch the 
 springs of moral thinking and life. Hence, even 
 their goodness (iDh), which ought to have 
 been a reflection of the divine, was fit only to 
 be rejected. The subject then is superficial re- 
 pentance; and a suitable line of exposition is 
 immediately suggested. It is not enough that 
 penitence be 
 
 (1) Emotionally strong (c/. the cohortatives). 
 
 (2) Theologically accurate (c/. especially ver. 1, 
 
 God hath torn, and He alone can heal). 
 It must also be — 
 
 (3) Morally sound and spiritually effective ; or 
 
 it is nothing better than the evanescent 
 dew that disappears in the heat of the 
 sun. 
 
 2. The Gohortative as Optative 
 
 When the speaker, instead of being able to 
 carry out his own determination, is dependent for 
 its execution on the help of others, his form of 
 address will naturally assume a more restricted 
 signification, and be appropriately rendered as a 
 request or wish. Gen. 1. 5, "Let me go, I pray 
 thee, and bury my father;" better, "Let me go 
 
148 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 ■ . . that I tnay bury my father ; " for in addition 
 to the strongly expressed wish, there is the in- 
 structive idiom of the voluntative with light 
 vav (tllipiSJl), which, as in the case of the 
 closely allied jussive, indicates the design or 
 purpose of the preceding act. Thus in 2 Sam. 
 iii. 21. Not, "I will arise and go, and will 
 gather all Israel unto my Lord the King ; " but, 
 " Let me arise, that T may go and gather ; " for 
 it is immediately added that " David sent Abner 
 away ; and he went in peace." In like manner, 
 Esau said unto Jacob, " Let us take our journey, 
 that we may go, and let me go before thee" 
 (Gen. xxxiii. 12). 
 
 Passages like Isa. i. 24, Gen. xxiv. 57, and Ps. 
 xxvi. 6 are somewhat different. The first verb 
 being an ordinary imperfect, the voluntative with 
 vav need not be regarded as cohortative at all. 
 " I will ease me of mine adversaries, so will I 
 avenge me of mine enemies." " We will call the 
 damsel, that we may inquire at her mouth." 
 
 I will wash mine hands in innocency ; 
 So will I compass thine altar, O Lord. 
 
 Under the optative use of the cohortative, the 
 preacher will find an interesting example at 
 Ps. xvii. 15 : — 
 
 As for me, in righteousness let me behold thy face ; 
 Let me be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness. 
 
The Cohortative 149 
 
 The emphatic pronoun "^3M, marked by a dis- 
 junctive accent, forms a most suitable starting- 
 point for the whole. It compares the low, sensuous 
 desires of the Weltmenschen (ver. 14) with the 
 pure, spiritual aspirations of the Psalmist. Men 
 of the world may be satisfied if they behold their 
 likeness reflected in their children ; but nothing 
 less than the sight of the form of God (cf. Num. 
 xii. 8; John xiv. 8) will satisfy the man of the 
 spirit. How is this to be attained ? Verse 15 
 suggests a threefold answer : — 
 
 1. By spiritual communion even here (ver. 
 15*) — i.e., the paramount claims of righteousness 
 (p"7JJil) ^T^^ the no less indispensable require- 
 ments of worship ; for as Duhm remarks, " To 
 behold the face of God " means, in general, to 
 betake oneself to the Temple, and there seems no 
 good reason for excluding that reference here. 
 
 2. By beatific vision hereafter (15'*) : for as 
 Dr. Maclaren has added, " It is diflScult to find a 
 worthy meaning for ' when I awake,' unless it be 
 from the sleep of death. Possibly, too, the 
 allusion to the men of the world as ' leaving their 
 substance ' (ver. 14) makes the reference to the 
 future beatific vision more likely. Death is to 
 them the stripping off of their chosen portion ; it 
 is to him whose portion is God, the fuller posses- 
 sion of all that he loves and desires." 
 
150 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 3. By a profound reverence, whicli is the 
 secret and outcome of both. Rapt in the thought 
 of that divine communion the Psalmist is led, like 
 the Apostle, to contemplate things not lawful to 
 be uttered. Hence, instead of confidence, "I 
 shall be satisfied " (R.V.), he instinctively passes 
 into the language of prayer (cohortatives) — not 
 assurance, as in the presence of his fellows, but, 
 as in the presence of the ineffable glory, an equally 
 valuable and, it may be, a rarer thing — humility. 
 " Let me he satisfied . . . with Thy likeness." 
 
 3. Other Uses of the Cohoetative 
 
 In view of a tendency in the later stages of the 
 language to use the stronger forms without the 
 special force they have in earlier times, passages 
 are constantly met with in which, as we are in- 
 formed, the usual cohortative sense is not to be 
 attached to the verbal form at all. 
 
 (a) In many cases it appears to be nothing 
 more than an emphatic vmperfect. So Jer. vi. 
 10, "To whom shall I speak and testify, that 
 they may hear ? " Isa. lix. 10, " We grope for the 
 wall like the blind, yea, we grope as they that 
 have no eyes." Or Jer. iv. 21, " How long shall I 
 see the standard, and hear the sound of the 
 trumpet ? " In these and similar passages, it is 
 
The Cohortative 151 
 
 said, the ordinary imperfect would have been 
 quite sufficient to convey the speaker's meaning ; 
 and it is simply a waste of ingenuity to try and 
 fit, on each case as it arises, some known cohorta- 
 tive sense. The rule, however, as thus stated, is 
 only partially correct. We strongly advise the 
 Hebrew student to judge each case on its own 
 merits. The effort to find some adequate reason 
 for the choice of the voluntative is not so serious 
 a waste of ingenuity as the assumption that the 
 same author has used the cohortative form in 
 both senses — sometimes with, and sometimes 
 without, its distinctive signification. In any case, 
 the habit of testing each passage as it arises is of 
 great practical importance, and will frequently 
 lead the careful expositor into one of the most 
 fruitful fields of biblical exegesis. In Jer. vi. 10, 
 for instance, why not translate the cohortative as 
 a modal form in the sense of a deliberative sub- 
 junctive ? Not, to whom shall I speak ? but, to 
 whom am I to speak ? — an expression that brings 
 out the 'mental perplexity of the prophet in view 
 of Israel's incorrigible depravity. In that case, it 
 would indicate the mental attitude of the speaker, 
 as of one who was virtually seeking advice ; and 
 therefore in a perfectly intelligible sense, might 
 remain as a genuine cohortative. Similarly, in 
 Isa. lix. 10, " We grope for the wall," is not the 
 
152 Semnons in Syntax 
 
 only possible rendering. Represented as in the 
 very act of feeling for the wall, they might well 
 encourage one another, saying, " Let us grope as 
 they that have no eyes." For as Delitzsch has 
 expressed it, it is " the impulse of self-preserva- 
 tion which drives them in their atropia to feel for 
 a way of escape.'' 
 
 (/8) A second use of the cohortative is found in 
 a poetic or vivid representation of the past. The 
 narrator recalls the thoughts or resolutions which 
 he had cherished on former occasions ; and by 
 the choice of the voluntative he dramatically 
 indicates the energy or impulse with which he 
 had expressed his desire. Or better still, he is 
 able, in spirit, to transport himself back to the 
 depicted scene ; and, like the Bride in Cant. iii. 2, 
 lives over again, in thought, the rapture of that 
 former experience. 
 
 Let me rise now, that I may go about the city, 
 In the streets and in the broad ways. 
 Let me seek him whom my soul loveth. 
 
 Or, again, in chap. v. 2, not " I was asleep, but my 
 
 heart waked " ; but, transporting herself back to 
 
 the scene in question, " I would (fain) sleep, but 
 
 my heart waketh." Why? Because the voice 
 
 of my beloved is heard even in my dreams. Like 
 
 Tennyson's Rizpah — 
 
 " I cannot hear what you say for my Willie's voice in the 
 wind." 
 
The Oohoriative 153 
 
 The entire ineffectual effort to bathe her spirit 
 in slumber is mirrored in the well-chdsen verbal 
 form ; and who does not feel that the English 
 version, with its prosaic preterite or present 
 (margin), is strangely lifeless and colourless in 
 comparison 1 So in Ps. Ixvi. 6 : — 
 
 " He turned the sea into dry land : 
 They went through the river on foot : 
 There would we rejoice in Him." 
 
 (7) The most interesting use of the cohortative, 
 however, has yet to be noted. According to A. B. 
 Davidson, "It is not unnatural that the cohorta- 
 tive or intentional should be used to express an 
 action which one resigns himself to do, though 
 under external pressure — a subjective / must." 
 Cf. Ps. Ivii. 5 :— 
 
 " My soul is among lions ; 
 I lie (or, must lie) among them that, etc." 
 
 Or Isa. xxxviii. 10, " I said. In the noontide of my 
 days I shall go (or, must go) into the gates of Sheol." 
 Driver, however, is not so confident regarding 
 this particular idiom. External compulsion there 
 may be ; but the internal resignation is not so 
 involuntary as this view tries to make out. In 
 no sense does the idea of impulse from within 
 disappear before that of compulsion from without. 
 And to that extent, at least, the definite phrase. 
 
154 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 " I must," is obviously inept. Here, as elsewhere, 
 
 the student can only be advised to examine each 
 
 passage as it arises. In Ps. Ivii., for instance, 
 
 which is far too courageous a poem for the gloomy 
 
 resignation depicted in verse 5, we may find a 
 
 more satisfactory rendering of the Psalmist's 
 
 thought if we paraphrase the lines as follows : — 
 
 "Even though my soul is among lions, / will 
 
 deliberately lie down in the midst of surrounding 
 
 foes ; for in view of verse 4, I know that my 
 
 deliverer is near at hand, and no manner of 
 
 calamity can ever befall His servant." In this 
 
 case the cohortative rQSttJSI would denote his 
 
 fixed determination to put his trust in Israel's 
 
 God in spite of all the enemies who might be 
 
 arrayed against him. Or, again, in Isa. xxxviii. 
 
 10, why might not the afflicted monarch say, "Let 
 
 me go (not, I must go) into the gates of Sheol " ? 
 
 just as the suffering patriarch exclaimed in Job 
 
 xiv. 13, " Oh that thou wouldest hide me in Sheol 
 
 . . . until thy wrath be past." Other passages 
 
 are Ps. Iv. 3, which might easily read : — 
 
 "Attend unto me, and answer me ; 
 I am restless in my complaint, and would moan; 
 Because of the voice of the enemy, etc." 
 
 And Ps. Ixxxviii. 16, which is rendered in the 
 
 RV. :— 
 
 " While I suffer thy terrors, I ami distracted." 
 
The Oohortative 155 
 
 But the air. \ey. TlS^Si^ is probably a corruption 
 for a verb meaning to grow numb ; and if so, 
 the form of the interjected prayer may well be 
 retained as full of meaning. " I have borne thy 
 terrors ! would that I might become numb ! " 
 
 For a practical illustration we may turn to 
 Ps. xlii. 5 (in Heb.) :— 
 
 "These things I remember, and pour out my soul upon 
 me, 
 How I went with the throng, etc." 
 
 For a variety of reasons this rendering of the 
 B..V. cannot be accepted. The cohortatives are 
 not only translated as ordinary imperfects, but 
 the punctuation of the first two lines follows 
 neither the Masoretic Text nor the LXX. We 
 may begin with some allusion to the accentuation. 
 The main logical division is clearly at '^ttJM ; for 
 here the resolution to give himself to earnest 
 recollection closes, and the delineation of his past 
 privileges begins. It is therefore to be marked, 
 not by R'bhia, as in the present Masoretic text, 
 but by Olev'yored, as in various MSS. collated 
 by Dr. Wickes.^ Hence the colon of the A.V., 
 and not the comma of the R.V., is to be retained 
 
 1 "Poetical Accents," p. 36 
 
156 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 as the correct English punctuation (cf. the similar 
 pointing of the LXX). In keeping with this 
 division, the pronoun Trpi^ is not to be referred 
 to the second half of the verse, as is generally 
 supposed ; but is to be regarded as a suitable 
 summing up of the previous verses, which contain 
 a vivid and pathetic description of the exile's 
 present. These things — his panting for God, 
 like the hart for the water brooks, his conscious 
 separation from the Temple worship (3^), and 
 the taunts of heathen enemies who insinuated 
 that the God in whom he trusted was either 
 callous or impotent — these things cut him to 
 the quick, and made him feel the bitterness of 
 his present lot. So that we may render : — 
 
 These things let me remember, and pour out my soul upon me : 
 "For " (''3) — with a pathetic reference to his past 
 — "I used to pass on (freq. imperf.) with the 
 throng, and led them to the house of God, etc." 
 As a Korahite Levite (see Title), or even as an 
 high priest (if the Psalm must be brought down 
 to the time of Onias III., with Duhm, etc.), the 
 exile was wont to conduct ilgrims to Jerusalem, 
 and share in the solemn jubilations of the annual 
 festivals. And why does he recall these pleasing 
 memories now? Is it simply to indulge the 
 luxury of his grief, remembering happier things ? 
 
The Cohortative 157 
 
 No, the man who thus consecrates his present 
 by the hallowing memories of his past is pre- 
 paring himself as a man of the open vision for 
 a larger sphere of usefulness in the future. We 
 may not be able, with the LXX, to carry back 
 this prospective idea to the middle of the present 
 verse, and translate the freq. imperf. "lij^lf? ''S, by 
 on SieXeva-o/jMi ; but Kirkpatrick is certainly right 
 in saying that the recollection of his past is the 
 best antidote to the sneers of the heathen, and 
 the best ground of assurance that the God in 
 whom he trusted could not really have deserted 
 him now. The verse would thus form the natural 
 transition to the confidence of verse 6. 
 
 Our subject, then, is the Exile's lament, and 
 these are its three natural divisions : — 
 
 (1) A voluntary recapitulation of his present 
 
 misery (5*). 
 
 (2) The brighter memory of his past (5^). 
 
 (3) The pledge which this recollection gave 
 
 him that in Jehovah, the God of Israel, 
 he had a future — a future of rare felicity 
 and reward. 
 
 " Hope thou in God : for I shall yet praise Him, 
 Who is the help of my countenance and my God." 
 
158 Additional Notes and Exairnples 
 
Additional Notes and Exam/pies 159 
 
160 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE TENSES AND MOODS WITH VAV 
 
 Syntax, in general, may be defined as the evolu- 
 tion of thought. It deals with the way in which 
 the various parts of a sentence are linked together 
 in the framing of a connected discourse. The 
 kind of connection is ever varying. It is deter- 
 mined by the particular stage reached by the 
 language in the development of human speech. 
 In the Semitic tongues, for example, which stand 
 at a comparatively early stage in the history of 
 that development, we are not to seek the same 
 wealth of connecting particles as is found in the 
 elaborate mechanism of classical or even New 
 Testament Greek. In point of fact there is a 
 great dearth of particles in Biblical Hebrew. 
 The favourite method is to link sentences 
 together by means of a simple "and." Instead 
 of Hypotaxis, or the subordination of one clause 
 to another, we have Parataxis, or the co-ordina- 
 tion of clauses — the diflferent parts being placed 
 in juxtaposition, and the reader left to determine 
 11 161 
 
162 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 their true relation by a due appreciation of the 
 context. This is the oldest and simplest method 
 of showing that one action is the condition or 
 result of another : as Ps. civ. 29 : — 
 
 Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled ; 
 Thou gatherest in their breath, they die. 
 
 The first clause in each line is the antecedent 
 cause of the second, so that we may read : — 
 
 When Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled ; 
 If Thou gatherest in their breath, they die. 
 
 Still at this early stage the clauses are simply 
 placed side by side, and are frequently found, 
 as in the case before us, without any coimecting 
 particle at all. 
 
 Beginning with this simple idiom of co-ordina- 
 tion, the next step in the Syntax would be the 
 finding of suitable links of connection to indicate 
 with greater clearness the syntactical relation of 
 the whole. First, by the use of primary con- 
 junctions, and then by the coining of temporal and 
 conditional particles it would seek to make the 
 sentence syntactically complete by making it less 
 dependent for its particular nuance on the 
 general scope and colouring of the context. It 
 is the former of these expedients which is the 
 outstanding feature of Old Testament Hebrew. 
 By means of the conjunction vav, whether con- 
 
Tenses and Moods with Vav 163 
 
 nective or consecutive, and aided by context and 
 intonation, it is able to denote all the varying 
 shades of logical distinction expressed by the 
 later forms of Indo-European grammar. The 
 surprising adaptability of this construction is one 
 of the most pleasing features in the study of 
 Biblical Hebrew. There is practically no limit 
 to the range of its ever-changing applications. 
 Cf. Ps. civ. 20 :— 
 
 " Thou makest darkness, and it is night," 
 
 — a statement that may mean, as in verse 29 — 
 
 " When Thou makest darkness, it is night," 
 or — 
 
 " Thou makest darkness that it may he night," 
 
 — the simple vav with the jussive ('^ri'^'l) indi- 
 cating the design or purpose of the preceding 
 act. Similarly in Ps. li. 9 (Heb.) : — 
 
 " Purge me with hyssop, that I may be clean," 
 
 or verse 18 — 
 
 " For Thou delightest not in sacrifice, that I should give 
 it," 
 
 — where the cognate idea of effect seems to be 
 the most suitable rendering of the jussive with 
 light vav. 
 
 The most striking modification, however, of 
 
164 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 this construction is the unique and essentially 
 Hebraic idiom of what is known as vav consecu- 
 tive. Instead of narrating a series of events by 
 a succession of verbs in the perfect, each fresh 
 verb is connected with the clause which precedes 
 it by means of strong vav with the imperfect. 
 See Gen. i. 3, and the Bible passim. The same 
 idiom appears on the Moabite Stone, and in the 
 Siloam Inscription — showing that it was fully 
 recognised and approved by the immediate neigh- 
 bours of the ancient Hebrews — and Professor 
 Sayce is of opinion that something precisely 
 similar is found in the structure of Assyrian 
 grammar; but otherwise it is confined almost 
 entirely to the Hebrew of the Old Testament. 
 It is not found in Aramaic nor in Arabic ; and 
 in the later stages of Hebrew itself, as in the 
 Mishnah and Rabbinical writings, it is wholly 
 superseded by the obvious and natural con- 
 struction of the perfect with light vav. 
 
 Reserving the details of this particular idiom 
 to the fuller treatment of Chapters XII.-XIV., the 
 preacher may examine, even at this point, the 
 great prophetic picture of Isa. Ixiii. 1-6 — a pass- 
 age which turns on the different values assigned 
 to the conjunction vav. " In these verses," accord- 
 ing to the Ency. Biblica, "we have a good 
 illustration of the traditional interpretation of 
 
Tenses and Moods with Vav 165 
 
 the Targumists. They wished to find here a 
 reference to future punishment upon the heathen, 
 and therefore pointed the verbs as futures with 
 simple vav, instead of with vav consecutive."^ 
 The true view, we are informed, is to point the 
 verbs with strong vav, as in the aorists of the 
 LXX, and to regard them, not as a threat of future 
 punishment, but as the announcement of a 
 deliverance already wrought in behalf of the 
 Jewish captives, " I trod them in Mine anger 
 and trampled them in My fury, ... for a day of 
 vengeance was in Mine heart, and My year of 
 release had come." Simple, however, as this 
 emendation may appear, the writer in the 
 Bihlica is not at all convinced that it will be 
 readily accepted. He is generous enough to 
 admit that " the Masoretes were too good scholars 
 simply to point the true text wrong." There 
 must have been some corruption in the trans- 
 mitted consonants to form the starting-point for 
 the wrong interpretation. Hence we are invited 
 to obliterate the allusion to " Edom " altogether 
 by reading Dlfr^T? instead of D'ilbJ^ in verse 1. 
 The whole contention, however, that we must 
 choose between the past and the future in the 
 elucidation of this prophecy, is, to our mind, 
 
 1 Col. 5029. 
 
166 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 nothing better than a waste of ingenuity. The 
 thought of the Targumist lay deeper ; and so also 
 did the necessities and convictions of the Jewish 
 captives. In their view, the one who came from 
 Edom did well to speak of the past, but what of 
 the future ? The captives were not yet planted 
 in their own land ; and the fears that haunted 
 them with respect to their future destiny were 
 not all the figment of a heated imagination. 
 What had the ideal conqueror, " Knee-deep in 
 Idumean blood "^ to say regarding these? It 
 was not the Masorete alone, but the prophetic 
 spirit of the Exile which replied, "I will tread 
 them in Mine anger, . . . and I will stain all 
 My raiment ; for a day of vengeance is in Mine 
 heart, and the year of My redeemed is come." In 
 a word, the deliverance desiderated by the his- 
 tory, and sketched by the prophet, is both past 
 and future ; and to pit the one against the other 
 — whether the LXX against the Targum, or the 
 Targum against the LXX — is entirely gratuitous. 
 The true view must be comprehensive enough to 
 include both : and this is what the present Masor- 
 etic pointing has done superbly. If we read the 
 future Hiphil ^7'^^j^^!!^ in verse 3 instead of the 
 suspicious Aramaic perfect ''ri7i^ilb>j — and surely 
 1 Stanley, " The Jewish Church," II. 471. 
 
Tenses and Moods with Vav 167 
 
 a cohortative and jussive might well go together 
 — the whole passage may be paraphrased as 
 follows: — Turning towards Edom, that battle- 
 ground of a long-standing and implacable enmity, 
 the prophet exclaims, " Who is this that cometh 
 from Edom, with dyed garments of Bozrah 1 " 
 And the answer comes, "I that speak in right- 
 eousness, mighty to save." He is mighty to save 
 in the future, no less than in the past — glorious 
 in His apparel, and travelling in the greatness 
 of His strength. A second time the question is 
 put, " Wherefore art Thou red in Thine apparel ? 
 and Thy garments like his that treadeth the 
 wine-press ? " And the voice replies, " I have 
 trodden (perfect) the wine-press alone ; and of the 
 peoples there was no man with Me " — none of all 
 the surrounding nations came to My help against 
 the mighty! And yet, just as in the subjugation 
 of Edom, so now in the subduing of all those 
 who oppose My purpose, "I will tread them 
 in Mine anger, and trample them in My fury ; 
 yea, let their lifeblood bespatter all My 
 garments, for I will stain all My raiment." 
 Not Edom alone, but all the other enemies 
 of His people will be trodden down and 
 subdued. 
 
 " For a day of vengeance is in Mine heart, 
 And the year of My ledeemed is come. 
 
168 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 And I look, but (even now) there is no helper ; 
 Yea, I am appalled, but there is no supporter ; 
 Nevertheless (in the past) Mine own arm wrought''^ 
 
 salvation for Me ; 
 And My fury — it supported Me. 
 Thus will I tread down the people in Mine anger. 
 And make them drunk in My fury. 
 Yea, I will pour out their lifeblood upon the earth.'' 
 
 The entire picture is a sublime and powerful 
 delineation of Israel's promised redemption, but 
 couched in the imagery of the past ; and these 
 are its main features : — 
 
 (1) Vengeance, on all those who oppose the 
 
 purpose of Jehovah. 
 
 (2) Deliverance, for the pious in Israel. 
 
 (3) Divine power, capable of accomplishing 
 
 both ; for even though the ideal con- 
 queror has to tread the wine-press alone, 
 He is mighty to save, and the fully 
 ripened purpose of Jehovah can never be 
 resisted with impunity. This is the 
 teaching of Israel's past, and this is the 
 promise of Israel's future : — 
 
 " Thou hast fought Thy people's foes ; 
 Thou wilt heal Thy people's woes." 
 
 ^ Note the change to vav consecutive. 
 
Additional Notes and Eaxi/mples 169 
 
170 Additional Notes and Eocaw/ples 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 VAV CONSECUTIVE WITH THE IMPERFECT 
 
 The older name, vav conversive, is now generally 
 discarded as inadequate. It originated with the 
 old Jewish grammarians. They assumed that 
 because a form like "lat^^'l (Gen. i. 3) is translated 
 as a past, and the form J^b^Dt^l (iii. 18) as a 
 future, the vav, in either case, has changed the 
 time-specification of the verb, and is, therefore, 
 rightly described as "TJISil Tl. The theory of the 
 Hebrew Tenses, however, has been entirely 
 remodelled. It is not the meaning of the verb, 
 temporal or otherwise, which is the precise point 
 at issue, but the nature of its connection with the 
 preceding context; and since the construction 
 with strong vav points to this connection as a 
 necessary sequence or result, the name vav con- 
 secutive is now adopted as a more accurate 
 description of the formula. True, in its union 
 with strong vav, the one tense-form is still 
 
 changed into the sphere and nuance of the other, 
 
 171 
 
172 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 and to that extent the older title is not to be 
 regarded as inaccurate. Yet even in this case 
 the indispensable element of sequence is not to be 
 overlooked ; and in order to give distinctness to 
 this wider aspect of the subject, we must at least 
 conclude with Ewald, that it ought to be con- 
 ceived as a vav consecutive-comversive. The 
 simpler title, vav consecutive, adopted by most 
 moderns, was originally suggested by Bottcher in 
 1827. 
 
 1. Its Form 
 
 In the formation of this idiom there are two 
 details that are worthy of special mention. We 
 have at once the pointing of vav with pathach, 
 followed by dagesh forte, and the use of the 
 apocopated form of the verb, accompanied by a 
 retrocession of the tone. Instead of Tlll^ we 
 
 write T^y^^.> a°cl for □''p;i, np}\ 
 
 What is the real significance of these two 
 changes ? 
 
 (1) Pathach and dagesh have been explained 
 in various ways. Some accept the explanation 
 of Lagarde. "^tSX^I, for instance, is regarded as 
 equivalent to 1J2X'' — Tf'Tl — "), and — it-came-to- 
 
 XT :■' 
 
 pass — he-goes-on-to-say. Cf. the frequent use 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Imperfect 173 
 
 of Kal ir/iveTo \eyei in New Testament Greek. 
 The words, of course, are never found in this 
 expanded form; they are always condensed or 
 run together into one word — the pathach being 
 followed by dagesh forte, precisely as in the 
 pointing of the definite article. The suggestion 
 of Ewald was somewhat similar. He conjectured 
 that the syllable a-, between the conjunction and 
 the verb, is of pronominal origin, and corresponds 
 to the temporal augment in Sanskrit and Greek. 
 Originally it was perhaps tl^, and had the mean- 
 ing of then; as hr^p^") (Ex. xxxv. 1), which is 
 exactly parallel to h'np^_ tb^ (1 Kings viii. 1). 
 The view of Driver, however, is preferable to both 
 of these. According to it, the pathach and 
 dagesh are nothing more than the fuller and 
 more original form of the conjunction. In the 
 name 11, for instance, the conjunction is repre- 
 sented by two consonants, with the connecting 
 vowel a, just as in the fuller and more original 
 form of the definite article (Vh) ; and if, as in 
 the latter, the final consonant has been assimi- 
 lated to the following letter by means of dagesh 
 forte, this, in view of similar combinations, is 
 just what might have been expected. It is quite 
 true that in the Perfect with strong vav, the con- 
 
174 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 necting vowel has been reduced to a weak and 
 indistinct sheva, as ]|}75ti>1. ; but tbis is no 
 real exception to the rule. The emphasis con- 
 nected with the personal pronoun, which falls at 
 the end of the perfect tenses, and not at the 
 beginning, as in the imperfect, is sufficient to 
 account for these necessary fluctuations. The 
 tone is moved forward to the ultima, or retracted 
 to the penult, as the case may be, and the pathach 
 is weakened to sheva, or preserved by dagesh 
 forte, in accordance with the rules of Hebrew 
 prosody. 
 
 (2) A similar divergence exists with regard 
 to the apocopated or shortened form of the verb. 
 Externally, it is identical with the abbreviated 
 form of the jussive; and the question at once 
 arises whether the similarity in form may not 
 occasionally carry with it a similarity in mean- 
 ing ? Is there any sense in which we can speak 
 of a jussive mood in forms descriptive of the 
 past ? Driver says no. It is quite impracticable 
 to do anything with the idea of command, per- 
 mission, or wish in the narration of past events. 
 Besides, the idea is not needed to explain the 
 apocopated form of the verb. The retrocession 
 of the tone, occasioned by the heavy prefix -1, 
 is a sufficient explanation of the apocopation. 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Imperfect 175 
 
 Hence, while the two idioms do resemble one 
 another in outward appearance, there is no neces- 
 sity to seek a jussive or modal sense in the 
 imperfect after strong vav. The answer to this 
 is twofold. It fails to do justice to the admitted 
 use of the cohortative after vav consecutive, and 
 overlooks the wider use of the jussive desiderated 
 in Chapter IX. With respect to the first point, 
 it is not disputed that the form of the cohortative 
 is repeatedly employed in the delineation of past 
 events. The passages are sufficiently numerous 
 both in poetry and prose (Ps. iii. 6, Gen. xxxii. 5, 
 etc.) ; and while a strict cohortative or admoni- 
 tory sense may not be admissible in a plain 
 historical past. Professor Driver has no difficulty 
 in specifying another meaning which is equally 
 in keeping with the wider applications of the 
 mood. The termination -ah, in this connection, 
 is merely intensive or energetic. " It strengthens 
 the animation (Lebendigkeit) of the verbal idea " 
 (Delitzsch). There is nothing admonitory, or 
 even " intentional," in the lengthened form, but it 
 adds emphasis to the idea of movement conveyed 
 by the tense ; and in this sense may be fitly 
 introduced into graphic delineatioiis of the past. 
 Thus in Genesis xxxii. 5, Jacob is represented as 
 sending servants to his brother Esau, and saying, 
 " Thus saith thy servant Jacob, ... I have oxen. 
 
176 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 and asses and flocks, . . . and I have sent 
 (nnbtpiji'l) to tell my lord, that I may find grace 
 in thy sight." In a passage like this, however, 
 the full force of the cohortative is not exhausted 
 by the bare idea of intensity. Whether one 
 thinks of the younger man's anxiety when he 
 heard of his brother's coming, or his clearly 
 expressed desire to find favour in his sight, it is 
 impossible to exclude from his request the mental 
 attitude of the speaker, or not to find in the 
 emphatic form of the verb the closely related 
 element of intention. In fine, we have a verbal 
 form which is rightly regarded as modal ; and if 
 this be once admitted in one form of the volunta- 
 tive (the cohortative), it will not be easy to 
 convince the Hebrew student that a similar 
 modification may not occasionally be present in 
 the jussive. 
 
 Let him examine, for example, the varying 
 forms of even one verb, 1133,, to weep, in the 
 following four texts. In 2 Chron. xxxiv. 27 the 
 heavy prefix •") has retracted the tone, and pro- 
 duced the apocopated form of the verb "ijlfll ; hut 
 in 2 Kings xxii. 19 a slight emphasis in the 
 reading, which the Masoretes have duly marked 
 by a disjunctive accent, has been sufficient to 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Imperfect 177 
 
 preserve the unmodified form nSir)'!. In these 
 texts we have a plain, consecutive narrative in 
 the course of a historical review, and there is 
 nothing to suggest in either passage that we 
 have a modal or jussive use of the verb. But in 
 contrast with these, let the student note the 
 apocopated form in Gen. xxxvii. 35, and 2 Sam. 
 xix. 1 (in Heb.). Here, if anywhere, we have 
 not simply the bare narration of past events, but 
 the mental attitude of a sorrow-stricken father, 
 weeping as for an only son, and his deliberate, 
 though resigned, determination to give himself 
 to the luxury of grief. How is this expressed ? 
 By the intensive or intentional jussive in both 
 instances — even though, as in the second passage, 
 the verbal form is marked by the strongest dis- 
 junctive accent. In the form HSiiHl (2 Kings 
 xxii. 19) a minor distinctive like Tiphcha is 
 sufi&cient to preserve the unmodified imperfect; 
 but in David's grief for Absalom, the abrupt 
 jussive form is retained even with so heavy an 
 accent as Athnach ('^2'J'l). Clearly a distinction 
 like this is not to be neglected. It is full of 
 meaning for the preacher. And if the expressive 
 idiom cannot be thus stretched on the Procrustian 
 bed of any preconceived rule or system, the 
 
 Hebrew student is well advised to keep an 
 12 
 
178 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 open mind, and to judge each case as it 
 arises. 
 
 2. Its Nature 
 
 Of the actual genesis of this idiom, we know, 
 and can know, but little. It lies in a period 
 anterior to the present state of the language ; 
 and in the last resort can only be referred to the 
 peculiar liveliness and vigour of early Semitic 
 speech. Even in its inception, however, the element 
 of sequence must have been one of the formative 
 principles. Otherwise, the natural construction 
 of the perfect with light vav would certainly 
 have been used instead. The mere play of fancy 
 would never have given rise to two special tense- 
 expressions, unless these lively transpositions had 
 been supported and justified by a definite logical 
 secution. Not that logical sequence is to be 
 sought in every instance of vav consecutive with 
 the imperfect. The probability is that, having 
 become a pretty common formula for the con- 
 necting of past events, the idiom came to be 
 used for all kinds of sequence — whether of mere 
 chronological succession or of mental association 
 — without any idea of regarding each new detail 
 as the necessary consequence or result of the pre- 
 ceding act. 
 
 The kind of connection which is strictly conse- 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Im'perfect 179 
 
 quential may be variously expressed. It may 
 be rendered by so, and so, or left more indefinitely 
 to the general sense of the narrative. Cf. Gen. 
 xxiii. 20, "And so the field was Tnade sure 
 (Q)^^) unto Abraham by the children of Heth." 
 Or Judges iii. 30, " So Moab was subdued {^i'2P\']) 
 that day under the hand of Israel. And the 
 land had rest fourscore years." Even in a 
 passage like Gen. xl. 23, the strong vav is not 
 to be regarded as merely connective. " He 
 remembered not Joseph, but forgot him." 
 Obviously the meaning is, that because the chief 
 butler made no effort to retain the memory of 
 a distinct personal favour rendered by the 
 Hebrew captive, he thereby (as a necessary 
 consequence) allowed his benefactor to slip out 
 of his thoughts altogether. Of the more general 
 nuance of succession in time, or association in 
 thought, the student may turn to examples like 
 the following : — Gen. iv. 8, " And Cain rose up 
 and slew him." Ex. ii. 10, " And she called his 
 name Moses, and said, etc." Or Job xiv. 10 : — 
 
 " But man dieth, and wasteth away : 
 Yea, man giveth up the ghost, etc." 
 
 Here the new statement, introduced by strong 
 vav, is parallel rather than consecutive to the 
 principle clause ; but occurring as it does in the 
 
180 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 detailed picture of the patriarch's hapless con- 
 dition, it is suitably represented by V^\ 
 
 Isa. xxxix. 1 is scarcely a case in point. The 
 R.V. renders, not as a pluperfect, had heard, but 
 simply as a fresh circumstance suggested to the 
 mind of the prophet, and rightly introduced at 
 this point by the help of vav consecutive with 
 the imperfect — "For he heard that he had 
 been sick." Nevertheless, the actual report of 
 Hezekiah's sickness must have been prior to the 
 sending of the Babylonian embassage ; and since 
 the pluperfect sense is found in the parallel 
 passage in 2 Kings xx. 12, the suggestion made by 
 Delitzsch and others is probably to be accepted as 
 correct that ^j^tW'^T ^® ^ copyist's error for j^j^ti^ ^3' 
 "for he had heard." Cf. 1 Sam. ii. 21, where 
 we have a similar confounding of the two letters 
 5 and "). The accepted reading, -ipg 15, yields 
 no intelligible sense, and must be corrected into 
 TpD'^') ^^^^ ^^ LXX. Emended in this way, 
 Isa. xxxix. 1 is not to be regarded as a case of 
 vav consecutive at all. 
 
 And yet on other grounds it is of the highest 
 possible interest to the Hebrew student. It has 
 broached the question how far the imperfect with 
 strong vav can convey the meaning of a Plu- 
 perfect ? There is, of course, no doubt that the 
 
Vav Gonsecutwe with the Imperfect 181 
 
 formula may denote the continuation of a 
 pluperfect, as Gen. xxvi. 18, xxxi. 34, xxxix. 13, 
 etc. But can it introduce it ? Can it, instead of 
 conducting us forward to a succeeding act or 
 detail, lead us back to one which is chronologically 
 anterior? Driver, in his exhaustive note, has 
 gone over all the passages, and concluded, like 
 Bottcher, in the negative — quoting Dr. Pusey in 
 the " Minor Prophets," who remarks on Jonah iv. 5, 
 " Some render, contrary to grammar, ' and Jonah 
 had gone.'" Strange to say, the Jewish gram- 
 marians were unanimously in favour of this con- 
 struction ; and the A.V., in following their 
 example, has inserted the reading "had" in a 
 great variety of passages. But in the RV. every 
 instance has been corrected or emended, with the 
 exception of 1 Kings xiii. 12, Isa. xxxviii. 21, 22, 
 Zech. vii. 2, Neh. ii. 9 ; and even in these instances 
 the student will experience little difficulty in find- 
 ing another and equally admissible reading. In 
 1 Kings xiii. 12, for example, the sense requires 
 the Hiphil 1«")51 instead of 'iNI.']!, and we ought 
 to render as in the margin, or in the LXX, koI 
 BeiKvvova-iv airm oi vlov k.t.X. "And his sons 
 shewed him what way the man of God went." 
 
 For a practical illustration suggested by this 
 distinction, the preacher may turn to Ex. xxxii. 29. 
 
182 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 The A.V. renders, "For Moses had said" — the 
 pluperfect implying that the injunction to con- 
 secrate themselves to Jehovah was at least 
 parallel, if not anterior, to the divine commission 
 in verse 27 ; so that the consecrating act and the 
 avenging deed were really one and the same. 
 There is nothing to show, however, that this was 
 the intention of the Hebrew leader. And within 
 the verse itself it fails to do justice to the particle 
 '^3^ which is signalised by a disjunctive accent. 
 In reality, the act of consecration is posterior, not 
 anterior, to the avenging deed (ver. 28), while 
 15 furnishes the reasons for the all-important 
 addition. Translate, " And Moses saAd, Consecrate 
 yourselves to-day to the Lord ; for every man 
 hath been against his son (R.V. margin) and 
 against his brother : and that he may bestow 
 (nJlbl) upon you a blessing." The infin. con- 
 struct with 1 is here used, simply as a shorter 
 way of continuing the preceding verbal action.^ 
 It adds a second reason for the act of consecration. 
 It suggests the possibiUty of the inherited curse 
 (Gen. xlix. 7) being changed into a national 
 blessing. Interpreted in this way, the expositor 
 at once feels that the original proclamation, 
 
 1 " A brachylogy," A. B. D. " Syiitax,''p. 129. 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Imperfect 183 
 
 " Who is on the Lord's side 1 " is followed by at 
 least a threefold dedication; or that they who 
 espouse the cause of Jehovah must be, at least, 
 three things in one. 
 
 (1) Soldiers — to wipe out, sword in hand, the 
 
 dishonour caused by idolatry (ver. 27). 
 
 (2) Priests — to fill their hands, not with the 
 
 sword of vengeance, but with the censer 
 of a nation's worship. The blessing con- 
 ferred on the Levites would be the 
 scattering abroad of priests (ver. 29). 
 (8) Intercessors — to pray for that stiff-necked 
 but now sorely-smitten people, even 
 though the price of Israel's forgiveness 
 should be the effacing of their own 
 names out of the Lord's Book of Life 
 , (vers. 30-33). 
 Were the Levites prepared to espouse the cause 
 of Jehovah in that profound, spiritual sense ? — 
 with the censer, no less than with the sword, 
 with self-sacrificing love, no less than with 
 avenging zeal ? If so, the consecrating act would 
 have its counterpart in a divine installation — not 
 the filling of the hand with any particular gift 
 (1 Chron. xxix. 5), but with the rights and reins 
 of office (Ex. xxix. 9). Levi would attain his con- 
 secration.^ 
 
 1 See the author's " Mosaic Tabernacle," pp. 20, 50. 
 
184 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 3. Its Use 
 
 It is used, in general, to continue a perfect or 
 other verbal expression, which furnishes the true 
 standpoint of the writer. It is not necessary, in 
 every instance, to begin with a definite verbal 
 form. Anything that provides a suitable starting- 
 point, as a statement of time, or a casus pendens, 
 will serve the purpose equally well. The imper- 
 fect with strong vav will catch up and continue 
 the logical succession, whatever may have been 
 the form or manner of its introduction. Hos. 
 xi. 1 — " When Israel was a child, then I loved 
 him, and called my son out of Egypt." Even a 
 simple imperfect or a participle, which is used in 
 a sense equivalent to a perfect, may be skilfully 
 selected to begin the new development, and then 
 the imperfect with strong vav will immediately 
 succeed it. Hos. xi. 4, " I drew them (imperf.) 
 with cords of a man, with bands of love, and I 
 was (Tl^Tl^i) to them as they that take off the 
 yoke, etc." 
 
 The normal use of the construction, however, 
 is to continue an ordinary perfect in any one 
 of the many shades of meaning characteristic of 
 that Hebrew tense.^ Does the perfect, e.g., refer, 
 
 ^ See above, Chapter IV. 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Imperfect 185 
 
 like the Greek Aorist, to a finished action in 
 past time ? The imperfect with vav consecutive 
 is at once brought within the sphere of the same 
 definite conception. Gen. iii. 13, "The serpent 
 deceived me, and I ate." Or does the imperfect 
 with strong vav continue a perfect in the sense 
 of a general truth, which we can only express by 
 the English present ? The same English idiom 
 must be retained and applied to both clauses, 
 as Job xiv. 2 : — 
 
 " He Cometh forth like a flower, and viithereth." 
 Or finally, does the fi:esh action, introduced by 
 strong vav, refer to futv/re time, being the con- 
 tinuation of a prophetic perfect, or of an ideal 
 situation in which the principle of the prophetic 
 perfect is really present ? The same method of 
 interpretation must be applied to it. The ideal 
 standpoint of the prophet is not to be sacrificed 
 to the prosaic standpoint of the present, except 
 as a concession to the English reader, who might 
 be slow to realise the surprising richness of the 
 Hebraic point of view. Ps. xxii. 30, " Have eaten," 
 etc. ; Isa. ii. 9, "Are bowed down" — i.e., in punish- 
 ment, as if the doom of the miscreants had 
 already fallen, and not simply in practice, as in 
 the A.V. Ps. Ixiv. 8-10, where in confident 
 expectation of a speedy and righteous retribu- 
 tion, the Psalmist exclaims : — 
 
186 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 But God hath shot at them ; 
 With an arrow they are wounded. 
 
 And all men fear ; 
 
 And declare the work of God, 
 
 And wisely consider of His doing. 
 
 For a concluding practical illustration of this 
 significant idiom the student may refer to Isa. 
 ix. 5 (Heb.). Disappointed by the persistent 
 unworthiness of King Ahaz (c/. vii. 9), the prophet 
 projects himself into the future, and pictures 
 Israel's ideal king, bearing the insignia of office, 
 and receiving the homage and acclamation of 
 the people. "Unto us a son has been given 
 (l^?)j ^^<i t'^^ government is laid upon his 
 shoulder, and they call him (i^'1p';'l), etc." 
 And then follows the august description of the 
 Prince - of- the - Four - Names — " Wonderful Coun- 
 sellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of 
 Peace." This requires the conjunctive accent, 
 M'huppakh, on the term " wonderful," instead of 
 the disjunctive T'lisha, as in the ordinary nota- 
 tion ; and the present accentuation being ab- 
 normal in other respects,^ the slight emendation 
 thus suggested may at once be admitted into 
 the text. It has the manifest advantage of 
 bringing the first part of the title into conformity 
 1 Wiokes, " Prose Accentuation," p. 134. 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Imperfect 187 
 
 with the other three compound expressions (R.V. 
 margin). But what is the true significance of 
 the Fourfold Name ? Does it mean that in the 
 dark days of Ahaz the attributes of a noble 
 and valorous monarch were conspicuous by their 
 absence ? and that Isaiah was constrained to 
 turn to the greatness of the Messianic age in 
 order to fan the patriotism and deepen the 
 spirituality of Israel's theocratic ideals ? If so, 
 he never painted on the shifting screen of the 
 future a more glorious portrait than this. God's 
 vicegerent on earth is already depicted as seated 
 upon his throne, and these are the four main 
 elements in his sovereignty : — (1) Wonderful 
 counsel. Unlike the pitiable vacillation of Ahaz, 
 the ideal king gives wholesome direction to his 
 subjects, and surprises all by the wisdom and 
 uniqueness of his plans. (2) Divine power. As 
 Jehovah's representative, he shows that where 
 there is counsel sufficient to guide and inspire 
 a people, there is also energy and masterful ease 
 in giving effect to his purpose (cf xxviii. 29, 
 margin). (3) Everlasting love. This monarch 
 is the father of his people. By wisdom and 
 might he has welded them into a nation ; and 
 thus " begotten," they are made to feel that 
 they are constantly surrounded and shielded by 
 a father's tenderness and care. (4) Messianic 
 
188 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 peace. By counsel, power, and love he brings 
 in an era of abiding tranquillity and rest ; for, 
 as Delitzsch has expressed it, " the other names 
 intentionally die away in Q^'^tl^, like the three 
 utterances of the Aaronic blessing." 
 
Additional Notes and Exam/pies 189 
 
190 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 VAV CONSECUTIVE WITH THE PERFECT 
 
 Foe the origin and meaning of this idiom the 
 s]tudent should consult the exhaustive and illu- 
 minative section in Driver's " Hebrew Tenses," pp. 
 114-124. According to.it, the formula of vav 
 Perfect was evoked by the corresponding idiom 
 of vav consecutive with the Imperfect. Just as 
 sequence in time or association in thought causes 
 a completed action to pass into the new phase of 
 incipiency ; so here, though in the opposite direc- 
 tion, a Tiascent action is regarded as advancing 
 to completion and thereby becoming perfect. The 
 one is the direct antithesis of the other. If the 
 
 latter, for instance, retracts the tone to the penult, 
 
 < 
 as ^Tp^*"!? ^^^ former throws it forward on the 
 
 ultima as n^^i^l ; and this difference in form is 
 
 T : - T : 
 
 accompanied by a corresponding difference in 
 
 meaning. If the one represents actions as real, 
 
 or descriptive of concrete events in the past, the 
 
 other views them as contingent and indefinite, like 
 
 191 
 
192 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 the abstract possibilities of the future, cf. h^iH^ 
 (Gen. iii. 13) with ''n'^^n'l (1 Kings xxii. 22). 
 Hence, if the imperfect with -T can only be 
 applied to the future when it is contemplated 
 as fixed and definite, the perfect with 1 can 
 only be applied to the past or present, when the 
 events are conceived as unfixed and indefinite. 
 The two idioms, in fact, are contrasted at every 
 point, and yet in one essential particular, they 
 are practically identical. In both instances, it is 
 the time or nuance of the first verb that deter- 
 mines the date or character of the second. What 
 the strong vav seems to do is to point to the 
 preceding verb and say, this verb indicates the 
 sphere within which the assertion contained in 
 the second verb is to be verified. This, as 
 Driver conjectures, may be the real explanation 
 after all of the emphatic alteration of the tone : 
 it is designed to mark this limitation. It seems 
 to say. There! to the hearer: beware lest you 
 construe in an absolute sense what is only true 
 with reference to the scope of the preceding 
 action. Consequently, if the initial verb be a 
 jussive, frequentative or subjunctive, the perfect 
 with strong vav is virtually the same. To all 
 intents and purposes it has lost its individuality 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Perfect 193 
 
 and passed under the sway of the dominant verb. 
 In a few brief paragraphs we shall look at some 
 of the more important usages of this Hebrew 
 idiom. 
 
 1. It continues an Imperfect in the Sense 
 OF A Futuee 
 
 In this connection, however, the imperfect may 
 
 denote a great variety of meanings. It may 
 
 begin with a pure future, as in Gen. xviii. 18, 
 
 "Abraham shall become a great nation, and all 
 
 the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him " 
 
 (iD'^lli']). Yet even in this case the student will 
 
 always have to enquire whether the context may 
 
 not demand a different shade of meaning — not 
 
 a mere future, but something of pv/rpose, or, it 
 
 may be, coTn/mand, translating " I will," or " thou 
 
 shalt" in accordance with these nuances. Ex. 
 
 viii. 23, " And I will put a division between my 
 
 people and thy people." 1 Sam. xvii. 32, " Thy 
 
 servant mil go and fight." Ex. xx. 24, "An 
 
 altar of earth shalt thou make Me, amd sacrifice 
 
 upon it." Verse 9, " Six days shalt thou labour, 
 
 and do (jT'toJ^'l) all thy work." In these and 
 
 similar instances the precise shade of meaning 
 
 is obvious enough ; but what is the real import 
 13 
 
194 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 of a passage like Judges vi. 16, " Surely I will be 
 with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites 
 as one man " ? Is this a promise of victory or an 
 injunction to fight ? 
 
 Closely related to this usage is the use of the 
 simple imperfect after various pa/rticles. Gen. 
 xxvii. 12, "Perhaps (^7^b4) my father will feel me, 
 and I shall be as one that mocks him." Chap, 
 xxxvii. 26, " What gain is it that (^S) we should 
 kill our brother, and cover hie blood." So 'iX = 
 or if (1 Sam. xxvi. 10), 1)A = then (vi. 3), 1;^ = 
 until (i. 22), 'T\''^iii = how ? (Gen. xxxix. 9), and 
 many others. Or the telic particles 'jS, X^h, 
 etc., as, "Lest he come, and smite me" (Gen. 
 xxxii. 12). " Therefore shall the word of the 
 Lord be . . . line upon line . . . that they may 
 go, and fall backward " — i.e., line upon line in 
 judgment (Isa. xxviii. 13). 
 
 It is not always an exception to this rule to 
 find, after the imperfect with these particles, not 
 vav consecutive with the perfect, but the imper- 
 fect with simple vav. Of. Hos. x. 12, " Break up 
 your fallow ground: for now it is time to seek 
 the Lord, till He come amd rain (n'Ti''1. i^'il'^'^J^) 
 righteousness upon you." Vav consecutive with 
 the perfect would have meant that the showering 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Perfect 195 
 
 down of righteousness was the result or conse- 
 quence of the preceding act — that the " raining '' 
 was subsequent to the "coming" — but such an 
 idea would have been alien to Hosea's thought, 
 and only have introduced confusion into his 
 imagery. Jehovah does not rain blessing upon 
 Israel after He has appeared in their midst. 
 The divine coming is the blessing. Hence a 
 verbal form which indicates parallelism rather 
 than consequence, or even identity rather than 
 result, is more in consonance with the prophet's 
 meaning, and gives a deeper spiritual import to 
 his language. The present use of n^'i'^'l, there- 
 fore, is perfectly legitimate, and is not to be 
 regarded as an infringement of the rule that 
 after ^5^ with the imperfect, the element of 
 sequence is usually denoted by the perfect with 
 strong vav. 
 
 In other respects the last-named passage is 
 full of interest for the preacher. It is known 
 as the Parable of the Heifer, and suggests, at 
 least, a threefold division. 
 
 (1) Jehovah's past goodness, or TDIl (ver. 11). 
 It is compared to the indulgence shown by a 
 kind master to a newly broken-in heifer. No 
 galling yoke had as yet marred the beauty of 
 its neck ; but in the easy work of the threshing 
 
196 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 floor it is allowed to go round and round, en- 
 joying at every turn the allotted hire of the 
 unmuzzled animal (Deut. xxv. 4). But, instead 
 of profiting by this indulgence, Israel had proved 
 herself to be a " stubborn heifer " — departing 
 from Jehovah. She had ploughed wickedness 
 and reaped iniquity (ver. 13). And, there- 
 fore, 
 
 (2) The threat of divine chastisement. Instead 
 of sparing her fair neck any longer, Jehovah 
 would " yoke Ephraim " (G. A. Smith) ; Judah 
 would be compelled to plough, and Jacob to 
 break his clods — '' a figure for the depressing 
 conditions of life under a foreign master " 
 (Cheyne). Removed from the threshing floor 
 altogether, Ephraim would be compelled to draw. 
 And was there no possibility of respite, even at 
 the eleventh hour ? Yes. 
 
 (3) The promise of divine forgiveness (ver. 12). 
 If Ephraim, determined to plough in some field, 
 would only do so in the field of penitence, and 
 sow the seed of righteousness, they would yet 
 reap according to IDH. The forgiving love of 
 Jehovah would shower upon them " the fruits 
 of righteousness" {^evvrifiaTa SiKaioavvr]<s, LXX) 
 — i.e., salvation ; and they would walk in the 
 light of the divine presence. 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Perfect 197 
 
 2. It continues an Imperfect in the Sense 
 OF A Frequentative 
 
 It does so (a) in past time, as Gen. ii. 6, 
 " A mist used to go up, and water the ground." 
 Ex. xvii. 11, " And it used to be (rf^lTl), when 
 Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed " 
 ("llil.). This use of vav perfect is very common 
 in describing past events, conceived as customary, 
 and in giving the details of a picture. Gf. 1 Sam. 
 xvii. 34-36), where David's early experiences with 
 wild beasts is graphically depicted. Dpil is cer- 
 tainly frequentative, having all the force of a 
 vigorous supposition — "whenever he arose (on 
 any given occasion), I used to catch him by the 
 beard and rend him." Or Gen. xxix. 2-3, in 
 which a sudden change of tense, from the 
 imperfect with -^ to perfect with "J, is most notice- 
 able, and ought not to be neglected. " ATid he 
 looked (vav imperfect), and behold a well in 
 the field, and, lo, three flocks of sheep were lying 
 (participle) by it ; for out of that well they used 
 to water (imperfect) the flocks. . . ." Then 
 follow, in verse 3, four perfects with vav conse- 
 cutive, showing that the whole verse belongs, 
 not to the general narrative, but to the account 
 
198 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 of what used to be done in the customary 
 watering of the flocks. The general narrative 
 is only resumed by the imperfect with •! in verse 4. 
 
 It is found (/8) in present time, as Amos v. 19, 
 "As a man fiees from a lion, and a bear Tneets 
 him." Hos. vii. 7, " They are all hot as an oven, 
 and devour (^75^<1.) their judges" (i.ft, habitually). 
 Gen. ii. 24, "Therefore does a man leave his 
 father and mother, and cleave to his wife, a/nd 
 they are one flesh." Or that solemn statement 
 in Jer. xvii. 5-8, "Cursed is the man that 
 trusteth in man, and maketh (Dtol.) flesh his 
 arm ; for he shall be like the scrub of the 
 desert : (but) blessed is the man that trusteth 
 in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is (TVTX)) ; 
 for he shall be as a tree planted by the waters." 
 The entire paragraph (5-10) may be divided thus 
 — (1) The continual practice or principle of the 
 divine government that only piety can eventually 
 prosper (5-8). (2) The self-deception of the 
 human heart that will not accept the teaching 
 of this principle (ver. 9). (3) The disillusion- 
 ment, that at the end he shall behold his ill- 
 gotten gains vanish, and he himself accounted 
 as a fool (vers. 10-11). 
 
 Or the preacher may turn to a similar illus- 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Perfect 199 
 
 tration in Jer. xx. 9. " ATid if I say (vav 
 perfect) I will not speak any more in his name, 
 then there is (rT^m.) in mine heart as it were a 
 burning fire shut up in my bones, amd I am 
 wea/ry [^tyi\V7y\) with forbearing, and I cannot 
 (contain)." This is a vast improvement upon 
 the A. v., which seems to describe a single 
 past occurrence — " Then I said, etc." The latter 
 would require "IDk"}"), and would convey no idea 
 of the repetition so plainly discernible in the 
 original. The fact is, that what is equivalent 
 to a conditional sentence is frequently framed 
 by vav consecutive perfect without any condi- 
 tional particle at all ; and it is so used both in 
 the protasis and apodosis. The whole text ought 
 to be read in the light of the context. Jere- 
 miah, by his fearless words, first at Topheth 
 (xix. 12) and then in the temple (ver. 14) had 
 aroused the wrath of the priests and people to 
 the highest pitch of violence. The chief agent 
 in this persecution was Pashur, " the chief officer 
 in the house of the Lord." He had Jeremiah 
 seized, scourged, and put in the stocks at one of 
 the principal gates of the temple. There the 
 prophet remained all that night until Pashur 
 came to release him on the morrow. And what 
 was the nature of his meditation, as he sat, a 
 
200 Sermons in Syntaa: 
 
 persecuted martyr, in the upper gate of Ben- 
 jamin ? The answer is found in xx. 7-18. For, 
 according to his usual method, Jeremiah has put 
 his soliloquies and prayers at the close of the 
 narrative with which they are connected. In 
 reality they ought to come in before his triumphant 
 reply to Pashur in the morning (vers. 3-6). So 
 that, read in the light of such a context, verse 9 
 suggests a twofold division. 
 
 (1) The temptation to be silent. It had its 
 origin in the persecution to which he was being 
 subjected — the violence of the priests (ver. 2) 
 and the ridicule of the people (7-8) ; and in pro- 
 portion as he yielded to it, it produced, and only 
 could produce, discouragement and dismay (of. 
 vers. 14-18). 
 
 (2) The irresistible impulse to speak. It was, 
 as it were, a fire shut up in the bones, and he 
 could not contain. The fire was the felt presence 
 and power of the Eternal — a power " mighty and 
 terrible " (ver. 11), and one that tried the reins and 
 the heart (ver. 12); and in proportion as he 
 yielded to it, he experienced the uplifting and 
 enlargement of deliverance, until he was able to 
 sing, " Praise ye the Lord ; for He hath delivered 
 (perfect of certitude) the soul of the needy" 
 (ver. 13). 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Perfect 201 
 
 3. It continues any other Veebal Form 
 belonging to the sphere op the im- 
 PERFECT 
 
 A participle — e.g., as Ex. vii. 17, " Behold, I am 
 about to smite (n3?5) the waters, omd they shall 
 he turned into blood." An infinitive, whether 
 absolute (Isa. v. 5) or construct (2 Kings xviii. 
 32) — " Until I come, and take you away " 
 {'^Plr^^')). A jussive, as Gen. i. 14, " Let there 
 be lights, and let them be for signs." Or a 
 cohortative. Gen xxxi. 44, " And now come, let us 
 make a covenant ; and let it he for a witness 
 between me and thee." But chiefly an impera- 
 tive, 1 Kings ii. 31, "Fall upon him, and hury 
 him." Or Gen. vi. 14, " Make thee an ark, and 
 
 pitch it" \pr)p2'\ — the throwing forward of the 
 tone showing that the 1_ is consecutive). 
 
 In connection with these verbal forms, the 
 student may note two other passages, in which 
 the precise point is somehow missed even in the 
 rendering of the R.V. Gen. xlvii. 29-30. Here 
 the ordinary division into verses has helped to 
 obscure the patriarch's instructions. He does 
 not say, " But when I sleep with my fathers, thou 
 shalt carry me out of Egypt." Beginning with 
 
202 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 the last clause of verse 29, which is practically a 
 negative imperative Oi"?!)?!? «5'7N), the three 
 subordinate verbs in verse 30, which are all per- 
 fects with vav consecutive, ought to be rendered 
 with the same or a similar nuance, "Bury me 
 not in Egypt, hut let me lie with my fathers ; yea, 
 carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their 
 burying-place." Similarly in Ezek. xx. 20. The 
 R.V. translates — " And hallow My Sabbaths ; and 
 they shall he a sign between Me and you, that 
 ye may know that I am the Lord your God " — 
 i.e., a promise of divine blessing for the future. 
 But the promise had already been given to the 
 fathers, as in verse 12 ; and now their children in 
 the wilderness were being appealed to, to allow 
 the covenant promise to become a reality — 
 " Hallow My Sabbaths ; and let them, he a sign 
 between Me and you." Instead of pointing to 
 the future, it was a call to divine co-operation in 
 the present. For as in Israel's past, so now on 
 the plains of Babylonia, the Sabbath was a 
 greater boon than Israel imagined. It was at 
 least three things in one. 
 
 (1) A bond of union among themselves. 
 
 (2) A badge of distinction from the heathen.^ 
 
 (3) Jehovah's bow in the cloud, that the 
 
 ^ See the author's " Minor Prophets," p. 68. 
 
Vav Consecutive mth the Perfect 203 
 
 deluge-like waters of exile would no 
 more become a flood to overwhelm the 
 nation. 
 
 4. It mat follow anything which supplies 
 THE Ground of a New Development 
 
 The starting-point may be a simple casus 
 pendens. Num. xiv. 31, "But your little ones 
 . . . / will bring ('^nNia^ll.) them in." 2 Sam. 
 xiv. 10, " Whosoever saith aught unto thee, bring 
 him ('inb^lJl^) to me." Or a time designation, 
 as Hos. i. 4, " Yet a little while, and I will visit 
 ('^P'lJ^O^)." Ex. xvi. 6, "At evening, then ye 
 shall IcTiow," Or even a causal statement, after 
 which the strong vav is used to introduce the 
 apodosis. 1 Kings xx. 28, " Because the Syrians 
 have said. The Lord is a god of the hills . . . 
 therefore will I deliver all this great multitude 
 into thine hand." Isa. iii. 16-17, "Because the 
 daughters of Zion are haughty . . . therefore the 
 Lord will smite, etc." Cf. also Isa. vi. 7, where 
 we have the ground or condition of the prophet's 
 forgiveness — " Lo, this hath touched thy lips ; and 
 so thy iniquity passeth away ("iDl), and thy sin 
 is atoned for " (G. A. Smith). It is not necessary 
 
204 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 to render '' shall pass away " with Davidson and 
 Driver. " The "l connects as simultaneous what 
 is said by yi3 and "ID " (Delitzsch). And if 
 anything is clear exegetically, it is the coinciding 
 of the prophet's forgiveness with the application 
 of the sacramental sign. The moment he rises 
 from that act of sacramental communion, he 
 exclaims in the full consciousness of a divine 
 absolution, " Here am I, send me." This allusion 
 to a sacrament may furnish the best solution of 
 the seraph's reassuring message. A sacrament is 
 something more than a momentary act. It is an 
 act that symbolises the passing into a forgiven 
 and lifelong state — a state that is best described 
 by God's eternal now ; not " shall be," but " is." 
 Hence, to paraphrase his language, it might read, 
 " Lo, this glowing stone touches thy mouth, and, 
 as you kneel in silent receptivity under the 
 mystic sign, I, as heaven's delegate, pronounce 
 the words Ahsolvo Te — Thine iniquity passeth 
 away, and thy sin is expiated." So that the for- 
 giveness depicted in Isaiah's vision may be treated 
 as follows : — 
 
 (1) Its divine origin — a glowing stone " from 
 
 the altar." 
 
 (2) Its completed character — "Thine iniquity 
 
 is taken away " (R.V.). 
 
Vav Consecutive with the Perfect 205 
 
 (3) Its adaptability to the inolAvidvAxl man — 
 " Lo, this hath touched thy lips." 
 
 Of course, if the vav be disjoined from the verb, 
 as in. the last clause of this verse, we must write 
 ■^SDJ^ 'l^ril^tsn'l instead of vav perfect. The sub- 
 ject is thereby rendered more emphatic, and the 
 change to the simple imperfect has the additional 
 advantage of variety. There are even cases where 
 the imperfect is used alone — the strong vav not 
 being present at all. Cf. Zeph. i. 8 with verse 12, 
 where in addition to an adverbial clause we have 
 the preceding phrase HTn.. " And it shall come 
 to pass in the day of the Lord's sacrifice that I 
 will punish (''in'lj2Dl) the princes, etc." " And it 
 shall come to pass at that time that I will search 
 (tosnb^) Jerusalem with candles." The latter 
 text, on Israel's sin and punishment, is full of 
 interest to the preacher ; and we may close the 
 present chapter by indicating a possible line of 
 exposition. 
 
 (1) The Sin. — It was at once an absorbing 
 devotion to secular business (ver. 11), religious 
 indifference or being " settled on their lees," and 
 unbelief or virtual infidelity — " that say in their 
 heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will He 
 do evil." 
 
206 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 (2) The Pvmishment — Jehovah had come 
 first with the lamp of reason and conscience 
 (cf. Prov. XX. 27) ; then with the lamp of mercy 
 (c/. Rev. iii. 20); and only when both of these 
 had been rejected, had He drawn near with the 
 lamp of judgment, to punish the men who were 
 settled on their lees. 
 
 (3) And yet it need not be. Zephaniah was a 
 preacher of salvation, no less than of judgment 
 (of. iii. 14-20) — a truth which is beautifully 
 symbolised by his name, " he whom Jehovah has 
 hid." "The Lord thy God is in the midst of 
 thee, a mighty one who will save : He will rejoice 
 over thee with joy ; He mil be silent in His love " 
 (R.V. margin). We bow in adoration before the 
 revelation of so profound an affection, and are hid 
 under the shadow of the Almighty.^ 
 
 1 Of. the author's " Minor Prophets," p. 58 ; also, 
 " Sermons in Accents," p. 117. 
 
AddMional Notes and Exam/plea 207 
 
208 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE PERFECT AND IMPERFECT WITH WEAK VAV 
 
 In dealing with the rudiments of Hebrew 
 grammar, the student has no doubt noted various 
 peculiarities that help to indicate date. We have 
 the varying use of the vowel letters— ilJiN- They 
 were used very sparingly at first, as DQin, with 
 omitted Aleph and Yod (Gen. xxv. 24), or Tl^fQ 
 with omitted Aleph (Num. xi. 11) ; precisely as 
 we find tW'l for ti^i^l on the Moabite Stone, or hp 
 for *^<^p in the Siloam Inscription. In later 
 Hebrew, however, when the Aramean began to 
 intrude upon the Palestinian speech, writers such 
 as Jeremiah and Ezekiel find it necessary to give 
 the scriptio plena; though even in this case 
 the question of date is somewhat complicated by 
 the fact that in the earlier books the instances 
 of defective writing have been largely removed 
 by the corrections of later copyists. QOlJH is 
 expanded into D'^Ql^^l^ in Gen. xxxviii. 27, and 
 '^nSQ becomes 'Tlt^J^ in 1 Sam. xxix. 3, etc. 
 
 • T X • T T 
 
 14 209 
 
210 Servians in Syntax 
 
 A more striking indication of date is found 
 in the growing use of the perfect with light vav. 
 In the continuation of a historical narrative the 
 usual idiom is the imperfect with vav consecutive, 
 as ")D«1, "Then said I" (Gen. xxiv. 39); yet 
 even in the earliest writings, there are occasional 
 traces of this second idiom coming to take its 
 place, as Judges xvi. 18, 2 Sam. xvi. 5, etc. ; until, 
 in the later books, and particularly in Ecclesiastes, 
 the imperfect with -1 gradually disappears, whereas 
 the other construction, which becomes universal 
 in Aramaic and in the Mishnah, occurs with ever- 
 increasing frequency as '^J^'^Qt^'l, " Then said I " 
 (Eccles. ix. 16). The feeling of connection in 
 some of these later instances is so strong that our 
 translators have quite commonly rendered it so, 
 then (Eccles. ii. 9, etc.), just as in the more 
 regular idiom of vav consecutive with the im- 
 perfect. Not that the two constructions are 
 thereby conceived as identical. They are rather 
 two circles drawn from two adjacent but quite 
 distinct centres. Logical secution is the centre 
 of the one ; parallelism or co-ordination the centre 
 of the other ; and while they intersect and over- 
 lap and cover a considerable area common to 
 both, the original conception that is peculiar to 
 each ought not to be overlooked. 
 
Perfect and Imperfect with Weak Vav 211 
 
 In the present instance we may distinguish 
 three separate nuances in the perfect with light 
 vav. 
 
 1. Co-OEDINATION 
 
 This is in keeping with Canon Driver's main 
 distinction that as compared with the imperfect 
 with -1, the perfect with light vav causes the 
 narrative to advance, not by development, but 
 by accretion. The writer wishes to set two facts 
 in co-ordination with one another. He would 
 regard the second, not as consequential or 
 successive to the first, but simply as simultaneous 
 or in some way parallel with it. Hence the 
 light vav, with which the connection is formed, 
 is copulative rather than consecutive, and ought 
 to be recognised and interpreted as such. Gf. 
 Isa. i. 2, " I have nourished, aind brought up 
 children." Deut. ii. 30, "The Lord thy God 
 hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate." 
 Or Ps. xxxviii. 9, " I am faint and sore bruised " 
 ('irT^5'T31.). This differs little from the asyn- 
 detons construction, as in verse 7, " I am pained 
 and bowed down greatly" ('^Jl'inttJ). Or Lam. ii. 
 16, " We have found, we have seen it." 
 
 For a practical illustration, suggested by this 
 idiom of co-ordination, the preacher may turn 
 
212 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 to Isa. Ixiii. 10, " But they rebelled, and grieved 
 (^liaj^l ^1!2 narri.) his holy spirit : therefore he 
 was turned (imperfect with .5) to be their enemy, 
 and himself fought against them." The A.V. 
 begins a new paragraph here ; but the verse is 
 in strict logical sequence with verses 7-9 — the 
 opening formula (T)'0 TVZ'ili) being an exact 
 equivalent for vav consecutive with the imperfect. 
 The revisers, too, have printed the term " spirit," 
 with a small s, instead of the authorised capital 
 letter ; for in the Old Testament the designation 
 "spirit" is invariably used in connection with 
 Jehovah, and is never employed absolutely, like 
 a distinct personality who may enter into com- 
 munion with man. And yet even in the R.V. is 
 the insertion of a comma justified after the term 
 " rebelled? " The pronoun " they " is em- 
 phatic; and in order to preserve this emphasis, 
 the Masoretes have not only marked it with a 
 disjunctive accent, but have also connected the 
 two verbs, which are really simultaneous or 
 parallel with one another, with a conjunctive 
 accent. Logical sequence is only resumed in the 
 next clause by the use of the imperfect with \ 
 So that to bring out this connection, and to pre- 
 serve this emphatic punctuation, we ought rather 
 
Perfect and Imperfect with Weak Vav 213 
 
 to read — " He bear them, and carried them all 
 the days of old. But as for them, they rebelled 
 and grieved his holy spirit, etc." Read in the 
 light of this context, the verse may be taken as 
 the key to the whole paragraph, which may be 
 divided thus : — 
 
 (a) The divvne love — manifold, compassionate, 
 
 and age-long (vers. 7-9). 
 (/8) The divine grief — not at aiHiction (ver. 9) 
 
 but at sin (ver. 10"). 
 (7) The divine chastisement — turned to be 
 
 their enemy, but the enmity was simply 
 
 the obverse side of the love (vers. 10^ 11*). 
 
 2. Contrast 
 
 Instead of simple co-ordination the perfect with 
 light vav may indicate a strong adversative sense, 
 expressed by but, whereas, etc. 1 Kings iii. 11, 
 " Thou hast not asked long life . . . but hast 
 asked, etc" {rhm^). 2 Kings xviii. 36, "But 
 (in reply to Rabshakeh) the people held their 
 peace (^ttJ''^nil'l), and answered him not a word." 
 Jer. iv. 10, " Then said I, Ah, Lord God ! surely 
 Thou hast greatly deceived this people, saying, 
 Ye shall have peace ; whereas the sword reacheth 
 
214 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 (nj^^il.) unto the soul." Or for a practical illus- 
 tration, Prov. ix. 12 : — 
 
 If thou art wise, thou art wise for thyself ; 
 
 But if thou scornest \Ki2 ./j t^o'i alone shalt bear it. 
 
 Why the revisers should have preferred the copu- 
 lative " and " instead of the adversative " but " 
 of the A.V. we cannot profess to explain. Not 
 only is there an emphatic contrast between the 
 two halves of the verse, but the verse itself is 
 the summary of one of the most striking contrasts 
 in the whole Book of Proverbs. It matters not 
 whether it be taken as the conclusion of the para- 
 graph on WisdoTn (as in the English version) or 
 the beginning of the section on Folly (as in the 
 Masoretic text);^ it belongs in reality to both, 
 and with its simple antithetical parallelism, may 
 be accepted as a suitable summary of the whole. 
 And what is its theme ? The bearing of wisdom 
 or of folly on the man's own life — 
 
 "If thou art wise, thou art wise /or thyself; 
 But if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it." 
 
 It may be admitted, with the LXX, that if a 
 
 ' For in the Tiberian school of Masoretes, verse 12, began 
 one of the Sedarim or triennial sections, into which the 
 whole Bible was divided, so as to admit of its being read 
 in the synagogue once in three years (Ginsburg's "Introduc- 
 tion," p. 32). 
 
Perfect cmd Im/p&rfect with Weak Vav 215 
 
 man be wise for himself, he shall be wise also to 
 his neighbours (koI roif irXtjaiov) ; just as wisdom 
 too will be supremely satisfied when she has 
 admonished the man into love (ver. 8) ; but that 
 is not the main thought in the present passage. 
 It is the influence of well-doing or of ill-doing 
 upon the individual himself — the growing in 
 honour or the reaping of the whirlwind in the 
 man's own life. And if the preacher follow the 
 interesting addition of the LXX, he will experi- 
 ence no lack of suggestive imagery to illustrate 
 his sermon. It may be paraphrased as follows : — 
 " My son, if thou be wise for thyself, thou shalt 
 also be wise to thy neighbours : but if thou turn 
 out evil, and so estrange thy fellows — massacring 
 the crew, so to speak — thou shalt find thyself 
 alone on a stormy sea, and be compelled to bale 
 out the water unaided (/aoi/o? av avTXrj<jei<; KUKa). 
 Yea, thou shalt be like a man who tries to shep- 
 herd the winds (odTo<; iroifiaivet avefiovs), or to 
 keep pace with the flight of birds at the time of 
 their migration : they can only lead you away 
 from the immediate duties of field and vineyard, 
 until wandering in desert places, you will find 
 neither water nor fruit." Truly, if one be wise, he 
 is wise for himself/ 
 
 On the other hand, is this a suitable message 
 for the present generation ? It is. Altruism has 
 
216 Serinons in Syntax 
 
 been preached so long that the indispensable 
 
 duty of self-discipline is apt to be neglected. 
 
 And yet where will all our altruistic dreams end, 
 
 if the individual equipment and character be 
 
 allowed to run to seed ? The call of humanity is 
 
 not to be ignored, but the teaching of the Hebrew 
 
 sage, as of our own dramatist, must be constantly 
 
 repeated : — 
 
 This above all, — to thine own self be true ; 
 And it must follow, as the night the day. 
 Thou canst not then be false to any man. 
 
 3. HisTOBicAL Association 
 
 As already indicated in Chap. XII., logical 
 sequence is not to be sought in every instance of 
 vav consecutive with the imperfect. Having 
 become a common formula for the connecting of 
 past events, the idiom came to be used for all 
 kinds of sequence — whether of mere chronological 
 succession or of mental association — without any 
 idea of regarding each new detail as the necessary 
 consequence or result of the preceding act. It is 
 in this wider use of vav imperfect that we are to 
 seek an analogy to the perfect with light vav. 
 In many instances, especially in the later stages 
 of the language, the two constructions are used 
 indiscriminately to indicate, in simple narrative, 
 the evolution of the thought. Indeed, the perfect 
 
Perfect and Imperfect with Weak Vav 217 
 
 with light vav is the natural formula for such an 
 expression ; and while the imperfect with -T was 
 adopted as the more classical Hebrew idiom, there 
 is nothing anomalous or enigmatical in the fact 
 that occasionally in the earlier books, and in- 
 creasingly in the later, we find this simple his- 
 torical connection denoted by vav copulative. 
 
 Gen. XV. 6, "And he believed {\'Oii'n']} in the 
 Lord ; and he counted (imperfect with ■")) it to 
 him for righteousness." The second verb is rightly 
 conceived as consequential to the first ; but there 
 is nothing to show that the verse itself is part of 
 a consecutive narrative. It is rather thrown in 
 as a mental reflection on the part of the writer ; 
 and is therefore naturally introduced by the per- 
 fect with weak vav. As a connected narrative, 
 verses 6, 7 read well enough without it. Gf also 
 1 Kings XX. 21, " And the king of Israel went out, 
 and smote (1J^) the horses and chariots, and 
 slew {r\'2'n'\) the Syrians with a great slaughter." 
 Here the first verb " to smite " is rightly viewed 
 as in true logical secution to " went out " ; but 
 since the second half of the verse is as clearly 
 parallel or simultaneous with the first half, it is 
 as fittingly introduced by vav copulative. 
 
 Or the preacher may turn to Isa. xxii. 14, 
 
218 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 "And the Lord of hosts revealed Himself ((17531) 
 in mine ears, Surely this iniquity shall not be 
 purged from you till ye die." The text is not 
 really consecutive to verses 12-13. It is simply 
 one of the pa/rallel truths which the prophet had 
 firmly and clearly realised in the valley of vision. 
 These truths are at least four in number : — 
 
 (1) That Sennacherib's army now advancing on 
 Jerusalem (701) was Jehovah's instrument (ver. 
 11"). 
 
 (2) That repentance, even at the eleventh 
 hour, was Jerusalem's one way of escape (ver. 12). 
 Indeed, when Hezekiah did repent, as recorded in 
 xxxvii. 1, deliverance was at once granted (ver. 
 36). 
 
 (3) Instead of this, the prophet saw the entire 
 city given over to infatuated frivolity (ver. 13). 
 They were looking to Egypt for help, and trusting 
 in the multitude of their sacrifices ; and thinking 
 that it was all well behind these safeguards, they 
 were turning the hour of crisis into a holiday. 
 
 (4) Therefore doom was inevitable (ver, 14). 
 " This iniquity shall not be purged from you till 
 ye die." They had sinned the sin that hath 
 never forgiveness ; and now the weeping prophet 
 (ver. 4), like the weeping Saviour (Matt, xxiii. 
 37), could only say, " Your house is left unto you 
 
Perfect omd Imperfect with Weak Vav 219 
 
 desolate." True, the doom did not immediately 
 fall; and yet still less was it withdrawn. "It 
 remains hovering over Jerusalem like an eagle, 
 and in the end, sure enough, Jerusalem becomes 
 its carrion " (Delitzsch). 
 
 4. The Imperfect with Light Vav 
 
 If the perfect with simple vav, as in the fore- 
 going paragraphs, is occasionally used in place 
 of the imperfect with ■"), we find something 
 entirely analogous in the corresponding idiom of 
 vav consecutive with the perfect. Its place is 
 frequently taken by the imperfect with light vav. 
 Instead of the ordinary secution, Gen. i. 14, " Let 
 there be lights, and let them be (^Tll.) for signs," 
 we have in all periods of the language the 
 equally natural construction of the simple im- 
 perfect, verse 9, " Let the waters be gathered to- 
 gether . . . and let the dry land appear (nt^irn).'' 
 Probably this use of the imperfect, which is more 
 frequent in the poetical than in the historical 
 books, was preferred to the more usual secution 
 with the perfect as giving greater force and 
 independence to the verbal action. Ps. xxv. 9 : — 
 
 The meek will he guide in judgment ; 
 
 And the meek will he teach (^^7"''1) his way. 
 
220 Sermons in Syntax 
 
 Or Gen. ix. 27 (poetical) : — 
 
 God enlarge (not, " shall enlarge ") Japheth, 
 And let him dwell ( t!Dtt)^l) in the tents of Shem. 
 
 The asyndetous construction is only slightly more 
 vivid in its terseness and animation. Gf. Hos. 
 V. 14, 15, "I, even I, will tear and go away" 
 {^^^ fpX^'i^). "I will go, and return to my 
 place " (rrl^2j« Tj'^^). 
 
 The main distinction, however, between the 
 two constructions — between simple vav and vav 
 consecutive — is just the fact already adduced, 
 that in the case of vav copulative, the element 
 of sequence is allowed more and more to recede 
 into the background. It tends to become simple 
 co-ordination. Cf. Gen. xvii. 1-2, " Walk before Me, 
 and be thou perfect. And I will make (nSJniSn.) 
 My covenant between Me and thee." Verse 2 is 
 not consecutive to verse 1, in the sense that the 
 framing of a covenant is made dependent on the 
 perfect allegiance of the man. The spring of the 
 divine action is found in El Shaddai Himself: 
 and since both the allegiance and the covenant 
 are traced back, like parallel streams, to His re- 
 vealed will and character (" I am God Almighty "), 
 the connection between them is suitably repre- 
 sented by the insertion of vav copulative. " Walk 
 
Perfect and Imperfect with Weak Vav 221 
 
 before me, and be thou perfect," is therefore a 
 divine injunction that looks in both directions — 
 back to the character of El Shaddai, and forward 
 to the fulness of the covenant. Nevertheless, 
 it is not the covenant that is contingent on the 
 obedience ; it is the obedience that is stimulated 
 by the covenant. Hence a suitable line of 
 thought would be : — 
 
 (1) The injunction to walk with God. 
 
 (2) Its twofold ground, in the assured character 
 
 and covenant of Jehovah. 
 Or for a concluding illustration, we may turn 
 to Ps. xxxvii. 40, which, as Perowne observes, 
 contains " the whole lesson of the Psalm : " — 
 
 And the Lord helpeth them, and rescueth them : 
 He rescueth them from the wicked, and saveth them. 
 Because they have taken refuge in Him. 
 
 The first line of this verse is really consecutive 
 to verse 39, and is therefore rightly introduced 
 by the imperfect with -X The second line, 
 however, forms with the first a good instance of 
 pa/rallelismus nrnembrorv/m, and consequently is 
 as suitably introduced by simple vav. Hence, 
 if the former passage supplied a twofold reason 
 for human obedience, the present furnishes a 
 twofold ground for the divine deliverance. 
 Jehovah saves the children of men because — 
 
222 Servnons in Syntax 
 
 (1) He is a fortress in the time of trouble 
 
 (ver. 39). 
 
 (2) Because, like the hunted manslayer, they 
 
 themselves have fled for refuge to the 
 shelter of the divine Shepherd's tent. 
 
 In view of what He is, and of what they are, 
 He rescues them from the fell sweep of the 
 avenger, because they have taken refuge in 
 Him.^ It is enough ! " Even the youths shall 
 faint and he wea/ry (imperfect with simple vav), 
 and the young men shall utterly fall : but they 
 that wait upon the Lord shall renew their 
 strength; they shall mount up with wings as 
 eagles ; they shall run, and not be weary ; they 
 shall walk, and not faint." 
 
 1 Of. The author's " Mosaic Tabernacle," p. 23. 
 
Additional Notes and Exa/mples 223 
 
224 Additional Notes and Examples 
 
INDEX OF PASSAGES 
 
 Gen. i 
 
 1 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 14 
 
 ii 
 
 6 
 
 
 19 
 
 
 24 
 
 iii 
 
 13 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 19 
 
 iv 
 
 8 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 17 
 
 vi 
 
 14 
 
 
 17 
 
 ix 
 
 27 
 
 xii. 
 
 2 
 
 
 13 
 
 xiv 
 
 19 
 
 XT 
 
 6 
 
 
 18 
 
 xviii. 
 
 1 
 
 
 17 
 
 
 18 
 
 
 21 
 
 
 30 
 
 xxii. 
 
 8 
 
 xxiii. 
 
 13 
 
 
 20 
 
 xxiv. 
 
 8 
 
 
 23 
 
 
 39 
 
 
 57 
 
 XXV. 
 
 24 
 
 xxvi 
 
 18 
 
 15 
 
 
 . 37 
 . 219 
 . 201 
 . 197 
 . 77 
 . 198 
 . 185 
 . 67 
 . 69 
 . 179 
 . 89 
 . 93 
 . 201 
 . 89 
 . 220 
 . 110 
 . 78 
 . 55 
 . 217 
 . 58 
 . 88 
 . 94 
 . 193 
 . 144 
 , 129 
 . 123 
 . 58 
 . 179 
 . 127 
 . 112 
 . 210 
 . 148 
 . 209 
 . 181 
 
 Gen. xxvii. 4 . 
 
 . 130 
 
 12 . 
 
 . 194 
 
 xxix. 2-3 
 
 . 197 
 
 XXX. 13 . 
 
 . 37 
 
 xxxi. 34 . 
 
 . 181 
 
 44 . 
 
 . 201 
 
 49 . 
 
 . 125 
 
 xxxii. 5 . 
 
 . 175 
 
 11 . 
 
 . 50 
 
 12 . 
 
 . 194 
 
 xxxiii. 12 . 
 
 . 148 
 
 xxxvii. 26 . 
 
 . 194 
 
 35 . 
 
 . 177 
 
 xxxviii. 27 . 
 
 . 209 
 
 xxxix. 9 . 
 
 . 194 
 
 13 . 
 
 . 181 
 
 xl. 23 . 
 
 . 179 
 
 xli. 33 . 
 
 . 123 
 
 xlii. 18 . 
 
 . 110 
 
 xlvil. 29-30 
 
 . 201 
 
 xlix. 7 . 
 
 . 182 
 
 1. 5 . 
 
 . 147 
 
 Ex. ii. 10 . 
 
 . 179 
 
 iii. 3 . 
 
 . 144 
 
 vii. 17 . 
 
 . 201 
 
 viii. 23 . 
 
 . 193 
 
 xiii. 15 . 
 
 . 72 
 
 XV. 5 . 
 
 . 67 
 
 xvi. 6 . 
 
 . 203 
 
 xvii. 11 . 
 
 . 197 
 
 XX. 1/. . 
 
 . 116 
 
 9 . 
 
 . 193 
 
 24 . 
 
 . 193 
 
 xxix. 9 . 
 
 . 183 
 
 225 
 
226 
 
 Index 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Ex. xxxii. 20 . 
 
 . 20 
 
 1 Kings iii. 11 . 
 
 . 213 
 
 XXXT. 1 . 
 
 . 173 
 
 viii. 1 . 
 
 . 173 
 
 Num. xi. 11 . 
 
 . 209 
 
 xii. 6 . 
 
 . 131 
 
 29 . 
 
 . 94 
 
 9 . . 
 
 . 131 
 
 xiv. 31 . 
 
 . 203 
 
 xiii; 12 . . 
 
 . 181 
 
 xxiv. 17 . 
 
 . 57 
 
 xvii. 21 . . 
 
 . 129 
 
 Deut. ii. 30 . 
 
 . 211 
 
 XX. 21 . 
 
 . 217 
 
 iii. 26 . 
 
 . 125 
 
 28 . 
 
 . 203 
 
 iv. 1 . 
 
 . 89 
 
 xxii. 7 . 
 
 . 131 
 
 40 . 
 
 . 66 
 
 8 . 
 
 . 131 
 
 V. 27 . 
 
 . 107 
 
 22 . 
 
 . 192 
 
 xii. 20 . 
 
 . 144 
 
 2 Kings V. 13 . 
 
 . 110 
 
 xvii. 14 . 
 
 . 145 
 
 xviii. 32 
 
 . 201 
 
 xviii. 15 . 
 
 . 123 
 
 36 . 
 
 . 213 
 
 xxxii. 6 . 
 
 . 55 
 
 XX. 12 . 
 
 . 180 
 
 Judges iii. 30 . 
 
 . 179 
 
 xxii. 19 . 
 
 . 176 
 
 vi. 5 . 
 
 . 66 
 
 Isa; i. 2 . 
 
 . 211 
 
 16 . 
 
 . 194 
 
 3 . 
 
 . 53 
 
 ix. 8 . 
 
 . 113 
 
 4 . 
 
 . 51 
 
 14 . 
 
 . 113 
 
 18 . 
 
 . 78 
 
 xvi. 18 . 
 
 . 210 
 
 24 . 
 
 . 148 
 
 Euthiv. 3 . 
 
 . 59 
 
 ii. 9 . 
 
 . 185 
 
 1 Sam. i. 13 . 
 
 . 88 
 
 iii. 1 . 
 
 . 89 
 
 22 . 
 
 . 194 
 
 16-17 
 
 . 203 
 
 23 . 
 
 . 123 
 
 iv. 4 . 
 
 . 49 
 
 ii. 11 . 
 
 . 93 
 
 V. 1 . 
 
 . 143 
 
 21 . 
 
 . 180 
 
 5 . 
 
 . 201 
 
 vi. 3 . 
 
 . 194 
 
 11 . 
 
 . 72 
 
 ix. 23 . 
 
 . . 113 
 
 19 . 
 
 . 143 
 
 ^. 7 . 
 
 . 109 
 
 vi. 1 . 
 
 . 88 
 
 8 . 
 
 . 126 
 
 2 . 
 
 . 84 
 
 xiv. 36 . 
 
 . 127 
 
 6 . 
 
 . 49 
 
 xvii. 32 . 
 
 . 193 
 
 vii. 9 . 
 
 . 57 
 
 34-36 
 
 . . 197 
 
 ix. 1 . 
 
 . 58 
 
 XX. 36 . 
 
 . . 89 
 
 xxviii. 13 . 
 
 . 194 
 
 xxi. 10 . 
 
 . . 112 
 
 xxxvii. 30/.. 
 
 . 109 
 
 xxii. 22 . 
 
 . 77 
 
 xxxviii. 10 . 
 
 . 153 
 
 xxvi. 10 . 
 
 . 194 
 
 21 . 
 
 . 181 
 
 xxix. 3 . 
 
 . 209 
 
 xxxix. 1 . 
 
 . 180 
 
 2 Sam. iii. 21 . 
 
 . 148 
 
 xl. 7 . 
 
 . 53 
 
 xiv. 10 . 
 
 . 203 
 
 30 . 
 
 . 77 
 
 xvi. 5 . 
 
 . . 210 
 
 xlii. 1 . 
 
 . . 58 
 
 xvii. 1 . 
 
 . . 114 
 
 xiv. 22 . 
 
 . . Ill 
 
 xix. 1 (H 
 
 3b.) 177 
 
 Iv. 2 . 
 
 . Ill 
 
 1 Kings ii. 6 . 
 
 . . 127 
 
 3 . 
 
 . 130 
 
 31 . 
 
 . 201 
 
 lix. 10 . 
 
 . . 150 
 
Index 
 
 227 
 
 
 FAQE8 
 
 
 PAOES 
 
 Isa. Ix. 1 . 
 
 . 58 
 
 Ps. XXXV. 2 . 
 
 . 113 
 
 Ixiii. 3 . 
 
 . 134 
 
 xxxviii. 9 . 
 
 . 211 
 
 Ixv. 18 . 
 
 . 109 
 
 11 . 
 
 . 73 
 
 Jer. iv. 3 . 
 
 . 116 
 
 16 . 
 
 . 54 
 
 10 . 
 
 . 213 
 
 Ii. 9 . 
 
 . 163 
 
 21 . 
 
 . 150 
 
 18 . 
 
 . 163 
 
 vi. 10 . 
 
 . 150 
 
 Iv. 3 . 
 
 . 154 
 
 xxiv. 2 . 
 
 . 77 
 
 Ivii. 5 . 
 
 . 153 
 
 xxvii. 12 . 
 
 . 110 
 
 Ixiv. 8-10 
 
 . 185 
 
 xxxvi. 15 . 
 
 . 112 
 
 Ixvi. 6 . 
 
 . 153 
 
 Lam. ii. 16 . 
 
 . 211 
 
 Ixxi. 21 . 
 
 . 126 
 
 Hos. i. 4 . 
 
 . 203 
 
 bcxxiv. 4 . 
 
 . 53 
 
 ii. 4 (He 
 
 b.) 130 
 
 Ixxxv. 11 . 
 
 . 58 
 
 iv. 4 . . 
 
 . 125 
 
 14 . 
 
 . 135 
 
 12-13 
 
 . 73 
 
 Ixxxviii. 16 . 
 
 . 154 
 
 15 . 
 
 . 126 
 
 xcv. 10 . 
 
 . 85 
 
 T. 14-15 
 
 . 220 
 
 civ. 20 . 
 
 . 163 
 
 Yii. 7 . 
 
 . 198 
 
 29 . 
 
 . 162 
 
 xi. 1 . 
 
 . 184 
 
 ex. 2 . 
 
 . 108 
 
 3 . 
 
 . 12 
 
 cxviii. 25 . 
 
 . 114 
 
 4 . 
 
 184 
 
 oxix. 176 . 
 
 . 70 
 
 Amos V. 19 . 
 
 . 198 
 
 cxxii. 2 . 
 
 . 94 
 
 vii. 12 . 
 
 . 102 
 
 Job iii. 9 . 
 
 . 123 
 
 Micah iii. 4 . 
 
 . 137 
 
 17 . 
 
 . 74 
 
 V. 2 . 
 
 . 50 
 
 iv. 5 . 
 
 . 68 
 
 Jonah iv. 5 . 
 
 .181 
 
 V. 22 . 
 
 . 109 
 
 Hab. ii. 4 . 
 
 . 8 
 
 27 . 
 
 . 112 
 
 iii. 3-16 
 
 . 68 
 
 vi. 2 . 
 
 . 78 
 
 Zeoh. ii. 12 . 
 
 . 70 
 
 xiii. 5 . 
 
 . 129 
 
 vii. 2 . 
 
 . 181 
 
 27 . 
 
 . 125 
 
 xi. 2 . 
 
 . 58 
 
 xiv. 2 . 
 
 . 185 
 
 Ps. i. 2 . 
 
 . 72 
 
 10 . 
 
 . 179 
 
 ii. 2 . 
 
 . 68 
 
 13 . 
 
 . 154 
 
 iii. 2 . 
 
 . 88 
 
 21 . 
 
 . 77 
 
 6 . 
 
 . . 175 
 
 xvi. 18 . 
 
 . 126 
 
 vi. 6 . 
 
 . 74 
 
 XX. 17 . 
 
 . 123 
 
 XX. 4 . 
 
 . 143 
 
 xxiii. 11 . 
 
 . 143 
 
 7 . 
 
 . 59 
 
 xxvi. 13 . 
 
 . 86 
 
 xxli. 30 . 
 
 . 185 
 
 xxxiv. 37 . 
 
 . 136 
 
 XXV. 2 . 
 
 . 116 
 
 xl. 25 . 
 
 . 77 
 
 9 . 
 
 . 219 
 
 Cant. iii. 2 . 
 
 . 152 
 
 20 . 
 
 . 113 
 
 V. 2 . 
 
 . 152 
 
 xxvi. 6 . 
 
 . 148 
 
 Eccles. ii. 9 . 
 
 . 210 
 
 xxxii. 1 . 
 
 . 83 
 
 ix. 16 . 
 
 . 210 
 
 4 . 
 
 . 51 
 
 Neh. ii. 9 . 
 
 . 181 
 
 xxxiii. 13 . 
 
 . 37 
 
 1 Chron. xxix. 5 . 
 
 . 183 
 
 xxxiv. 11 . 
 
 53 
 
 2 Chron. xxxiv. 27 . 
 
 . . 176 
 
228 
 
 Index 
 
 LIST OF TEXTS MOKE FULLY 
 TEEA.TED FOR THE PREACHER 
 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Gen. xvii. 1-2 ... . 220 
 
 Hos. X. 12 . . 
 
 . 194 
 
 Ex. xxxii. 29 . 
 
 
 
 182 
 
 AmoB V. 4 . . 
 
 . Ill 
 
 Dent. ix. 3 . 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 15 . . 
 
 . 78 
 
 xxxii. 10 . 
 
 
 
 69 
 
 Zeph. i. 12 . . 
 
 . 205 
 
 Isa. i. 21 . 
 
 
 
 75 
 
 Pb. vi. 8 . . 
 
 . 59 
 
 vi. 7 
 
 
 
 203 
 
 xvii. 15 . . 
 
 . 148 
 
 vii. 14 . 
 
 
 
 90 
 
 xix. 1-2 . . 
 
 . 86 
 
 ix. 5 . 
 
 
 
 186 
 
 xxxi. 8 . . 
 
 . 51 
 
 xxii. 14 . 
 
 
 
 217 
 
 xxxii. 5 . . 
 
 . 39 
 
 Iviii. 10 . 
 
 
 
 137 
 
 xxxvii. 40 . . 
 
 . 221 
 
 Ixiii. 1-6 . 
 
 
 
 164 
 
 xli. 3 (Heb. 
 
 . 116 
 
 10 . 
 
 
 
 212 
 
 xlii. 5 (Heb. 
 
 . 155 
 
 Jer. i. 11-12 . 
 
 
 
 95 
 
 civ. 24 . . 
 
 . 54 
 
 xvii. 5-8 
 
 
 
 198 
 
 cxxi. 3 . . 
 
 . 129 
 
 XX. 9 . 
 
 
 
 199 
 
 Prov. i. 5 . . 
 
 . 103 
 
 Ezek. XX. 20 . 
 
 
 
 202 
 
 ix. 12 . . 
 
 . 214 
 
 Hob. vi. 3 . 
 
 
 
 146 
 
 Job xvi. 21 . . 
 
 . 132 
 
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 LORIMEK AND CHALMERS, 
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 T. & T. CLAEK, BDIifBUEGH. 
 
 London : Stmpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd. 
 
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