Naaman the Syrian.

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out the narrative of Naaman the Syrian, show clearly how the essential difference of meaning between the one tense and the other is not effaced by vau conversive, but might, in so far as the imperfect is concerned, be expressed in English by the present tense. (Whether such a method of bringing out the specific import of the original would or would not be suitable for a popular version of the Scriptures is a point altogether beyond the scope of the present inquiry, the English present tense being here mentioned merely in illustration of the Hebrew idiom.)—

Verse 11.-But Naaman is wroth, and goeth away, and saith, Behold I said, Unto me he will surely come out

ועמד וקרא בשם יהוה אלהיו והניף ידו אל המקום ואסף המצורע :

Here Naaman pictures to himself as accomplished facts the series of actions consequent on Elisha's expected coming out-as if one were to say in English, He will surely come out; and then there is an end of the matter: the thing is done: he has stood, and prayed, and waved his hand, and recovered the leper. Yet the one future and in this case contingent event, namely the coming out, is the pivot on which all the preterites rest, and apart from which they have no actuality. It might not indeed be easy to give full expression in good English to the deep significance of the series of preterites here linked on to the initial imperfect in the Hebrew original. Yet it is surely conceivable that a preterite might, even though thrown by means of vau conversive into the future, yet retain its essential import. Indeed the narrative of Naaman the Syrian derives, in the text of the

180

An alleged mark of lateness.

original, peculiar force from the fact that each tense does retain its own specific meaning. The historian is describing the series of incidents as they proceed. Hence he takes for his stand-point the very date of their occurrence, or rather takes no fixed stand-point at all, but moves along the scene, and with dramatic vividness paints it as he goes.

Frequency or Infrequency of Vau Conversive.

The alleged infrequency of Vau Conversive in the Book of Ecclesiastes is, as has already been observed in page 168, one of the grounds on which the Solomonic authorship of the book is denied.

:

'This singular construction is [says Mr. Driver] peculiar to Hebrew outside the limits of the Old Testament it occurs nowhere except in the fragment dating from the ninth century B.C., and preserved upon what is now known as the Moabite Stone. The other Semitic languages do not hesitate to employ what might seem to be the very natural and obvious construction of the perfect and, in cases where the Hebrew regularly makes use of the imperfect and 1: : indeed the purest Hebrew almost uniformly shuns the perfect with under these circumstances, and it is not till the later language, and even then only partially, that the latter is able to gain an acknowledged footing. . .

Although in Hebrew the continuation of a historical narrative is most usually expressed by the imperfect with .1, we find, occasionally in the earlier books of the Old Testament, and with increasing frequency in the later ones, that this idiom, which is so peculiarly and distinctively a creation of the Hebrew language, has been replaced by the perfect with the simple or weak waw Generally, indeed, and invariably when the verb to which the perfect is annexed is a bare imperfect, the waw prefixed to the perfect is conversive, and the sense consequently frequentative; but a certain number of passages exist in which this signification is out of place; in these, therefore, we are compelled to suppose that the waw is the mere copulative, and that it no longer exerts

Co-ordinate facts.

181

...

over the following verb that strong and peculiar modifying influence which we term conversive. There are two principal cases in which the perfect with weak waw is thus met with. The feature common to them both is this-that the idiom employed, instead of representing a given event as arising out of, or being a continuation of, some previous occurrence (in the manner of the idiom with ↑), represents it as standing on an independent ground of its own, as connected indeed with what precedes, but only externally and superficially, without any inner bond of union existing between them in a word, it causes the narrative not to advance by development but by accretion. Accordingly we find it used (1) upon occasions when a writer wishes to place two facts in co-ordination with one another, to exhibit the second as simultaneous with the first rather than as succeeding it; for instance, in the conjunction of two synonymous or similar ideas (thus, 1 Samuel xii. 2 na 'nɔpt am old and grey-headed; Is. i. 2 1 1) : and (2), chiefly in the later books, when the language was allowing itself gradually to acquiesce in and adopt the mode of speech customary in the Aramaic dialects (Chaldee and Syriac), in which the rival construction with, at least in historical times, was never employed. . . . Those [instances of 'the perfect with weak waw'] which occur in the later books may be fairly regarded as attributable to the influence of Aramaic usage: but for the few which are met with in the earlier books (Genesis-2 Samuel, Isaiah), it is more than doubtful whether such an explanation is legitimate or admissible. . . . In 2 Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Chronicles, this usage becomes somewhat more frequent, . . The imperfect and, however, continues still to be distinctly the predominant construction: even in Ezra, for example, the perfect with occurs only iii. 10, vi. 22, 30, 36, ix. 6, 13, and in Nehemiah only ix. 7, xii. 39, xiii. 1, 30. Similarly in Daniel (excluding, of course, the Chaldee portion, from ii. 46 to vii. 28), . is constantly employed, though in viii-xii a few instances of the perfect are met with. There is only one book in the Old Testament, Qohéleth or Ecclesiastes, in which this state of things is reversed, and the perfect with simple waw obtains a marked and indeed almost exclusive preponderance. In the whole of Qohéleth. occurs not more than three times, i. 17, iv. 1, 7, whereas the other construction is of constant occurrence. This circumstance, taken in connection with what is uniformly observable in all other parts of the Old Testa

182

Ecclesiastes and Canticles.

ment, is by itself, quite independently of any other considerations, sufficient to stamp the book as being in all probability the latest in the whole canon. In the Song of Songs . occurs but twice, vi. 9 in this book, however, there is very little occasion for either form being used, and in fact the perfect with waw occurs only twice likewise, ii. 3, 10: but its use in verse 10 ["TIT MAY, according to (1) overleaf] is no criterion of date, being common to all periods of the language.'

While giving due weight to what is here specified as being characteristic of the Book of Ecclesiastes, one may yet observe that the rareness of in Ecclesiastes, and the frequency of the simple copulative vau, may be accounted for apart from the theory of lateness. Be it so that the simple conjunctive vau is more frequent in the later than in the earlier Scriptures, and that there is no trace of vau conversive beyond the close of the Hebrew canon, yet, apart from the Solomonic Scriptures, vau conversive is as common in the latest as in the earliest books of the Old Testament; and the simple conjunctive vau, though said to be characteristic of lateness, is not unusual even in the earlier Hebrew Scriptures. Its use in the Book of Ecclesiastes is to be accounted for, not by the alleged lateness, but by the scope and subject-matter of the book, or, as Dr. Pusey expresses it in his sixth lecture on Daniel the Prophet, by the simple fact, that language must be adapted to its subject.'

In various extensive portions of the earlier Hebrew Scriptures, vau conversive is seldom met with. Throughout much of the Book of Joshua, for instance, its occurrences are few and far between. It is found only once in the Song of

Vau prefixed to the Imperfect.

183

Deborah (Judges 5. 28), only once in the fortyfifth Psalm (verse 8), not even once in the seventy-second Psalm, which is ascribed in its title to Solomon, nor so much as once in chapters 2, 9, 10, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 27, 28 of Solomon's Proverbs.

The Imperfect Tense with the simple prefix.

In the Proverbs of Solomon, vau, whether conversive or simply conjunctive, is prefixed to the preterite about forty times, and to the imperfect tense forty-seven times. In eighteen of these forty-seven instances, the prefix is pointed as vau conversive, and in twenty-eight as simple vau; and once (23. 24) it is unpointed.

Vau conversive of the imperfect tense, eighteen times :—

also in Psalm 72. 4, 8, 11, 14, 15 thrice, 16, 17, 19. In connection with this preponderance of vau simply conjunctive over vau conversive of the imperfect tense in Solomon's Proverbs and in Psalm 72, it may be observed that the Book