[Mesorah] Vav hahippukh and jussive

[Mandel, Seth]

It is my fault, forgetting that almost none of you are linguists and  used to linguistic shortcut and abbreviations.  Mea culpa.
A word like "jussive" is used to refer both to the form and the meaning.  Just an in English, the word "past" can refer both to the morphological form as well as the meaning.
Jussive as a morphological term refers especial;ly to forms that in Biblical Hebrew are different from the "imperfect"/"future.  In most verb conjugations, the forms are identical.  However, they differ in 1) the Qal with III-weak roots (e.g. banah); 2) the Qal with III-Hollow roots (e.g. qam); 3) the Hif‘il.
These morphological forms, when prefixed by a vav, carry the vav hahippukh meaning.  Not just future, but future in the course of recounting a series of actions/occurrences.  Just as in English, the form "says" normally carries a present meaning, but in the recounting syntax refers to the past: "So he says,... so I say/says...so he says."
The Biblical syntax requires that this vav hahippukh recounting form follow a normal perfect form.  The vav hahippukh may never stand as the first verb in the sequence. Since it is used only in this formation, it of course has a vav at the beginning.
The jussive form with the jussive meaning is essentially the same as the form as used with the vav hahippukh, except for the stress with II-Hollow roots.  The jussive form of the root Q-M would be yaQOM, whereas as with vav hahippukh, it would be vayYAqom.  Here are examples with the root S-M: וְאָמַר יָשֵׂם יְיָ לְךָ זֶרַע מִן-הָאִשָּׁה הַזֹּאת (Sam 2:20), vs. וַיָּשֶׂם שָׁם אֶת-הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר יָצָר (Gen. 2:8).
Note that in Birkat Kohanim, the jussive form is used, with a vav preceding it יִשָּׂא יְיָ פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם (Num. 6:26), but this is the jussive meaning, not the syntactical usage of recounting a story, so the form is the jussive one, not the one used with "vav hahippukh."

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union

Voice and Fax (212) 613-8330        e-mail mandels at ou.org


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