[Mesorah] vav hahipuch

[Toby Katz]

R' Akiva Miller wrote:
...But when preceded by a vav, the wishfulness seems to evaporate, and it becomes a simple past tense - "it happened":Vayhi erev vayhi bokerVayhi miketzVayhi b'etzem hayomVayhi bachatzi halaila
If so, then why not use the past tense ("V'hayah") in those cases? What meaning is added by saying "vayhi"?
Akiva Miller
>>>>>past participle: verb tense (usually combined with with some form of "have" or "be") indicating completion of event prior to some other event (or to the present). 
VEHAYA with the vov hahipuch would not be the past tense, rather, it means "And it will be" -- by definition the vov hahipuch changes past to future (and vice versa).
But to answer your main question, what is gained by using the vov hahipuch instead of "simple" past tense? In many cases in Tanach the vov hahipuch ("vayehi")  indicates the simple past tense while what we might think is the simple past tense ("hayah") is actually the past participle.  For example.Ber 1:31 VAYAR Elokim es kol asher ASAH -- Hashem SAW everything HE HAD MADE.
Ber 2:7-8 Hashem made man, Hashem planted a garden, Hashem PLACED there the man that HE HAD MADE -- VAYASEM sham es ha'adam asher ASAH..Ber 2:22 VAYIVEN Hashem es hatzela asher LAKACH min ha'adam le'isha -- Hashem BUILT the rib that He HAD TAKEN from the man into a woman.Here's an example from last week's parsha, Ber 50:13 VAYIKBARU oso bim'aras sedei hamachpelah asher KANAH Avraham -- they BURIED him in the double cave in the field that Avraham HAD BOUGHT.In this week's parsha, Shmos 4:7 VAYASHEV yado el cheiko VAYOTZIAH meicheiko vehineh SHAVA kivsaro -- He RETURNED his hand to his chest AND HE TOOK IT OUT of his chest and behold IT HAD ALREADY RETURNED to be normal flesh

--Toby Katzt613k at aol.com
=============
______________________________
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/mesorah-aishdas.org/attachments/20200114/90fdbd95/attachment-0002.htm>