21st Century Bible Hebrew -- hifil progressive

Genesis 1:6

ו וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי רָקִיעַ בְּתוֹךְ הַמָּיִם וִיהִי מַבְדִּיל בֵּין מַיִם לָמָיִם:

 

Transliteration: Va-yomer elohim y’hi raqia b’tokh ha-maim v’yhi mavdil ben maim la-maim.

Translation:     Gd said Let there be a raqia in the midst of the water so as to let it be setting a division between water and water.

Letters in this lesson:

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

 

רָקִיעַ	Raqia
בְּתוֹךְ	in the midst of, among
מַבְדִּיל	Divide

 

You should recognize the root of the last word in the vocabulary; you’ve seen it before. This is the progressive aspect of the verb you saw as yavdel before, but in a real hifil. Now you can see how the piel progressive I showed you before differs from the hifil. They use all the same suffixes for gender and number. So try writing out the progressive of “divide” for yourself.

 

Now notice that we have bein again, but not bein…u-vein.  This time it’s bein X l’X. Previously we divided two different nouns. Now we’re dividing between the same noun twice. We’ll find out why when we get to the next verse.

 

We have y’hi again, “let X exist” but then we have a new form.

 

Viyhi is neither a certainty epistemic nor a jussive with a predicate noun. It has a predicate gerundive in the progressive aspect.

 

The progressive aspect here is taking on the job of a substantive via this gerundive usage; there are six other uses of vihi in Torah and all of them are followed by a noun.

 

I also want you to notice the dagesh in the dalet of mavdil. Here’s the syllabification: mav-dil. Because the first syllable is closed by a consonant, the dalet opening the next syllable has to take dagesh.

 

But this is not the same thing as verbal gemination. It’s a requirement of syllabification.

Next: the first of many words that I will not translate.

 

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