21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:16, duplicate conditional

Genesis 2:16

 

טז וַיְצַו֙ יְהוָֹ֣ה אֱלֹהִ֔ים עַל־הָֽאָדָ֖ם לֵאמֹ֑ר מִכֹּ֥ל עֵץ־הַגָּ֖ן אָכֹ֥ל תֹּאכֵֽל:

 

Translation:     **** Gd commanded the man saying: “eating you are permitted to eat” from every tree in the garden.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

יְצַו

commanded

 

The two words at the end of this verse are crucial and I put their translation in “”. You will see this structure over and over again and I have given it a special name: duplicate conditional.

 

The duplicate means that you have the same verb root twice: akhal in this case.

The binyan is qal; sometimes this structure will be in an agentless binyan.

The first verb is aspectless.

Aspectless verbs are used for commandments that must be met on demand, not constantly or on a specific schedule.

The second verb in a duplicate conditional is always imperfect aspect and that’s what makes it conditional. It is not a done deal. Some condition has to be fulfilled.

 

In fact, there’s a secondary condition here. The vowel under the kaf should be patach, but it’s tseire: not tokhal but tokhel.

That connects this imperfect to a verb form tokhelu which I call the permissive/prescriptive. It shows up in Leviticus 11 with the animals and so on that Jews are “permitted” to eat.

 

So the point is that Adam has permission to eat, when he does eat, from every tree in the garden. (Don’t get ahead of me here, that’s what THIS verse says.)

 

Duplicate conditional in most cases identifies a situation where due process applies. In this case, the due process is eating from all the food trees in front of the etnach in that other verse. The next verse will, however, have a form of the duplicate conditional that is crucial to Jewish law and shows up over and over again in Torah.

 

By the way, have you been keeping up with your etnachs and revias? Because it’s time to go on to a more common “comma”, the zaqef. Above elohim in this verse are two vertical dots like a sheva, only on top. That’s a zaqef qatan; it’s a slightly milder pause than the revia, and it has a cousin, the zaqef gadol, which has a vertical line to the left of the dots.