ט וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יִקָּווּ הַמַּיִם מִתַּחַת הַשָּׁמַיִם אֶל־מָקוֹם אֶחָד וְתֵרָאֶה הַיַּבָּשָׁה וַיְהִי־כֵן:
Translation: Gd said be the water gathered under heaven to one place and be the dry land revealed; it must have been so.
I want to clear up one thing. One of my research sources says yiqavu is qal not nifal. However, another source shows that shavah has this identical vowelling in nifal but not in qal. The one that disagrees with me, I have found mistakes in before – but since it’s a beta, that’s no surprise.
This is a parallel for use of nifal here in a later verse.
All right, why imperfect and not imperative?
Imperative seems to be reserved for one time actions that are supposed to take place immediately.
Another feature of imperatives is that you have to wait for another verse to confirm that the imperative was carried out. If not, the person issuing the imperative was not worthy to do so, or it was issued to somebody who could not be relied on to carry it out.
This is Gd speaking. If He doesn’t have the authority to issue imperatives, who does?
The final feature of imperatives is that even if they are carried out, they may reverse themselves. It is impossible to suppose that when Gd issues an imperative, it should reverse itself.
Well, there are three possible uses of the imperfect.
In third person, it usually appears when a ritual is under discussion and it’s a generalized envelope telling us what the ritual is. You find this a lot in Exodus and Leviticus.
In second person, it’s a commandment, a habitual part of Jewish life.
The third possibility is a process, and a rabbinic midrash picks up on this in connection with a verse much later in Torah. However, that verse talks about humans engaging in a process. From Gd’s point of view, however, this will be instantaneous.
These are all in qal in every case that I can remember; I’m starting the third rewrite of Narrating and will watch for exceptions.
And of course, it could be a future tense type usage, but as I said, from Gd’s point of view in time there is no such thing and He certainly doesn’t mean that time should stand still or something until this decree comes to pass.
But – the people hearing this narrative, at a certain point in time, knew perfectly well of a contradictory narrative. There was a time, wasn’t there, when the waters came back over the land, making it disappear?
I already said that hitpael is used for motion in multiple directions and we will see that again in Genesis 5 in a famous verse. But here, I have to wonder if a uniquely reversible situation isn’t meant.
I’m going to stop with that suggestion, but at the point when I’m editing this post, I can’t think of another place Torah has imperfect as a reversible action. If I come across it during my rewrite of Narrating the Torah this year, of course I’ll note the connection there. For now, I have bigger fish to fry. Almost literally.
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