21st Century Bible Hebrew -- two important aspectless verb structures

Now I can talk about an important structure in Biblical Hebrew which you saw in the Garden of Eden story, Genesis 2:13:

וּמֵעֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע לֹא תֹאכַל מִמֶּנּוּ כִּי בְּיוֹם אֲכָלְךָ מִמֶּנּוּ מוֹת תָּמוּת:

Mot yumat appears a lot in Leviticus 20 in a list of capital crimes. I already said that in the Genesis story, it introduces an expectation that Gd will follow due process and not kill Adam and Chavvah unless He has the right evidence. This is also true of mot yumat; a court cannot execute somebody without following due process.

The grammar is:

Aspectless verb plus imperfect aspect verb from the same root and binyan.

The aspectless verb is used here as a commandment. As with zakhor and shamor, this is an “upon demand” commandment. The laws of Shabbat also apply to holy days and so it’s not just a simple schedule; intercalating the year moves the holy days. So any time an aspectless verb is used as a commandment, it’s “on demand”.

BUT the complement identifies when it’s legal to carry out the demand. In the case of mot tamut in Genesis, Gd says when it’s legal. You don’t get anything more “on demand” than that.

In the case of yumat other grammar is involved. Remember a few lessons back when I was talking about the perfect aspect verbs for a sacrifice, and I said that they define when the sacrifice is hurtsah and I said I was going to say more about that later. Here it is.

Hurtsah and yumat are from the hufal binyan. In legal formulations, this binyan says that a legal definition has been met. (It says something else in narratives but I’ll talk about that later.)

So in the case of mot yumat, the legal definition of yumat has been met and, in Narrating the Torah, I define it as meaning “a dead man”. This is stronger than ish mavet in Kings I 2:26 for Evyatar the priest; he has displeased Shlomo for trying to crown Adoniyahu. Yumat means somebody actually condemned by a court – through due process.  Because there’s a condition on carrying out the commandment – meeting due process – I call this the duplicate conditional. 

The duplicate conditional also shows up in narratives, probably the best example being Genesis 37:8. Yosef has just told his brothers his first dream and they say:

ח וַיֹּ֤אמְרוּ לוֹ֙ אֶחָ֔יו הֲמָלֹ֤ךְ תִּמְלֹךְ֙ עָלֵ֔ינוּ אִם־מָשׁ֥וֹל תִּמְשֹׁ֖ל בָּ֑נוּ וַיּוֹסִ֤פוּ עוֹד֙ שְׂנֹ֣א אֹת֔וֹ עַל־חֲלֹֽמֹתָ֖יו וְעַל־דְּבָרָֽיו:

His brothers said to him, “Oh, we are so sure you’ll rule over us, or take charge of us”; they added hating him more over his dreams and his words.

They could have issued a direct denial, but instead, the grammar says “No way are you in a position to do this,” the conditions don’t exist.

I once thought I had found an example of the duplicate conditional with each word in a different binyan but once I studied it carefully, I found both verbs were in nifal binyan.

There’s another structure like this, and it uses perfect aspect verbs.