21st Century Bible Hebrew -- uncertainty epistemic

So you might guess that if there’s a certainty epistemic, there’s also an uncertainty epistemic, and you would be right. You saw it in Genesis 1:3-4.

ג וּמִפְּרִ֣י הָעֵץ֘ אֲשֶׁ֣ר בְּתוֹךְ־הַגָּן֒ אָמַ֣ר אֱלֹהִ֗ים לֹ֤א תֹֽאכְלוּ֙ מִמֶּ֔נּוּ וְלֹ֥א תִגְּע֖וּ בּ֑וֹ פֶּ֖ן תְּמֻתֽוּן:

ד וַיֹּ֥אמֶר הַנָּחָ֖שׁ אֶל־הָֽאִשָּׁ֑ה לֹא־מ֖וֹת תְּמֻתֽוּן:

Chavvah isn’t sure she’ll die. The serpent copies her word as a complement for the aspectless mot, a sort of duplicate conditional that also shows up in Deuteronomy. For now, let’s concentrate on t’mutun, the uncertainty epistemic.

The morphology is imperfect verb, usually in 3^rd person although we have 2^nd person here, with a masculine -un ending or a feminine -in ending.  The latter is found in Samuel and Ruth.

The uncertainty epistemic is used when the “speaker” is not sure of the facts, especially that a commandment will be carried out. In some cases in Deuteronomy, during Mosheh’s address, he uses it while retelling Israelite history, and it gives a sense that he is allowing for the audience not to have been eyewitnesses to what he’s talking about. He’s addressing the generation that is about to enter the Holy Land; the generation that experienced the events died in the wilderness with notable exceptions.

One of the most important examples of uncertainty epistemic is Genesis 18:28ff, where Avraham tries to get Gd to let off the Cities of the Plain and not destroy them. What if there are 50 people who are good, will You destroy the cities then? Gd says “No.” “And what if five of the fifty are lacking?” And the form he uses is yach’srun.

אוּלַי יַחְסְרוּן חֲמִשִּׁים הַצַּדִּיקִם חֲמִשָּׁה הֲתַשְׁחִית בַּחֲמִשָּׁה אֶת־כָּל־הָעִיר וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא אַשְׁחִית אִם־אֶמְצָא שָׁם אַרְבָּעִים וַחֲמִשָּׁה:

Avraham doesn’t know for sure there are 45 good people in the cities; he doesn’t know if there are any. He’s using “lacks five” as an opening wedge to reduce the number. He stops at 10. (There’s a midrash for that.) And then when he gets up the next morning, he sees that the cities have been destroyed. He can see the smoke from where he is, miles to the west of where the cities were. Well, he tried.

Why would Avraham’s lack of knowledge be important to this narrative? Because Gd says:

“If I find in Sdom fifty righteous among the city, then I shall bear with the whole place because of them.”

That is a vow. For the vow to be legal, the positive clause has to come first, which it certainly does. Gd has to carry out that vow.

Peshitta, as the rabbis say, of course He’s going to carry out His vow, just as He’s going to carry out His vow for the descendants of the patriarchs to take over the Holy Land.

Well, but wait a minute. Why is it important that Avraham admits he doesn’t know? The answer is, Torah’s oral narratives transmit the norms and standards of the culture that transmitted it for so many centuries. Lack of knowledge is grounds for getting a vow annulled. The formula in Mishnah is, if you made a vow, it could be annulled by a rabbi if he questioned you and at some point you said “well, if I had known that, I wouldn’t have made the vow.”

But Gd knows how many righteous people there are in the cities – none! So He made the vow based on what He knew!

That’s not true. Gd made the vow based on Avraham’s suggestion, as a favor to His BFF, not on Gd’s personal knowledge. Avraham is admitting he may have been wrong to make the suggestion. He is giving Gd a way out. As it turns out, there aren’t even five righteous people in all of the cities. Kaboom.