21st Century Bible Hebrew -- participles

Some of you are screaming that I haven’t covered everything. No more I have. I haven’t talked about participles. Here’s the deal.

There are three verb forms in Biblical Hebrew that are gerundive, but apparently with different functions.

One is the progressive. It often is used gerundively and therefore works substantively but only when prefixed with the definite article. See Genesis 48:5.

 וְעַתָּה שְׁנֵי־בָנֶיךָ הַנּוֹלָדִים לְךָ בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם עַד־בֹּאִי אֵלֶיךָ מִצְרַיְמָה לִי־הֵם אֶפְרַיִם וּמְנַשֶּׁה כִּרְאוּבֵן וְשִׁמְעוֹן יִהְיוּ־לִי:

Ha-noladim means “who have been born”; it’s a modifying substantive from the nifal binyan. As such, it legitimizes Yosef’s sons. This might be the source of the midrash that their mother converted, because only the child of a Jewess can be considered a Jew. As a progressive, ha-noladim takes on the immediate past connotation in this context.

The aspectless gerundive is also naturally substantivized. The version that takes prepositions can operate as an adverb, as you see in Exodus 13:17, but the progressive and participle can’t.

וַיְהִי בְּשַׁלַּח פַּרְעֹה אֶת־הָעָם וְלֹא־נָחָם אֱלֹהִים דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ פְּלִשְׁתִּים כִּי קָרוֹב הוּא כִּי ׀ אָמַר אֱלֹהִים פֶּן־יִנָּחֵם הָעָם בִּרְאֹתָם מִלְחָמָה וְשָׁבוּ מִצְרָיְמָה:

This pretty much means “at the time of their seeing”.

The first participle I came across in Torah was Genesis 48:4 which goes like this:

וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלַי הִנְנִי מַפְרְךָ וְהִרְבִּיתִךָ וּנְתַתִּיךָ לִקְהַל עַמִּים וְנָתַתִּי אֶת־הָאָרֶץ הַזֹּאת לְזַרְעֲךָ אַחֲרֶיךָ אֲחֻזַּת עוֹלָם:

The bolded word is a hifil participle formed from the progressive, which most people would nowadays call an active present participle. Notice that it has an object suffix.  The reason we need a gerundive here is because of hin’ni, a relative of emphatic hineh, which has to be followed by a substantive. It’s bad grammar to use a progressive with a personal suffix. The quasi-descriptive nature of this word is not suitable for an aspectless verb. There aren’t many true participles in Torah, but this is one of them.