21st Century Hebrew Bible -- aspectless verbs 2

I have some cats and dogs to clean up on aspectless verbs and then I’ll move on to another topic.

I used Genesis 41:43 to discuss the relationship between the different aspects. Now let’s look at why it would be there.

וַיַּרְכֵּב אֹתוֹ בְּמִרְכֶּבֶת הַמִּשְׁנֶה אֲשֶׁר־לוֹ וַיִּקְרְאוּ לְפָנָיו אַבְרֵךְ וְנָתוֹן אֹתוֹ עַל כָּל־אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם:

Let’s go through the alternatives and see why they don’t work.

If this had va-yiten, the narrative past, then we would still be enumerating how Pharaoh treated Yosef. Instead, we’re sealing off that list of examples.

If it had v’natan, that could be oblique modality, as if believing this clause depended on the truth of the other clauses. This isn’t a possible future action which the speaker is trying to convince the listener to believe in. It seals that as a result of the things done, we know that Pharaoh set Yosef over Egypt.  It’s also not part of the specifications for a ritual; if anything, the ritual is what the imperfect aspect verbs are about.

In Exodus 7:27 and 8:11, there are more aspectless verbs in similar situations. In the first one, we have im maen, for Pharaoh possibly refusing to let the Israelites go. It looks like the start of a duplicate conditional. However, the duplicate conditional would mean that there are conditions under which Pharaoh might not refuse and so far that hasn’t happened yet. We’re only up to the frogs and he refuses to let go until the firstborn die.

In 8:11 we have hakhbed. The verse opens with what looks like an evidentiary epistemic, which should have a narrative past after it as the evidence. However, this evidentiary epistemic is not asking for evidence; it comes after the verse about the stinking frogs, so it is actually a certainty epistemic. The next part of the verse says “because there was a respite”. Then we have Pharaoh hardening his heart, a beautifully gerundive use of this form, but if we used perfect aspect, we would be implying that he did so permanently and, according to the rest of the narrative, that wasn’t true. In this episode, Pharaoh hardening his heart is a job that a finite verb doesn’t work for, so it goes to the aspectless gerundive.