21st Century Bible Hebrew -- "can/could"

I'm working on something I call Narrating the Nakh, a companion to Narrating the Torah with similar features: Olrik’s principles; 21^st century Bible Hebrew; modern archaeology. And I came across a structure that looks like an oblique with an imperfect aspect verb.

In Biblical Hebrew, use of vav plus a perfect aspect verb has several functions, one of which is the oblique. In a subordinate clause, preceded by a statement of a general or specific truth, the oblique is immediately accepted as true, whether it’s a result, purpose, cause, effect, or condition.

Vav plus imperfect aspect is a narrative past in most cases, but I started to find it in non-past contexts and because the context is different, it’s not a narrative past.

See Samuel I 11:1.

וַיַּ֗עַל נָחָשׁ֙ הָֽעַמּוֹנִ֔י וַיִּ֖חַן עַל־יָבֵ֣ישׁ גִּלְעָ֑ד וַיֹּ֨אמְר֜וּ כָּל־אַנְשֵׁ֤י יָבֵישׁ֙ אֶל־נָחָ֔שׁ כְּרָת־לָ֥נוּ בְרִ֖ית וְנַֽעַבְדֶֽךָּ:

So we have our certainty epistemic followed by its narrative past. After the etnach we have a narrative past, an imperative, and v’naavdekha. Is it a true future tense promise to serve Nachash?

Well, no it’s not. The men of Yavesh Gilad have set a condition “make a covenant with us, and [then] we can serve you.” Remember, avad and eved are an exclusive personal services contract between two Jews or a Jew taking on a Canaanite servant. The men of Yavesh Gilad want Nachash to promise the same rights as they would have if they contracted their personal services to a Jew. Well, the condition he sets is unacceptable, consisting specifically of an injury which would release a Canaanite from an exclusive services contract. So the men of Yavesh Gilad send for help. Also see Samuel I 12:10 for the same verb; once Shmuel saves the men of Yavesh Gilad they will be able to be eveds to Gd again.

Samuel I 12:1:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר שְׁמוּאֵל֙ אֶל־כָּל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל הִנֵּה֙ שָׁמַ֣עְתִּי בְקֹֽלְכֶ֔ם לְכֹ֥ל אֲשֶׁר־אֲמַרְתֶּ֖ם לִ֑י וָֽאַמְלִ֥יךְ עֲלֵיכֶ֖ם מֶֽלֶךְ:

So, “I could set up a king over you” because of obeying according to all you have said to me.

The old Latin grammars would want me to call this the potential aorist but I refuse to do that because it’s based on a tense grammar and Biblical Hebrew is an aspect grammar. Besides, it’s not just potential; it’s about conditions being fulfilled and then this form is used for something that hasn’t happened yet. That’s not a real future tense, which is a promise to do something unconditionally.

Notice that this is not the duplicate conditional, which requires an introductory aspectless verb from the same root and binyan as the imperfect verb; it states what will happen when the action becomes due and owing. That rests on Jewish law.

This new structure does not rest on Jewish law, it rests on things happening which probably no Jewish law addresses. The Law of Kings in Deuteronomy is about how the king has to behave once he is anointed. Here we have what has to happen before Shmuel will anoint a king.

Aside from this new structure, the grammar in Nakh is identical to Torah. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Nakh is part of the Jewish oral tradition. The fact that it is in Biblical Hebrew means it was written down during the first part of the 70 years of the captivity, while enough people still knew the grammar. The use of Biblical Aramaic in Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther and Daniel confirms that Biblical Hebrew literally died out toward the end of the Captivity.

This is different from the Sumerian Kings List which was copied from centuries-old lists of kings in the various city-states, after the 200 years of the Gutian takeover. The scribes of the Ur III dynasty no longer understood the old grammar – probably because of some hybridization with the Gutian Indo-European language – and they made mistakes that show the problem.

So once again, CONTEXT IS KING. The context is non-past, so the verb form can't be classed as narrative past. And the cultural context tells us what the difference is between this and a duplicate conditional.