Benjamin Lee Whorf

So Moses wrote down this song on the same day, and taught it to the sons of Israel.  Deuteronomy 31:22  NASB

Moses wrote – I want to look at something about the linguistic cultural reflection in Hebrew verb-gender combinations.  I think it’s fascinating, but it’s technical, at least to begin with.  So I’m a bit hesitant to write about this because I don’t want you to read this and say, “So what?  Does this really matter?  Where’s the movement of the Spirit here?  I wanted to read something that will draw me closer to God and all I got was a grammar lesson.”

Now you know my fear.  I write these daily investigations in order for me (and you) to understand the depths of the cultural influence in the Bible—things we often miss because we read in English or some other Indo-European language.  I write so that we will learn more about how God dealt with His chosen people—and maybe learn something about how He deals with us.  I don’t want you to read and be confused.  But occasionally I see that the very construction of Hebrew reflects a completely different perspective than the one we have in the West.  So—here goes.

Grammar:

Here are the two words of this verse in Hebrew:  וַיִּכְתֹּב מֹשֶה

You will see that the word “Moses” (מֹשֶה) follows the verb.  You will also note that the translation puts the verb in the past tense.  But this isn’t quite right.  If you remove the introductory conjunction, the verb here is יִּכְתֹּב  Now let’s find it in the conjugations below.

Hebrew conjugates verbs by either adding prefixes or suffixes to the verbal root.  Sometimes the grammar changes the appearance of the root as well, adding or subtracting consonants.  That means when we read something like “I wrote” or “You wrote” or “She wrote,” the verbal root remains the same but the suffix changes.  Unlike English, the subject (I, you, she) is attached to the verb so that the verb becomes a single word with case and gender.  Here’s an example in the past tense:

כָּתַבֽתִּי        I wrote

כָּתַבֽתָּ        You (singular) wrote

כָּתֽבָ         He wrote

כָּתֽבָה        She wrote

You will notice that the verbal root (“to write” – כָּתַבִ) remains the same but the gender designation changes (I put it in RED).  This is what we would call the “past” tense.  If our translation is correct, we should find the form כָּתִב in this verse (“Moses wrote”).  But we don’t!  Instead, we find יִּכְתֹּב  You will notice that the verb in our sentence doesn’t have a suffix.  Instead, it has is a prefix.  This means that verb isn’t a past tense, even if the translators say it is.

Now look at the gender conjugations of the future tense.  In the “future” tense, the gender designation is a prefix, not a suffix.

אֶכֽתֹּב        I will write

תִּכֽתֹּב        You will write

יִכֽתֹּב        He will write

תִּכֽתֹּב        She will write

Did you see that the gender designation is prefixed to the verb?  Let’s find our verb.  It is יִכֽתֹּב (he will write).  Of course, the translators think that this doesn’t make sense because the event has already occurred (the Israelites have already crossed the Red Sea), so they offer us a past tense English translation.  But the Hebrew isn’t in the past tense.  It’s in the future tense.  We’ve investigated this before, so no further comment is necessary about the translation, but now we have to consider another implication of this way of constructing case and gender.  Of course, as you know, when a Vav precedes the verb, it switches the verb from future to past (or from past to future), so the translation is technically correct.  It is past tense.  But the verb construction isn’t actually the past tense.  It’s the future tense reversed.

Implication:

I want to draw your attention to something quite interesting.  In Hebrew, the actor and the action are tied together, but not always in the same way according to the tense.  In the past tense, the actor comes after the action.  In the future tense, the actor comes before the action.  It seems to me that this reflects a Hebrew concept of time and the divine-human relationship.  Let me explain (and then we’ll look at the present tense).

I think the past tense (where the actor comes after the action) reflects the idea of attribution.  What I mean is that the important thing is the action (the verb) and the actor tags along (follows) the action.  The action is attributed to the actor only after it is accomplished.  Why?  Because the action involves God, and you never know for sure how it will turn out until it’s finished.  So, after the act has taken place, then it is attributed to the actor.

The future, on the other hand, requires a different arrangement.  The future is about agency, that is, the actor is required to do something before the action can be accomplished.  Therefore, it is the actor that is most important.  Without agency, nothing is done.  If it is going to be done, agency must occur.  God’s involvement is with the agent before the action happens.  Once it has happened (it is now in the past), it is the action of the agent that matters.

What about the present tense?  Quite interestingly, the gender/case indicator of the present tense is inserted into the verb.  Then a suffixed gender designator is sometimes added.  Here’s the example:

כּוֹתֵב        I, he, you (male) write

כּוֹתֶבֶת       I, she, you (female) write

כּוֹתֽביִם      You (plural – male or female) write

כּוֹתֽבוּת      They write

I also find this interesting because the consonant inserted is a Vav, which by itself often means “and.”  Can I suggest the implication that the present tense always involves the actor and an invisible partner (God?) inserted into the action.

Benjamin Lee Whorf’s[1] theory about language and reality suggests that the way a culture views reality is subject to (and reflected in) the language of that culture.  It seems to me that this is an example of how differently Hebrews view the world.  Action and actor are collapsed into a singular construct.  Tense determines priority of attribution or agency.  And the present moment always has more than one participant.

Try translating that!

Topical Index: language, grammar, tense, gender, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Deuteronomy 31:22

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lee_Whorf