Cohortative
In peace, all whole, let me lie down and sleep. For You, LORD, alone, do set me down safely. Psalm 4:9 [Hebrew numbering] Robert Alter
Let me lie down – Did you read my little footnote yesterday? You know, the one about the difference between the cohortative hey and the paragogic hey. Ah, probably not. It’s all that technical stuff. But today we have to take a serious look at the “technical” stuff. Here’s the verb, šākab (to lie down), in the Qal imperfect (present tense continuous, sort of) but with a cohortative hey. The actual text is: (I’ve highlighted our word in red)
בְּשָׁלוֹם יַחְדָּו אֶשְׁכְּבָה וְאִישָׁן
The verbal root is שָׁכַב, so you can see some things have happened to the root. Notice the aleph at the beginning and the hey at the end. Now consider this remark about cohortative verbs:
“In BH [the standard Hebrew Bible] it functions similarly to the jussive but is limited to the first person. . . Like the jussive, it is often accompanied by the emphatic particle na.”[1]
Okay, so now you need to know what “jussive” means. Simple. A wish, permission, or indirect command. “Let me lie down.” A wish that needs permission and is expressed as an indirect command. But not just lying down. “In peace, whole, . . .” šālôm and yaḥdāw. “Well-being” and “together.” I don’t want to just fall asleep. I want to sleep without the monsters. The sleep of a newborn.
There’s a very interesting implication in this verb, šākab. Victor Hamilton notes: “šākab appears most often in the Qal primarily with the meaning ‘to lie down (in death)’ or ‘to lie down (for sexual relations).’”[2] Eros and thanatos. Do you remember? (August 28). It’s remarkable to me that ancient Hebrew already acknowledged the connection between sex and death. By the way, some of our modern languages still carry this theme. Consider the French description of orgasm as La petite mort, once again with both spiritual and sexual implications. Maybe our modern vulgarity overlooks something critically important, as I mentioned in the previous studies of eros and thanatos. Perhaps Michael Foucault is correct. We’ve converted life into death by making sexuality a public psychological issue.
“Let me lie down,” says the poet. Do you suppose he knew about the connection to sex and death? If I’m going to die, let it be with šālôm. If I’m going to experience another kind of lying down, let me also be with peace, together. Ah, the intricacies of all these connections. I wonder if the poet intended us to read and reread this verse over and over, playing out all the ways it might be understood. Poetry is so valuable, isn’t it?
Topical Index: šākab, lie down, eros, thanatos, šālôm, yaḥdāw, cohortative, jussive, Psalm 4:8 [English], Psalm 4:9 [Hebrew]
[1] Todd Murphy, Pocket Dictionary for the Study of Biblical Hebrew, p. 43.
[2] Hamilton, V. P. (1999). 2381 שָׁכַב. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 921). Chicago: Moody Press.
