Going Deeper (2)
Then the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark of the Lord went on continually, and blew the trumpets; and the armed men went ahead of them, and the rear guard came after the ark of the Lord, while they continued to blow the trumpets. Joshua 6:13 NASB
They continued to – Okay, so now we know that the past tense in this verse is a translator’s interpretation. The verbs aren’t really past. They’re present (and future) but, of course, the translator changed them to the past because this is supposed to be an account of something that already happened. That led us to recognizing something similar in Greek (called the “historical present”).
“ . . . in some contexts the present tense seems more unexpected and unjustified to English than a past tense would have been. But Greek authors frequently used the present tense for the sake of heightened vividness, thereby transporting their readers in imagination to the actual scene at the time of occurrence.”[1]
So, perhaps this is happening in Hebrew. The narrator wants the reading audience to experience the Jericho event as if they were present. So, he uses the “wrong” grammar intentionally. Ah, maybe we’ve come across a solution. But not quite . . .
Remember that Hebrew, like Greek, doesn’t have punctuation. If I want to emphasize something or create a particular mood, I have to do it grammatically. Hebrew often does this by repeating the verb in sequence (e.g., Genesis 2:17, “you will surely die” is the verb mût, repeated, literally, “you will die die”). This is the use of the infinitive absolute as a means of creating emphasis. But this isn’t the only technique. In this account in Joshua, verse 8 is past tense, but 9-11 are present tense. Verse 12 is past tense, but 13 is present tense. Then 14 is past again. In other words, it appears that whenever the narrator recounts the instructions directed by God at Jericho, he uses the present tense. But the story before and after these instructions is in the usual past tense. All of this seems to be associated with the use of the verb hālak, in particular, the form הֹלֵךְ. This reminds me of the unusual Greek word kairós, translated “fullness of time” or something like that, but in truth it has no real English translation. You can refresh your memory here:
https://skipmoen.com/2021/05/time-enough-2/
https://skipmoen.com/2017/07/one-of-three-2/
kairós is that moment when everything conspires to bring about a desired end. It’s a “God-pointer,” that is, a word that pushes us to reflect on God’s action inside human action. It’s not precisely translatable because it doesn’t quite fit our world—our chronological world. It’s a slice of eternity wedged into human chronology. So, when you read kairós in Greek, you know to stop and reflect on God’s hidden hand.
Perhaps something similar is happening here in Hebrew. The doubled verb, הֹלְכִים הָלוֹךְ (“went on continually”) uses the second occurrence to indicate continual action (the infinitive absolute), and on that basis the tradition alters the next occurrence of הולך the same way. But this is unnecessary as the written verb in the present tense means “going,” which would be rendered “going blowing” or “continually blowing.” The verb as read causes the reader to pause and ask why it should be changed. Grammarians suggest that this doubling action is for emphasis. We can see this in Joshua 6:9 where hālok is coupled with the verb “to blow,” literally “going blowing,” both verbs in the infinitive absolute. Remember, an infinitive absolute in the Hebrew construction used to put emphasis into an action, like a grammatical exclamation point. So, Genesis 2:17 (“you will die die”) and here (“they going blowing”). This use of the infinitive absolute makes sense in the phrase הֹלְכִים הָלוֹךְ, translated as “going continuously” but really meaning “going!” As far as I can tell, the only other occurrence of this phrase is in Genesis 31:30, “you have indeed gone away,” with the doubled hālok hālăktā. Emphatic? Yes! But the qere ketiv doesn’t fit this pattern because it isn’t a doubled verb. It’s a substituted verb. Why?
Consider the tense shift in this account. It starts as past tense, a simple recording of the events. But when it comes to God’s instructions about Jericho, it switches to the present tense. After God gives the instructions and the assembly begins to fulfill them, it goes back to past tense. I don’t think this is an accident. Is hālok used for emphasis? In the first case, undoubtedly so, but that isn’t the end of the story. Hālok also forces the reader to experience the event from inside the event, but only when God is giving instructions. Like kairós, the very presence of this odd shift indicates that this event is not human. It’s an event that occurs because a slice of the eternal shows up in human history. The verb as written maintains this necessary oddity. The verb as read alters this grammatical “mistake” to treat hālok as if it were for emphasis, and in doing so, misses the deeper point.
Try translating all that!
Topical Index: kairós, hālok, verb tense, infinitive absolute, emphasis, Joshua 6:13
[1] “Notes on the Translation of Greek Tenses,” in New American Standard Bible (Moody Press, 1963).
