John Hobbins and I have been discussing Habakkuk 3 a bit via email, and he encouraged me to bring the discussion to my blog.

I’m currently working on the grammar of Habakkuk 3 for a class this semester. Any chance to learn more about Hebrew grammar is well worth taking, and Habakkuk 3 just makes things that much more enjoyable. One of the first things that pops out about the grammar in Hab 3 is that scholars don’t particularly agree on how to render the verbs. Below, I outline the three ways I’ve noticed scholars rendering the verbs in Habakkuk 3:

1. Some scholars render the yiqtol forms as present-future and the qatal forms as past. (e.g., J.J.M. Roberts, Sinker). In Roberts’ case, at least, this is because he views the poem in Hab 3 as a visionary experience of the prophet. However, he does not elaborate on why he has chosen present-future and past. It could be that he is trying to bring out the aspect of the verbs by using these English tenses (understandable), it could also be that he views Hebrew as tense-prominent. I’d disagree, but an aspect-prominent view of the language could produce a nearly identical translation.

2. Other scholars analyze the yiqtol forms in Hab 3 as short-form preterits (e.g., Hiebert, Robertson, Andersen). That is okay, but I think it is far from certain that the context requires such an explanation. Basically, the scholars who take this view are following Robertson, and I’m just not convinced that his arguments are strong enough to support this understanding of the forms in Hab 3. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, however.

3. The final way in which scholars understand the verbs in Habakkuk 3 is disappointing, to say the least. Some scholars simply flatten all the forms (yiqtol, qatal and wayyiqtol) into English present tense forms (e.g., Smith, O. Palmer Robertson, Haak). Now, it may be that the scholars who do so feel that there is some interplay between aspect in Hebrew that simply cannot be brought into English. However, none of the authors mentioned above discuss their reasons for translating the forms in this way. My reaction is to say that this option really ought to be avoided, as it’s no option at all.

So, those are the three ways I’ve noticed scholars handling the forms in Habakkuk 3. Have I missed anything? Perhaps someone out there would like to argue for one of the above three? I don’t personally find any of them entirely convincing. I’d rather posit some kind of interplay between unbounded action (yiqtol) on the one hand and bounded action (qatal) on the other. How this would be represented in English is, of course, difficult. The idea is also still somewhat nebulous in my mind.

Basically, I’m proposing wildly speculating that there is some interplay between imperfective and perfective aspect in the Hebrew. Perhaps the imperfective action simply paints somewhat broader strokes and the perfective action views smaller, particular instances? Alternatively it may be that the poet intends an interplay between the qatal and yiqtol forms that, in English, would require a vast array of constructions to represent–thus they could not adequately be represented by a simple 1:1 correlation of verbal forms. In either case it may be that all the verbs have the same time reference, but the aspect is what differs.

I’m very interested to hear what thoughts others might have on this topic.