Commands, Infinitives and Participles

Hebrew has a form made for commanding, the imperative, and it is the first word of the anchor. In the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) Deuteronomy 6:4 begins שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל (shema' yisrael, hear, Israel). שְׁמַע (shema') is a qal imperative, second person masculine singular, of שָׁמַע (shama', to hear, to listen, and very often to obey). Its first word has given the whole confession its name: Jewish tradition calls it the Shema, and it was being recited morning and evening by the time of Jesus. Imperatives are easy to spot once you know the qal imperfect, because they are usually the imperfect without its prefix: tishma', you will hear, becomes shema', hear! The plural adds -u: שִׁמְעוּ (shim'u, hear, all of you).

The imperative is only for positive commands. To forbid, Hebrew uses one of two negatives with a prefix form. לֹא (lo, not) with the imperfect gives a standing prohibition, the form of the Ten Commandments and of Genesis 2:17, לֹא תֹאכַל (lo tokhal, you shall not eat). אַל (al, do not) with the short form called the jussive gives an urgent or particular prohibition, as when the angel cries in Genesis 22:12 אַל תִּשְׁלַח יָדְךָ (al tishlach yadkha, do not stretch out your hand) and as in Deuteronomy 31:6, 'do not be afraid'. The jussive also gives third person commands and wishes: God's 'Let there be light' in Genesis 1:3 is יְהִי (yehi), the short jussive of hayah. And the first person form called the cohortative gives let me or let us.

Then there is the form behind the second line of the anchor. וְאָהַבְתָּ (we-ahavta, and you shall love) is the conjunction with a qal perfect, second person masculine singular, of אָהַב (ahav, to love). Lesson 4 noted that about one Hebrew verb in thirteen is this kind of form, the weqatal, a perfect with and that carries on a future, a command or an instruction after a form that set the frame. Here it follows the imperative hear, and continues it: hear, and you shall love. The same thing happens in Leviticus 19:2, speak, and you shall say, and in Deuteronomy 6:7, where וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם (we-shinnantam, and you shall teach them diligently) and וְדִבַּרְתָּ (we-dibbarta, and you shall speak) carry the instruction on, both of them piels. When a tool labels a verb weqatal or sequential perfect, read it as continuing whatever kind of statement came before it.

Can love be commanded? In an influential article in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly (1963), William L. Moran showed that ancient Near Eastern treaties used the word love for the loyalty a vassal king owed his overlord, and argued that Deuteronomy's love for God belongs in that world: covenant loyalty, shown in obedience. That has been widely accepted, and it explains why love can be the subject of a command. Others insist, rightly, that Deuteronomy does not drain the word of feeling. The same book says that the LORD 'set His affection on' Israel (7:7, 10:15), using a strong word of desire, and the whole person is summoned here, heart, soul and strength, which Module 7's lesson on soul and heart takes up. The command is to a loyalty that is wholehearted. Both halves of that sentence matter.

The Hebrew of Deuteronomy 6:4 has six words: שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָד (shema' yisrael YHWH eloheinu YHWH echad, hear, Israel, YHWH our God YHWH one). The four words after Israel have no verb. Hebrew often leaves out the verb to be, and English has to put it back. The question is where, and the answer changes what the verse says.

There are four main options, and serious translations have chosen each. The LORD our God, the LORD is one, as the BSB has it. The LORD our God is one LORD, as the KJV has it. The LORD is our God, the LORD is one. And the LORD is our God, the LORD alone, which is the main text of the New Revised Standard Version and of the Jewish Publication Society's translation. They divide into two families. In the first, echad describes God's oneness, his unity and uniqueness: there is one LORD, not many. In the second, echad describes Israel's relation to him: the LORD, and the LORD only, is our God.

The case for oneness is strong. Echad is the ordinary Hebrew word for the number one, and its plainest sense is that the LORD is one. Deuteronomy has already said, in 4:35 and 4:39, that the LORD is God and there is no other. And when Jesus quotes the verse in Mark 12:29, the scribe who answers him takes it this way, 'God is One and there is no other but Him' (12:32). The earliest translation points the same way: the Septuagint renders the line with the Greek word for one, and Mark 12:29 quotes it in that Greek form. And the clear uses of echad to mean only are few. On this reading the Shema is the great confession of monotheism, and so Jews and Christians have very often heard it.

The case for alone is also strong, and it comes from the context and from the usage of echad. Deuteronomy 6 is addressed to a people about to live among other gods: 'Do not follow other gods' (6:14). The command that follows, love the LORD with all your heart, is a command to exclusive loyalty, and the confession that frames it is most naturally a statement of who Israel's God is. And echad can carry the sense of only. Zechariah 14:9 says that on that day יִהְיֶה יְהוָה אֶחָד וּשְׁמוֹ אֶחָד (yihyeh YHWH echad u-shemo echad), which the BSB itself renders 'the LORD alone, and His name alone'. In 1 Chronicles 29:1 David calls Solomon the one God has chosen, with echad marking him as the only one. On this reading the Shema is first a pledge of allegiance, and its monotheism is implied rather than stated.

Two notes on what this debate is not. It is not a fight between those who believe in one God and those who do not; both families of translation are held by convinced monotheists, and the verse's meaning in Deuteronomy probably includes both ideas, since a people who confess that the LORD alone is their God are confessing something about him. And it is not settled by the claim, often heard in Christian teaching, that echad means a compound unity and so points to the Trinity. Echad is used of a compound unity in Genesis 2:24, one flesh, and of a single ewe lamb in 2 Samuel 12:3; the word itself is simply one, and it neither proves nor disproves anything about the inner life of God. The Christian doctrine stands on firmer ground than that: on the New Testament's own reading of the Shema, most strikingly in 1 Corinthians 8:6, where Paul sets 'one God, the Father' beside 'one Lord, Jesus Christ', which many scholars, among them Richard Bauckham, read as Paul placing Jesus within the very words of Israel's confession. Teach that, and leave the word echad to mean what it means.

Hebrew has two infinitives, and your tools will name them. The infinitive construct is the one that works like an English noun or to-form. It is usually joined to a preposition: לְ (le-, to), בְּ (be-, in, when), כְּ (ke-, as, when). In Genesis 22:10 Abraham takes the knife לִשְׁחֹט (lishchot, to slaughter). In Deuteronomy 6:7 Moses tells Israel to speak of these words בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ (be-shivtekha, in your sitting), when you sit at home, and then in your walking, in your lying down and in your rising, four qal infinitives construct, each with be- in front and the suffix your after. The infinitive construct with be- is one of the commonest ways of saying when in Hebrew, and the BSB renders all four that way.

That same construction lies behind a phrase you need to read carefully. Genesis 2:4 says that the heavens and earth were made בְּיוֹם עֲשׂוֹת יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים (be-yom asot YHWH elohim, in the day of the LORD God's making), 'in the day that the LORD God made them', of a creation that chapter 1 has spread across six days. In the day of followed by an infinitive often means simply when. Keep that in mind for section 4.

The infinitive absolute is different. It does not take prepositions or suffixes and it does not work like a noun. It has two main jobs. The first is to stand in front of a finite verb of the same root and strengthen it. When God tells Moses in Exodus 3:7 רָאֹה רָאִיתִי (ra'oh ra'iti, seeing I have seen), the BSB renders it 'I have indeed seen'. When Exodus 21:12 says of the murderer מוֹת יוּמָת (mot yumat, dying he shall be put to death), the BSB has 'must surely be put to death'. The construction adds emphasis, certainty or intensity to the main verb; English renders it with surely, indeed, certainly, or by a strong adverb.

The second job is to stand on its own as a command. Exodus 20:8 begins זָכוֹר (zakhor, remember), a qal infinitive absolute: 'Remember the Sabbath day'. The next commandment but one, 'Honor your father and mother' in 20:12, begins כַּבֵּד (kabbed), which the Open Scriptures tagging also calls a piel infinitive absolute and some other tools call a piel imperative; in the piel the two are spelled the same, so the tools are not really disagreeing about the Hebrew. An infinitive absolute used as a command often has a solemn, general force, like a notice: remember, honour.

Now the phrase this lesson promised. Genesis 2:17 ends כִּי בְּיוֹם אֲכָלְךָ מִמֶּנּוּ מוֹת תָּמוּת (ki be-yom akhalkha mimmennu mot tamut, for in the day of your eating from it, dying you will die). אֲכָלְךָ (akhalkha, your eating) is a qal infinitive construct with the suffix your, after in the day of. מוֹת (mot) is a qal infinitive absolute of מוּת (mut, to die), and תָּמוּת (tamut) a qal imperfect, second person masculine singular, of the same verb. The BSB has 'you will surely die'. In Genesis 3:4 the serpent answers לֹא מוֹת תְּמֻתוּן (lo mot temutun), putting the negative in front of the whole construction, 'You will not surely die'. He contradicts God's words almost exactly, adding one word.

First, what the construction does not mean. The margin of the KJV gives the literal 'dying thou shalt die', and preachers have sometimes taken that to mean a process: you will begin to die, and go on dying until you are dead. That reading may be true theologically, but it is not what the construction says. The same pair, mot tamut, is used in Genesis 20:7 when God warns Abimelech, and in 1 Kings 2:37 when Solomon warns Shimei, and in neither is a slow process in view. The infinitive absolute makes the death certain; it does not describe how it comes.

Then the real question, which every reader of Genesis has faced. Adam and Eve ate, and Genesis 5:5 says Adam lived 930 years. In what sense did they die in the day they ate? There are four main answers, each held by careful readers, and they are often combined. The first is spiritual death: on that day they died to God, as their hiding in 3:8 and their expulsion from his presence in 3:23 show, and bodily death followed as the outworking. The second is mortality as sentence: on that day the death penalty became certain and they became mortal, though it was carried out later. Its strongest support is the closest parallel in the Bible, Solomon's warning to Shimei: 'On the day you go out and cross the Kidron Valley, know for sure that you will die' (1 Kings 2:37), with the same mot tamut, and the same in the day. Shimei went out, came back, and was executed only after Solomon summoned him (2:39-46); the day of his going out was the day his death became certain. The third is that in the day of means when, as it does in Genesis 2:4, so that the warning concerns the consequence of eating, not its timing. The fourth is mercy: God's sentence was real, and its full execution was delayed by grace, which the promise of 3:15 and the garments of 3:21 begin to show.

The grammar supports the first point every one of these readings needs, that God's warning was a certain and solemn sentence of death. It also gives real weight to the second and third, through the parallels in 1 Kings 2 and Genesis 2:4. It does not choose among them for you, and it does not support the serpent's suggestion that God's word was empty. The Old Testament Survey lesson The Garden and the Command weighs these readings as theology; what this lesson adds is the Hebrew you need to see why each of them is possible.

The last form is the participle, which you met in lesson 2 in Cain's keeper and Job's redeemer. It is a verbal adjective, and it does three jobs. It can describe a person or thing by an action, as an adjective does: הָעָם הַהֹלְכִים בַּחֹשֶׁךְ (ha'am ha-holekhim ba-choshekh, the people, the walking ones, in darkness), 'The people walking in darkness' (Isaiah 9:2). It can name a person by what he does, as a noun does: גֹּאֲלִי (go'ali, my redeemer). And it can be the main verb of a clause, describing action going on at the time in view. That last use is the one to watch.

Look again at Deuteronomy 6:6. 'These words I am commanding you today' is אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם (asher anokhi metsawwekha ha-yom, which I am commanding you today). מְצַוְּךָ (metsawwekha) is a piel participle, masculine singular, of צוה (ts-w-h, to command), with the suffix you. Moses is not reporting a command once given; he is presenting it as being given now, on this day, to this generation on the edge of the land. Deuteronomy uses today again and again for that reason, and the participle is one of the ways the book makes its law present to every generation that hears it. In Exodus 3:1, the participle with the verb to be, הָיָה רֹעֶה (hayah ro'eh, was shepherding), describes what Moses was doing when the story began: ongoing action in the past, set off the narrative line as lesson 5 showed.

Because Hebrew participles take their time from the context, they are rendered with English presents, pasts or futures as the setting requires. Most of the time that is easy. When it is not, as in prophecy, where a participle can describe what God is about to do, the time column you began in lesson 4 will show you, and the question to ask is the same: what in the context gives the time?

You have now met every form a Hebrew verb can take: the stems, the perfect and imperfect, the narrative forms, the commands, the two infinitives and the participle. Your tools will name them all for you. What you can now do, and what most readers of English Bibles cannot, is see which form stands behind an English phrase and ask what that form usually does, before you build anything on it.

Open your verb table, which should now have columns for root, stem, conjugation, time and line. This week you will fill the remaining gaps and turn the table into the verb map of your passage, the first finished piece of your capstone study.

First, go through every verb you have marked imperative, jussive, cohortative or weqatal, and every negative with lo or al. In a new column headed Command, write who is commanding whom, in three or four words: God to Israel, Abraham to servants, psalmist to his soul. If your passage has no commands at all, write none at the foot of the column and note whether the passage is narrative, poetry or speech.

Second, find every infinitive and participle. For each infinitive construct, write the little word in front of it, if any, and what it means here: to, in, when, as. For each infinitive absolute, write whether it is strengthening a verb of the same root, which English will render with a word like surely or indeed, or standing alone as a command. For each participle, write whether it is describing, naming, or acting as the main verb, and if the last, what in the context gives its time.

Third, read across your whole table one last time and choose the three verbs on which your passage most depends. For each, write one sentence in your notebook that begins: In the Hebrew, this verb is, and goes on to give its root, stem and form in plain words. Then write one more sentence, the most important of all: Because of these verbs, my passage asks my hearers to. Finish that sentence in your own words. It is the bridge from the verb system to the sermon, and you will build on it in every module that follows.