Re: Mediterranean flood

George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Sun, 03 Oct 1999 15:59:59 -0400

PHSEELY@aol.com wrote:
>
> George wrote:
>
> << There is probably no strict rule of the sort you mentioned & I don't think
> (as I noted in a parallel) that it's necessary to insist that the
> consequence of
> the command be instantaneous. I think the question is, however, whether the
> sense of
> the waw consecutive with two indicatives allows the intervention, even
> though tacitly,
> of other events, which are part of the same overall action.>>
>
> In Psalm 105:34 "He spake and the locusts came" is a waw consecutive with two
> indicatives, yet Ex 10:13 (19:13 in my first note is a typo) shows that there
> is an intervention of an east wind between the two actions, and that wind is
> a part of the same overall action. At least, that is how I see it. So what
> do you see wrong with this besides my typo?

I don't think that this is conclusive.
1) The psalm speaks of the same general events as Exodus but quite possibly
from a somewhat different tradition of those events. (Note, e.g., that in Exodus water
into blood is the is the 1st plague & darkness the 9th, while in Ps.105 the darkness
comes 1st (v.28) before the blood (v.29).) The psalmist probably didn't have the
present text of Exodus in front of him & we can't assume he knew about, or had any
interest in, the east wind. The grammatical construction has to do only with what the
writer was intending to say.
2) In Exodus, the east wind brings the locusts & so in a sense isn't a separate
event.
Shalom,
George


George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/