Abram’s Persistent Faith: Hebrew Verb Semantics In Genesis 15:6

By Max Rogland

[Max Rogland is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Erskine Theological Seminary in Columbia, S.C., and an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America.]

The purpose of this study is to draw attention to the significance of the Hebrew verbal forms used in Gen 15:6, והאמן ביהוה ויחשבה לו צדקה, a verse which is typically rendered along the lines of the English Standard Version: “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”[1] Such a rendering of the verb ויחשבה is very fitting, as wayyiqtol (the so-called “waw-consecutive imperfect”) is used throughout OT narrative to indicate the simple or “non-imperfective” past.[2] It will be argued here, however, that the weqatal form expresses repeated activity (i.e., an “imperfective” situation) and that והאמן would be more accurately translated as “and he kept believing” rather than “and he believed.”

The “waw-consecutive perfect” or weqatal form was a productive member of the Biblical Hebrew verbal paradigm with a range of different functions. When referring to past situations, weqatal indicates various kinds of imperfective situations, in contrast to the qatal form, which marks a non-imperfective past tense.[3] Thus, for example, the weqatal form is used to describe an activity that occurred repeatedly:[4]

Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing (ושמע) all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. (1 Sam 2:22)

In other instances, this “iterative” or “frequentative” use of wᵉqatal is extended to activities that occurred habitually or customarily:

The custom of the priests with the people was that when any man offered sacrifice, the priest’s servant would come (ובא), while the meat was boiling, with a three-pronged fork in his hand, and he would thrust it (והכה) into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot. All that the fork brought up the priest would take for himself. This is what they did at Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. Moreover, before the fat was burned, the priest’s servant would come (ובא) and say (ואמר) to the man who was sacrificing, “Give meat for the priest to roast, for he will not accept boiled meat from you but only raw.” (1 Sam 2:13–15)

The habitual-iterative use of weqatal in past contexts is observable throughout the Biblical Hebrew corpus, although this particular function of the verbal form decreased significantly in the exilic and post-exilic periods.[5] In the Mishnaic period the consecutive forms disappear entirely from the verbal system; qatalforms with a prefixed waw occur, but these are to be classified as “waw-copulative perfects” rather than waw-consecutives. Such copulative weqatals indicate the non-imperfective past and function precisely like wayyiqtol in biblical texts.

A potential source of confusion for analyzing weqatal forms in the OT arises from the fact that waw-copulative perfect forms are occasionally attested in Biblical Hebrew. Although it is an extremely rare phenomenon in pre-exilic texts, there are instances of weqatal which are not to be analyzed as expressions of habitual or iterative activity.[6] Thus one occasionally encounters examples such as Judg 3:23: “Then Ehud went out into the porch and closed the doors of the roof chamber behind him and locked them (ונעל).”[7) Clearly we are not to understand Ehud to have locked the doors over and over again; the verb ונעל simply marks the next item in a chain of events being narrated.[8] The distinction between consecutive and copulative wᵉqatal is indicated in the 1 common singular and 2 masculine singular forms by a shift of the accent from the penultimate to the final syllable: wᵉqatalti vs. wᵉqatálti and wᵉqataltá vs. wᵉqatálta. In a great many cases no such phonetic distinction is possible, but contextual features are typically sufficient to indicate how the form is to be analyzed.[9]

What are the implications of the preceding discussion for our understanding of והאמן in Gen 15:6? Given the abundant and clear attestation of weqatal as an indicator of imperfective situations in OT narrative, the prima facie reading of והאמן would be as a habitual-iterative past and, as such, should be rendered along the lines of “and he kept believing Yahweh.”[10] Strikingly, however, English translations consistently render this verb as a simple past tense (“and he believed”), and והאמן is more commonly analyzed as a copulative weqatal.[11] The rationale for such an interpretation of the verb is not discussed in any significant detail in the scholarly literature, but one can surmise some probable factors leading to this conclusion. First of all, a non-imperfective interpretation of והאמן is supported by the Greek translation tradition, which in this particular instance has most likely exercised considerable influence on how the verse has been read in its OT context. The LXX of Gen 15:6 renders והאמן with an aorist (ἐπίστευσεν) and—quite possibly under the LXX’s influence—so do the citations of this verse in the NT as well (Rom 4:3; Gal 3:6; Jas 2:23). One could argue that if either the LXX translators or the NT authors had understood this particular weqatal form to have a habitual-iterative meaning, they would have rendered it with the imperfect ἐπίστευεν instead.[12] In any event, given the immense theological significance attached to Gen 15:6 and the NT passages in which it is cited, one should not underestimate the degree to which these non-imperfective renderings have influenced the exegesis of this verse in its original context.

While the Greek translation tradition is certainly an interesting and relevant factor to be taken into account, one must nevertheless be careful not to overestimate its significance. The LXX does indeed render habitual-iterative weqatals with Greek imperfects in many instances, yet it does not do so consistently, and thus it sometimes renders what is obviously an imperfective weqatal with an aorist. Such is the case in the following examples (some of which were cited above):

Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil, until he came out. And when he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded, the people of Israel would see (וראו; LXX: εἶδον) the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over (והשיב; LXX: περιέθηκεν) his face again, until he went in to speak with him. (Exod 34:34–35) 

Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing (ושמע; LXX: ἤκουσεν) all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. (1 Sam 2:22) 

The custom of the priests with the people was that when any man offered sacrifice, the priest’s servant would come, while the meat was boiling, with a three-pronged fork in his hand, and he would thrust it (והכה; LXX: ἐπάταξεν) into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot. All that the fork brought up the priest would take for himself. This is what they did at Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. (1 Sam 2:13–14)

In these instances the LXX has rendered the imperfective weqatal with a non-imperfective aorist. While such renderings do not bring out the aspectual significance of the weqatal forms, they are not incompatible with it either. One must always bear in mind that it is possible for the Greek aorist to be used to refer to more than single or “momentary” events. As Zerwick explains in his discussion of the “global” aorist:

The action expressed by the aorist may have occupied a long time, or the reference may be to an act frequently repeated; the aorist will be used so long as the writer wishes simply to record the fact of the act or acts, and not to represent the action as in progress or habitual, i.e. so long as the whole activity expressed by the verb is regarded ‘globally’.[13]

Such considerations indicate that the use of the aorist ἐπίστευσεν in the Greek translations of Gen 15:6 does not conclusively demonstrate that והאמן is to be interpreted as a simple (non-imperfective) past tense.

A second possible reason why scholars might be inclined to analyze והאמן as a copulative (rather than consecutive) weqatal would be the sequence of the tense forms in Gen 15:5–6: the fact that והאמן is both preceded and followed by wayyiqtol forms indicating non-imperfective pasts could suggest that והאמןis to be understood in the same fashion.[14] This argument also proves unconvincing upon closer examination, however, since it is actually quite common in biblical narrative to find verbal forms expressing both imperfective and non-imperfective situations interspersed with one another. Consider the variation of imperfective weqatals and non-imperfective wayyiqtols in the following examples:

Morning by morning they gathered it (וילקטו), each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot (וחם), it melted (ונמס). (Exod 16:21) 

And when Saul saw (וראה) any strong man, or any valiant man, he attached him (ויאספהו) to himself. (1 Sam 14:52) 

“I went (ויצאתי) after him and struck (והכתיו) him and delivered (והצלתי) it out of his mouth. And if he arose (ויקם) against me, I caught him (והחזקתי) by his beard and struck him (והכתיו) and killed him (והמיתיו).” (1 Sam 17:35) 

And Absalom used to rise early (והשכים) and stand (ועמד) beside the way of the gate. And when (ויהי) any man had a dispute to come before the king for judgment, Absalom would call (ויקרא) to him and say (ויאמר), “From what city are you?” And when he said (ויאמר), “Your servant is of such and such a tribe in Israel,” Absalom would say (ויאמר) to him, “See, your claims are good and right, but there is no man designated by the king to hear you.” (2 Sam 15:2–3)

In sum, it is not at all uncommon for a narrator to utilize verbal forms indicating different aspectual nuances within the same sentence.[15] It can hardly be viewed as unusual, then, if a similar interchange occurs in Gen 15:6.

In light of the preceding observations, I would argue that the most natural reading of והאמן in Gen 15:6 is as a waw-consecutive form that refers to an imperfective (habitual-iterative) past situation. It appears that there is no substantive grammatical objection to such an analysis, and it accords with the overwhelming number of instances of weqatal in pre-exilic biblical narrative. How does such an analysis of the verb form contribute to the exegesis of the passage? By taking note of the aspectual value of והאמן, it emerges that Abram’s “believing” in the Lord is not to be viewed as a single “moment of trust” that took place in Gen 15 but rather as something that occurred repeatedly. Abram has been responding in faith and obedience to the Lord from the start of the narrative cycle (Gen 12:1–4; cf. Heb 11:8), indicating that Gen 15 does not intend to present Abram as “coming to faith” for the first time. The literary function of v. 6 is not to provide one more link in the narrative chain of events; rather, the author “is editorializing on the events reported, not including Abram’s faith in the chain of events as a consequence of the theophanic message.”[16 ]As such, the verse is to be understood as a summarizing, evaluative statement on the part of the narrator.[17]

This statement concerning Abram’s persistent faith occurs in the midst of a section in which the Lord has repeated his promises to bless Abram (vv. 1, 4–5,

7, etc.), but concerning which there have been no tangible signs of fulfillment. The promises of God always require a response of faith, but Abram, seeing no evidence of their fulfillment, quite naturally has questions as to the specifics of the Lord’s plan (vv. 2–3; cf. v. 8). Questions can be asked in a doubting, skeptical manner, but they can also arise out of genuine bewilderment. In this context, the statement “and he kept believing in the Lord” is intended to convey that throughout it all Abram was indeed responding in faith to the Lord’s promises and that his questions are not to be read as those of a doubtful skeptic.[18] Faith in the Lord does not mean the absence of all questions and confusion; it means accepting the Lord’s word of promise and trusting in its truthfulness, even when by all appearances the reality seems otherwise.

Notes

1. I cite the ESV throughout this article.
2. The terms “imperfective” and “perfective” refer to the linguistic parameter of aspect, which indicates “different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation” (Bernard Comrie, Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976], 3). Aspectually imperfective forms “make explicit reference to the internal temporal constituency of a situation,” whereas an aspectually perfective form “looks at the situation from outside, without necessarily distinguishing any of the internal structure of the situation” (ibid., 3–4). Aspect is to be distinguished from the parameter of “tense,” which is understood here as “the grammaticalised expression of location in time” (Bernard Comrie, Tense [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 9), and indicates whether a situation is, e.g., past, present, or future.
3. This particular description of the meaning of the qatal form is, admittedly, a disputed subject in Hebrew linguistics, since it is frequently denied that the Hebrew verb forms express grammaticalized tense; see, e.g., Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 475–78. For a recent overview of the scholarly discussion and a defense of the view that qatal is best described as a non-imperfective past tense see Max Rogland, Alleged Non-Past Uses of Qatal in Classical Hebrew (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003).
4. It is occasionally argued that there is no semantic or functional distinction between freestanding qatal and the weqatal form (so, e.g., Josef Tropper, “Althebräisches und semitisches Aspektsystem,” ZAH 11 [1998]: 185), but such a claim is unable to account for the well-attested contrast between the iterative weqatal and qatal expressing the simple past; cf. B. Johnson, Hebräisches Perfekt und Imperfekt mit vorangehendem we (Lund: Gleerup, 1979), 38–41; Jan Joosten, “Biblical Hebrew weqātal and Syriac hwā qātel Expressing Repetition in the Past,” ZAH 5 (1992): 1-14; Robert Longacre, “weqatal Forms in Biblical Hebrew Prose: A Discourse-Modular Approach,” in Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics (ed. Robert D. Bergen; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 50–98.
5. See Jan Joosten, “The Disappearance of Iterative WEQATAL in the Biblical Hebrew Verbal System,” in Biblical Hebrew in Its Northwest Semitic Setting (ed. Steven E. Fassberg and Avi Hurvitz; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 135–47; cf. W. Th. van Peursen, The Verbal System in the Hebrew Text of Ben Sira (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004), 137.
6. Joosten (“The Disappearance of Iterative WEQATAL,” 138 n. 7) observes that there are only a handful of such instances in Classical (i.e., pre-exilic) Biblical Hebrew; it is called “exceedingly rare” in Genesis–Samuel by S. R. Driver, A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew and Some Other Syntactical Questions (repr. of the 3d ed., with an introductory essay by W. R. Garr; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 160 (§133).
7. For additional examples, see Johnson, Hebräisches Perfekt und Imperfekt, 42–46.
8. Various explanations of these copulative weqatal have been offered. Longacre suggests that they mark “climactic” or “pivotal” events in the storyline (“Weqatal Forms in Biblical Hebrew Prose,” 71–84). E. J. Revell attempts to delineate syntactic and semantic conditions that explain their usage (“The Conditioning of Stress Position in waw Consecutive Perfect Forms in Biblical Hebrew,” HAR 9 [1985]: 279). A text-critical solution is adopted by John Huesman, who argues that many of these cases are to be revocalized as infinitive absolutes (“The Infinitive Absolute and the Waw Perfect Problem,” Bib 37 [1956]: 410-34).
9. Cf. Rogland, Alleged Non-Past Uses of Qatal, 9.
10. This possibility has occasionally been mentioned in the exegetical literature; see, e.g., Hermann Gunkel, Genesis (trans. M. Biddle; Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1997), 179; M. Oeming, “Ist Gen 15:6 ein Beleg für die Anrechnung des Glaubens zur Gerechtigkeit?,” ZAW 95 (1983): 182-97, esp. 190; Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1–15 (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1987), 324, 329; John Ha, Genesis 15: A Theological Compendium of Pentateuchal History (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989), 23; Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2005), 166.
11. So, e.g., Driver, Treatise on the Use of the Tenses, 161 (§133); Johnson, Hebräisches Perfekt und Imperfekt, 43; Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis Chapters 1–17 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 424–25 n. 25; Douglas M. Gropp, “The Function of the Finite Verb in Classical Biblical Hebrew,” HAR 13 (1991): 45-62, esp. 48 n. 10; Joosten, “Disappearance of Iterative WEQATAL,” 138 n. 7; J. C. L. Gibson, Davidson’s Introductory Hebrew Grammar: Syntax (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 103 (§84).
12. So Huesman, “The Infinitive Absolute and the Waw Perfect Problem,” 413.
13. Maximilian Zerwick, Biblical Greek (repr., Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1990), 83 (§253)
14. So, e.g., Johnson, Hebräisches Perfekt und Imperfekt, 43; cf. Huesman, “The Infinitive Absolute and the Waw Perfect Problem,” 413.
15. Cf. Paul Joüon and Takamitsu Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (2d, one-vol. ed.; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 2006), 373.
16. Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, 166; similarly Oeming (“Ist Gen 15:6 ein Beleg?,” 190): “Der Satz beginnt auffälligerweise mit einem Perfekt consecutivum, während vorher im Narrativ erzählt wurde. Dieser Tempuswechsel signalisiert, daß der Glaube Abrahams nicht als eine einmalige Tat mißverstanden werden darf, sondern als eine sich je und je neu aktualisierende Grundhaltung Abrahams aufgefaßt werden muß. Es handelt sich also um ein frequentatives Perfekt. Dieses Tempus bildet gleichsam ein Zwischenglied zwischen Erzählung und Zustandbeschreibung, zwischen Tun und Sein.”
17. Ha, Genesis 15, 47 (cf. p. 23).
18. Contrast E. Speiser, Genesis (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), 114–15.