Lesson 8 | Infinitives
[3] In the Songs We’ve Learned
We have seen infinitives in four songs so far.
The first three are qal infinitive-constructs, each with a prepositional prefix. The ב prepositional prefix is often translated as “when” when attached to an infinitive-construct.
Verse 6 contains three infinitive-absolutes. The first and third are intensifying the following imperfect verb. It’s not easy to tell how the first one does this, and English translations don’t usually show it, but it could be showing continual action.¹ The third is simpler: “they will surely come.” The second infinitive-absolute is acting like an adverb for the imperfect verb that comes before: “he goes weeping.”
The piel infinitive-construct in verse 1 functions as a noun, the subject of the implied verb: “making music to our God [is] good.” (Since it has no prepositional prefix or pronominal suffix, it can’t be distinguished from an infinitive-absolute.)
Both infinitive-constructs in verse 8 are direct objects of יִשְׁמָר. The maqqeph between the verb and the first direct object makes this obvious: “Yahweh will guard your going out and your coming.”
The first is an infinitive-construct: notice the cholem-vav after the second consonant of the root (not a feminine plural participle, since that wouldn’t make sense in the context). The second must be an infinitive-absolute, since the vowel pattern follows the infinitive-absolute form. You can only tell that לֶ֖כֶת is an infinitive-construct if you look up הלך and see what it looks like as an infinitive-absolute: הָלוֹךְ or הָלֹךְ.