Lesson 8 | Prophecy & Directive Discourse
[2] A Directive Text Hierarchy
We’ve finally arrived at the fourth and final major genre of biblical literature! And this is the last Grammar Point step where we teach you something new about Hebrew grammar or syntax. Congratulations on making it this far!
Understanding Directive Discourse
Duane Garrett and Jason DeRouchie explain that...
...[i]n directive discourse, a speaker commands, exhorts, or advises the hearer to do or not do something or provides instructions for a procedure.
—Duane A. Garrett and Jason S. DeRouchie, A Modern Grammar for Biblical Hebrew (B&H Academic, 2019), 303.
This may be done in just a few words, as in Genesis 12:1-3 below, or it may take many chapters, as in the book of Leviticus.
Making a Directive Text Hierarchy
The mainline verb for directive discourse is a little more complicated than for narrative or prophetic discourse. Like in the latter, you may find וְהָיָה introducing a discourse block, “followed by directives or instructions.”¹ Or a discourse block may be introduced by an imperfect verb, “an imperative clause, or a jussive clause.”²
Within a discourse block, the mainline will be marked by either (1) command verbs (cohortatives, imperatives, or jussives) or (2) a command verb followed by a series of sequential-perfect verbs.³
This is a good time to give you a bit more detail about two types of verbs:
The sequential-perfect is a “chameleon verb.”
We originally explained that its aspect is flipped from the perfect with the addition of the vav (unless, of course, it is just a simple vav + perfect!). But there is more: frequently a sequential-perfect takes on “the same significance as the verb in front of it.”⁴ So, for example, following an imperative, a sequential-perfect is functioning as an imperative.
A vav + imperfect often shows purpose.⁵
Remember, as you learned here in Hebrew III, this has a different form than the sequential-imperfect, which has an a-class vowel underneath the ו, plus a dagesh in the prefix consonant that follows.
The first three verses of Genesis 12 are a great example of directive discourse.
God’s discourse begins with the asyndetic clause starting with לֶךְ, and is carried by a chain of vavs in verses 2-3. The first imperatival clause (1b) is followed by two vav + imperfects and a vav + cohortative, each of which show God’s purpose in Abraham’s faithful obedience. The second imperatival clause (2d) is followed by a vav + imperfect, a vav + cohortative, and a sequential-perfect (which, chameleon-like, may be functioning like a command since it follows a cohortative).
As Dr. DeRouchie explains it, whose analysis we’re following here,
Genesis 12:1–3 has two distinct units, with the second being conditioned on the fulfillment of the first. Abram must “go” to the land in order to become a nation, and there he must “be a blessing” in order that the curse from Genesis 3 may be overcome and all the world may be blessed.
—Jason S. DeRouchie, How to Understand and Apply the Old Testament: Twelve Steps from Exegesis to Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2017), 210.
Lastly, as you can see from the passage above, the mainline of directive discourse doesn’t imply that commands need to be done one after the other, just like the mainline of prophetic discourse.⁶