היה

Forms

הָיָה (hāyâ) verb^[1] Feminine perfect הָיְתָה, imperfect יִהְיֶה with the short jussive יְהִי and the narrative form וַיְהִי, infinitive construct הֱיוֹת, imperative הֱיֵה, participle feminine הוֹיָה (Exodus 9:3).^[4][5] The Kethiv of 2 Kings 9:37 writes the feminine perfect הית without the final he, the spelling of the Siloam inscription.^[6][4] Besides the qal, a niphal נִהְיָה “to come about, be done” occurs.^[6]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Semitic *haway- (“to fall, happen, be, become”).^[7][8] The same verb is Aramaic הֲוָא (hăwā) and Classical Syriac ܗܘܳܐ (hwā), with ⟨w⟩ as the middle consonant, and Hebrew has that form too in the rare הָוָה (hāwâ, “to be”).^[4][9][6] HALOT also compares Akkadian ewû (“to become”), and Kogan judges the Hebrew form with ⟨y⟩ to be a Hebrew innovation, since Akkadian, Arabic and the Modern South Arabian languages point to ⟨w⟩.^[6][10] In Kogan's view the few biblical uses of the ⟨w⟩ form may owe something to Aramaic, as Wagner suggested.^[10][11]

Several scholars connect the verb with Arabic هَوَى (hawā, “to fall”) and with the verb “to fall” of Job 37:6, spelled the same, so that the sense would have run from “fall” through “befall, happen” to “be”;^[6][9][8] HALOT and Klein give the link with a question mark or as the opinion of some scholars.^[6][9][8] StarLing keeps “to be, become” and “to fall upon” as separate Proto-Semitic roots.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest dated Hebrew record of the verb is the Siloam tunnel inscription of Jerusalem, from around 700 BC.^[13][14] It opens wzh hyh dbr hnqbh, “and this was the account of the tunnel”, and later explains ky hyt zdh bṣr, “for there was a fissure in the rock”, with the feminine perfect written ⟨hyt⟩.^[14][6] The word ⟨zdh⟩ there is much debated.^[15] In the Bible it is one of the commonest verbs, about 3,560 times, 17 of them in the archaic poems, as in the Blessing of Jacob: yəhî-ḏān nāḥāš ʿălê-ḏereḵ, “Dan shall be a serpent by the way” (Genesis 49:17).^[1][16]

Semantic evolution

HALOT orders the senses from the event to the state: first “to come to pass, occur” (evening came, rain came, disaster happens), then “to be there, exist, remain”, and out of these grew its use as a copula, “to be” something, as in “the earth was formless and empty” (Genesis 1:2).^[6] With prepositions it means “to become” or “serve as” (הָיָה לְ), “to have” (“you shall have no other gods”, Exodus 20:3), “to be with” someone, and “to be upon” someone as a duty.^[6][4] The narrative form וַיְהִי “and it came to pass” introduces episodes throughout the prose books.^[4] The divine self-designation ʾehyeh ʾăšer ʾehyeh (Exodus 3:14) is a form of the verb, which HALOT renders “I shall be who I shall prove to be”.^[6] Huehnergard explains the divine name יהוה (yhwh) as perhaps a causative of the same root.^[8]

The Septuagint renders it with forms of Ancient Greek γίγνομαι (gígnomai) (ἐγένετο) and of Ancient Greek εἰμί (eimí) (ἔσται, ἦν).^[1] The Dead Sea Scrolls use it 2,891 times.^[17] Modern Hebrew היה (hayá) keeps the senses “to be, exist, happen”.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 700 BC – hyh and hyt in the Siloam tunnel inscription.^[13][14]
• Archaic Hebrew poetry – 17 uses, as in the Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49:17).^[16][1]
• Classical Biblical Hebrew – about half of the biblical occurrences are in Genesis to Kings.^[1]
• 7th century BC – in the Ḥorvat ʿUza ostracon.^[18]
• 6th century BC – in the Lachish and Arad ostraca.^[19][20][21]
• 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint translates it with γίγνομαι and εἰμί.^[22][1]
• 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – 2,891 occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls.^[23][17]

Meanings

Verb

1. qal to happen, come to pass, occur.^[6][4]
2. qal to be there, exist; to remain, live on.^[6]
3. qal to be, as the link between a subject and what is said of it.^[6]
4. qal with לְ: to become, turn into; to serve as; to belong to, have.^[6][4]
5. qal with עִם: to be with someone, stand by them.^[6]
6. niphal to come about, be done; to be gone.^[6]

Descendants

• Modern Hebrew היה (hayá)^[7]

Usage notes

The Aramaic of Ezra and Daniel has the cognate הֲוָא.^[6][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Clear Bible (2023–), MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (Westminster Leningrad Codex, with Greek alignment), github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-hebrew, CC BY 4.0
2. ^ Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (2021), BHSA: Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Amstelodamensis, Text-Fabric dataset, version 2021, github.com/ETCBC/bhsa
3. ^ Højgaard, Christian Canu; Naaijer, Martijn; Schorch, Stefan (2023), Text-Fabric Dataset of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.7734632
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. הָיָה
5. ^ Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. היה
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. היה
7. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
8. ^ a b c d Huehnergard, John (2011), "Proto-Semitic Language and Culture" and "Semitic Roots", in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. s.v. hwy
9. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. הוה ᴵᴵ
10. ^ a b Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 399
11. ^ Wagner, Max (1966), Die lexikalischen und grammatikalischen Aramaismen im alttestamentlichen Hebräisch, Berlin: Töpelmann (BZAW 96), p. 45
12. ^ Militarev, Alexander, et al., Semitic Etymology (database semet), The Tower of Babel (StarLing), starling.rinet.ru
13. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 76
14. ^ a b c Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 4.116.1
15. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 80
16. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 69
17. ^ a b Abegg, Martin G.; Jacobs, Jarod; Roorda, Dirk (2022), The Dead Sea Scrolls, Text-Fabric dataset, version 2.0.2, github.com/ETCBC/dss
18. ^ Davies, Graham I. (2004), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 37.006.12
19. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 76–77
20. ^ Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1.006.14
21. ^ Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2.111.4
22. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 93
23. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 143