There was a famine in the land of Canaan, for the people were sinful unto the Lord. And the Lord spoke unto Abraham and he said unto him: ‘Behold, there is a famine in the land.’
We went over it in today's online session.We know that there is is the particle יֵשׁ and that אֵין is its negation. There is no past tense of יש, so Hebrew uses הָיָה instead. Consider the following:
1) יֵשׁ כֶּ֫סֶף — There is money.
2) אֵין כֶּ֫סֶף — There is no money.
1') הָיָה כֶּ֫סֶף — There was money.
2') לֹא הָיָה כֶּ֫סֶף — There was no money.
The chances are that the book expects us to use vav-consecutives (past narrative) as much as is sensible when writing, and we would expect that in real Hebrew text. The past narrative for היה is וַיְהִי. Since רָעָב is masculine, we don't need to adjust it at all. If it were a feminine subject (such as סְעָרָה "a storm"), we'd have to change it to feminine. The plural would be וַיִּהְיוּ.2) אֵין כֶּ֫סֶף — There is no money.
1') הָיָה כֶּ֫סֶף — There was money.
2') לֹא הָיָה כֶּ֫סֶף — There was no money.
3) וַיְהִי רָעָב — There was a famine.
4) וַתְּהִי סְעָרָה — There was a storm.
5) וַיִּהְיוּ בָּֽתִּים רַבִּים — There were many houses.
The land of Canaan is a construct phrase formed by simply joining the two words together: אֶ֫רֶץ כְּנַ֫עַן. To make it say "in," you just add בְּ־ and end up with בְּאֶ֫רֶץ כְּנַ֫עַן.4) וַתְּהִי סְעָרָה — There was a storm.
5) וַיִּהְיוּ בָּֽתִּים רַבִּים — There were many houses.
So far, it should be pretty clear that we write There was a famine in the land of Canaan as וַיְהִי רָעָב בְּאֶ֫רֶץ כְּנַ֫עַן.
The next phrase begins with the reason behind this plague (according to the author)—that the people were sinful to the Lord (meaning, Yahweh).
I take were sinful as a stative sense of the verb לַחֲטֹא "to sin." The verb loves to follow right behind grammar words (conjunctions and the like), so the verb would jump up to be right after כִּי.
Since the people, though grammatically singular (collective), represents a group and not just one person, the verb could possibly appear as singular (grammatical concord) or as plural (constructio ad sensum). It's more common for it to go with grammatical concord, so rather than כִּי חָֽטְאוּ, let's go with כִּי חָטָא and pair it with the subject הָעָם.
The only thing left is to add to the Lord:
וַיְהִי רָעָב בְּאֶ֫רֶץ כְּנַ֫עַן כִּי חָטָא הָעָם לַיהוָה
There was a famine in the land of Canaan, for the people were sinful ("had sinned") to the Lord.
This is just going over what we already covered in the class. I'll add the rest of this section soon.There was a famine in the land of Canaan, for the people were sinful ("had sinned") to the Lord.