Why ever rely on a vav hahipuch?

Question

There is a grammatical form in the chumash of the vav [hahipuch]1 which turns words written in the past form into future tense and future tense constructs into past. I noted this, I think, pointed out explicitly in the first pasuk of Va'etchanan, where the Avi Ezer supports the reading of the first word as "שתיבת ואתחנן הוא עתיד הנהפך לעבר" (unless there is another grammatical reason to account for the tense change besides the vav).

So I can understand that this construct exists, but I don't yet understand WHY it exists. If there is a way of creating the "right" form of the verb, why write it in the opposite way and then put a vav on to change the tense? If the Ibn Ezra says that it means "וכבר התחננתי" why wouldn't the text simply use the past tense (perfect or pluperfect) in the first place? Is there an opening for a commentary which would be foreclosed if the text simply wrote the appropriate tense?

In cases where the vav hahipuch is used, is there a deeper reason why the tense is written in one way and then inverted?

Answer 1

The simple answer to this question is that there's probably no such thing as a vav hahippukh anyway. On the contrary, Hebrew grammarians speak of four (not two) verbal aspects in Classical Hebrew:

The perfective (aka suffix-conjugation, aka qatal) - eg: כתב. This indicates a completed action;

The imperfective (aka prefix-conjugation, aka yiqtol) - eg: אכתוב. This indicates an incompleted action;

The waw-consecutive perfect (aka weqatal) - eg: וכתבתי;

The waw-consecutive imperfect (aka wayyiqtol) - eg: ויכתוב.

In the example that you brought in your question, ואתחנן is a waw-consecutive imperfect, or wayyiqtol. Identifying it is fairly easy: it involves a patach under the waw and a dagesh in the following letter (in this case, a qamatz under the waw, since the aleph cannot take a dagesh).

What does it mean? Well, this is where things get complicated. One prevailing theory is that it indicates a consecutive action in the narrative. Prose passages in Tanakh feature high concentrations of this type of verb. Discourse linguists claim to isolate a broader range of possible meanings, depending on the type of text in which it appears, and a look at any grammar of biblical Hebrew should give you at least a brief synopsis of those.

I recommend checking out Arnold and Choi's A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, pp84 onwards. They identify five different types of meanings, which they label sequential, consequential, narratival, epexegetical and dependent.