Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/338

 Knudtzon (see above, Rem. on ), comparing the Ass.-Bab. usage, would prefer the term present rather than imperfect, on the ground that the tense expresses what is either actually or mentally present. In any case, the essential difference between the perfect and imperfect consists, he argues, in this, that the perfect simply indicates what is actually complete, while the imperfect places the action, &c., in a more direct relation to the judgement or feeling of the speaker.

More precisely the imperfect serves—

1. In the sphere of past time:

(a) To express actions, &c., which continued throughout a longer or shorter period, e.g. a mist went up continually, 2:25, 37:7, 48:10, , , , , 12, 14, 15,  f. 20 f., 23 7, , , ,  f., , , , , ,  , 17:10 f., 51:2 x, , , , 14, 17 ff.38 ff., 24:2, 32:4, 5 , 47:5, 68:10, 12, 104:6 ff., 106:19, 107:18, 29, 139:13, , , 15 f., 10:10 f., 15:7 f.—very frequently alternating with a perfect (especially with a frequentative perfect; cf. –23 and ), or when the narration is continued by means of an imperfect consecutive.

Rem. 1. The imperfect is frequently used in this way after the particles, , , , e.g. , &c.; , , , , , ,. (The is used after  when stress is to be laid on the fact that the action has really taken place, and not upon its gradual accomplishment or duration in the past, e.g. , &c.; , , , , .) After  e.g.  ; , , , 7, always in the sense of our pluperfect. (In instead of the perf., the imperf. should be read, as in verse 45; so also in  [] an imperf. is co-ordinated with ). After (sometimes also simply , ), e.g.  ; , , ,  (perhaps also in  an imperf. was intended instead of ; cf. Wellhausen on ; but note also , in a similar context, before the mountains were settled, , the predicate being separated from , by , as in ). After,  (until I went), ; on the other