10.3 Words in Construct will not have the Article or any adjectives

Nothing else can come between words in construct - this can pose translation challenges so watch word endings carefully

  • In English, we could add an adjective like “the servant of the wicked son of the king”
  • In Hebrew, any adjectives must come after the whole chain
    • A literal translation would look like: “servant of son of the king the wicked”
    • To resolve, we would need to go back and determine which word the adjective modifies by matching the gender and number
  • Translating is straightforward when the nouns in the construct chain are of a mixed number or gender
    • For example: “the wife of David the strong the smart, the beautiful”
    • If “strong” and “beautiful” were FS, then we know they are referring to David’s wife
    • If “smart” was MS, we know it is referring to David
    • The sentence translation would be clear: “The strong and beautiful wife of smart David”
    • See examples below using “good”, “king” and “land”. Note how the gender and number of the adjective tells us which noun it is modifying
In many cases, the gender and number of a trailing adjective can indicate which word it modifies

Figure 10.4: In many cases, the gender and number of a trailing adjective can indicate which word it modifies

  • When an adjective has the same gender and number as two or more nouns in the construct chain, there is potential ambugity as to which word the adjective is modifying
  • We must rely on context
  • In the example of “servant of son of the king the wicked” there is ambiguity84
    • All nouns are masculine singular, so the adjective is masculine singular
    • See example animation below
      • Note that this is a hypothetical example used to illustrate the potential ambiguity
      • Most of the time, translating a construct chain with an adjective is straightforward
        • Often there is no ambiguity
        • When there is, the context of the passage would indicate which man was the wicked one
Because adjectives do not appear next to construct nouns, it can sometimes be a challenge to determine which word the adjective modifies.

Figure 10.5: Because adjectives do not appear next to construct nouns, it can sometimes be a challenge to determine which word the adjective modifies.

  1. We will discuss definiteness of construct words in an upcoming section.↩︎