343 RESCUED ALREADY ? THE SIGNIFICANCE yntyn[ OF form is “non-modal”, but rather that in and of itself it is (in Buttenwieser’s phrase) “equivocal as to modality” 38. The fact that the qatal form is unmarked for modality means that in the absence of other indicators it functions by default as indicative. However mood is a property of the sentence, not just of verb morphology, and so given appropriate contextual indicators, a verb morpholog- ically unmarked for modality can function modally. If the modal- indicative distinction does indeed take priority in Biblical Hebrew, this means that contextual indicators of modality can effectively override the indicative default of the qatal form. Various different modal indicators may be involved, prominent among these being conditional clauses within which hypothetical statements can be expressed using qatal verbs 39. In the context of these recent discussions about modality and the Hebrew verbal system, Buttenwieser’s comments about the precative perfect are of considerable interest. He suggests that it is “ as a rule found alternating either with the imperfect or the imperative, and it is by this alternation that we are able to identify it ” 40. Thus in the context of a sentence, the deontic modality of which has been established by an imperative form, a qatal verb may undergo (to use Warren’s phrase) “mood neutralisation” 41, and take on the modality of the sentence. This is clearly applicable to Ps 22,22 in which yntyi"ˆ is preceded by the imperative yn[yv/h 42. i : n[ ie i fact expresses the indicative in past time as opposed to participial forms which express the indicative in present time. COOK, “Vav-prefixed Verb Forms ”, 11, differs from Joosten and Warren in arguing for imperfective uses of yiqtol forms in addition to modal forms, but likewise treats the qatal form as susceptible to both indicative and modal uses. B U T T E N W I E S E R , T h e Psalms, Chronologically Treated, 20; cf 38 D.J.A. CLINES, On the Way to the Postmodern (London – New York, 1998) 748. WARREN, “Modality”, 94. COOK, “Vav-prefixed Verb Forms”, 7, argues 39 that the vav-prefixed form of the qatal verb is a “syntactically distinct modal use of the perfect conjugation in Biblical Hebrew”, suggesting that this type of use may have originated with conditional uses of the qatal, such that in sentences where the position of the verb was analogous to conditional clause word order, a modal meaning was implicit. BUTTENWIESER, The Psalms, Chronologically Treated, 25. Cf DAHOOD, 40 Psalms I, 20: “The presence of imperatives or jussives in the immediate context is the surest clue to the precative mode”. WARREN, “Modality”, 94. 41 WARREN, “Modality”, 99, describes the precative use of qatal in terms 42