DREAM REPORTS
The implication of visual
experience comes to the fore in the description of dreams. An element of the
marvellous is also present, of course. The narrative ingredient is not well
developed in the dreams reported in Genesis. There is usually only one event
clause; all the other information is supplied by means of wĕhinnē clauses,
which may accumulate into quite a string. Otherwise they occur one at a time.
So Jacob's dream begins with
three wĕhinnē clauses, with God's speech as the dream event (Ge 2812-15).
Each clause has the structure wĕhinnē +S:N +P:PtPh. The dream in Ge 3110
begins in the same way. The dreams in the Joseph story are particularly
impressive in this regard. The dream of the sheaves has three wĕhinnē clauses
followed by the event clause (Ge 376-7). The speech even begins with
wĕhinnē. The third clause is the only instance in the entire Bible of hinne
followed by an imperfect verb. The dream report in Ge 379 consists
of one hinnē clause and one wĕhinnē clause. Compare the single wĕhinnē clause
in the vision of Ge 154. The butler's dream consists of one wĕhinnē
clause followed by a string of four circumstantial clauses which set the scene.
This is followed by three event clauses.
Then I picked the grapes.
And I squeezed them into
Pharoah's cup,
And I put the cup on Pharoah's palm.
In contrast to this the
baker's dream consists of circumstances only -- one wĕhinnē clause plus two
circumstantial clauses. There is no event. In Pharoah's first dream (the cows)
there are three wĕhinnē clauses (with participles). The only event is the skinny
cows eating the fat ones (411-4). The second dream (the wheat)
consists of two wĕhinnē +S:N +P:PtPh clauses plus the event clause in which the
shrivelled wheat devours the plump wheat (415-7). Pharoah's reports
repeat the patterns, except that the first is embellished with some comments of
his own (Ge 4117-24). The abundant use of wĕhinnē clauses is thus a feature
of dream reports in classical Hebrew. (Francis I. Andersen, The Sentence
in Biblical Hebrew [Janua Linguarum Studia Memoriae Nicolai Van Wijk
Dedicata, Series Practica 231; The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1974], 95)