Subjunctive of Prohibition (A negative command)
a) It is used to forbid in advance the initiation or occurrence of an action.
b) It is formed by using the negating adverb (mh)
with the aorist subjunctive, typically in the second person. It is equivalent
to imperative after mh.
i) In second person verb forms, the subjunctive
takes the place of a verb in the imperative mood. In third person verb
forms, either the subjunctive or the imperative may be used.
ii) The subjunctive of prohibition is usually seen
with the aorist tense, rather than the present tense.
c) It is translated "dont ever
" or just "do not
." It does not
have the sense that "You should not
."
d) Examples:
i) Matthew 6:34
"Therefore dont ever worry about tomorrow;"
"mh; ou\n merimnhvshte eij" th;n au[rion,"
ii) John 3:7
"Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born anew."
"mh; qaumavsh/" o{ti ei\povn soi, Dei' uJma'" gennhqh'nai
a[nwqen."
e) Comparative Note: A prohibition can be formed by using the negative
adverb (not) with the present imperative or with the aorist subjunctive
(or with the future indicative). As seen earlier, in general the
present tense emphasizes the continuation of an action and the aorist sees
the action as a whole (and thus sometimes has an ingressive idea). When
used in prohibition, the present tense (imperative) can mean to cease the
continuation of an action, i.e. "stop doing
" something. The prohibition
formed with the aorist tense (subjunctive) can mean to not start the action,
i.e. "dont start doing
" something. This is a generality but cannot
always be assumed to be the case. One needs to take caution and not blindly
apply this generality. The context of the prohibition always needs
to be taken into consideration.
i) The present tense prohibition may also just be
telling a general or customary precept, without commenting on whether
the action is going on or not.
ii) The aorist tense in prohibitions does not always
have an inceptive sense, but can just be looking at the action as a whole,
also as a general precept. |