תחביר המקור הנטוי בספר בן סירא

A comprehensive description of the syntactic and semantic behavior of the construct infinitive in Ben Sira's language reveals a typical feature of the author's linguistic background. In Ben Sira, as in late biblical and Qumran Hebrew, the modal use of the infinitive with (לקטל) ל- is common. This infinitival form appears in Ben Sira 130 times - in 68 as a predicate or part of a predicate expressing modal meanings; in the other cases, it functions as an adverbial of purpose/result or as a noun complement with a sense of purpose. In its adverbial function, the infinitive with ל- always follows the predicate of its main clause as a governed complement. Where the infinitive itself governs an object complement, the infinitive regularly precedes its object; in three cases, however, it follows the object, probably due to the influence of Aramaic. Another typical feature of late biblical Hebrew, found in Ben Sira 71 times, is a less frequent use of the construct infinitive with other than לprepositions, mainly as a temporal adverbial. As an adjunct, its relative position in the sentence is undetermined. As a gerund, without prepositions, the infinitive functions as any nominal part of the clause (e.g., as a subject or an object). This usage, common in late biblical language, was replaced by new verbal nouns in Mishnaic Hebrew. Ben Sira uses the classic infinitival forms alongside the new verbal nouns.