Summary

In Biblical Hebrew the verb normally comes first in a sentence or clause. In cases where another grammatical element precedes the verb, especially the subject, the context must determine whether or not a new narrative or section of text is being introduced, or whether or not the narrator is introducing a break in the narrative.

Article

In verbal sentences (that is, sentences with a verb), the structure of the sentence in Biblical Hebrew is: (1) the verb, in first position; (2) the subject, in second position; (3) the object, in third position. Other grammatical elements such as adverb, prepositional phrases, discourse particle, etc. can be inserted at various points within that general sentence structure. In most cases, variations from the standard word order are for literary reasons or to add some emphasis (usually on the word moved to the beginning of the sentence), but this does not fundamentally change the meaning. Sometimes however, if a grammatical element (often the subject) is placed before the verb, it has implications for the general structure of a narrative and/or how to best divide up the text in smaller blocks. In these cases, the context must determine whether this introduces a new narrative or section of text, or if it indicates a break in the narrative.

Poetic portions of the Hebrew Bible generally not follow the standard structure for several reasons. For example, they use a lot of nominal sentences that do not have a verb, they use parallelisms where the same thought is repeated twice, as well as other poetic tools.