I'm learning Modern Hebrew (I am a complete novice) and I was trying to wrap my head around the structure of the common phrase for "Welcome" ("ברוך הבא").
The etymology of "הבא" is pretty much clear as I'm introduced to the verb "בא" (which is backed up in wiktionary). I assumed that this word is a noun for "smb/smth that is coming" (which is once again backed up in wiktionary).
Whereupon I checked "ברוך" in wiktionary. There are 3 options for the word "ברוך" stated:
- An adjective for "Blessed" (etymology 1).
- A proper noun (etymology 1).
- A noun for "Trouble" (etymology 2).
Therefore, I reckon the first option to be the only fitting one. Thus, in case my perception of the part of speech for "הבא" is correct, the phrase turns out to be a nominative sentence (at least in case it is used as a separate sentence).
But the word order does not seem to add up to me, as an adjective precedes the noun. My first guess was that the phrase itself was derived from the Biblical Hebrew, which is, to my knowledge, characterized by a different word order in some cases. Yet, checking Wikipedia for the Biblical Hebrew word order revealed the following:
Attributive adjectives normally follow the noun they modify[Waltke & O'Connor (1990:258)].
Thus, the only other assumption I managed to come up with implies that the phrase literally means "Blessed be the comer" instead of "The comer is blessed", but I'm not introduced to such a construction in Modern Hebrew yet.
Thus, my questions are:
- Where am I wrong?
- What is the correct approach towards comprehending the phrase?
- Could the "Blessed be the comer" construction be implemented this way?