Thank you, Carlo, for your very helpful comments on Rev 6.2 (and for all
your input to B-Greek. I joined the group a little over a week ago and I'm
learning a lot). You're right of course that the header should have read
6.2; also, in the 2nd line I meant Hebrew "infinitive absolute" (also
called "internal accusative", Ges-Kautsch). I was impressed by your
comparison to Jn 1.8 (ALL' hINA, & KAI hINA in Rev 6.2d), although the
emphatic repetition of cognates is missing in Jn 1.8. But the analogy
helps, as did your other comments.
A friend of mine, doing a doctorate in OT at Cambridge, ventured another
possible explanation. He reconstructed a hypothetical equivalent Hebrew
text of "wayyetse wayyak hakkot" (or "wayyetse whikkah hakkot"). Since
Hebrew WAW can mean both "and" (KAI) and purpose (hINA), he conjectured
that the author, struggling to articulate his Hebrew thought into Greek
words, simply decided to use both senses of WAW: "KAI" (more literal) and
"hINA" (freer rendition).
I later found an intriguing partial Hebrew parallel in a corrected reading
that BDB proposes for 2 Kings 3.24b (p.646 bottom of 1st column): "and
they went on defeating" the moabites (wayaboAu boA wehakkot). This is not
an exact parallel either, but it has the two basic ideas of "go" and
"conquer" and the emphatic repetition of cognates. It keeps me wondering
whether the emphatic infinitive absolute of Hebrew (typically replaced by
a participle in Greek) may still shed some light on this construction.
Would you or any of the Hebrew experts want to comment on that?