Word Order in Biblical Hebrew—How Useful Is the Prague School Framework?

Abstract This article examines the two dominant word orders in Biblical Hebrew— SVO and VSO—through Prague School functional analysis of 1 Samuel 5 and 10. It evaluates whether (1) theme–rheme distribution, (2) semantic roles, or (3) grammatical stereotypes govern sentence structure. The findings show that word order reflects grammatical stereotypes rather than pragmatic or semantic constraints. The article also identifies the limits within the Prague School framework when applied to a language whose word order is structured by grammar. This is the first in a two-part series developing a unified analysis of Hebrew tense and word order.