ed krentz wrote:OT law codes take two forms, casuistic and epideictic.
Ed,
Don't you mean apodictic? In any case I don't think adding the words "casuistic" and "apodictic" are of much help linguistically.
Ade,
Here are some facts about the imperative that I hope are helpful:
The imperative always implies future time.
The imperative is a late development in Greek. It is the last of the moods to appear.
Prohibitions in the 2nd and 3rd person aorist subjunctive held their place and were not supplanted by the imperative.
The imperative and the future between them carried off the old jussive use of the subjunctive in positive commands of 2nd and 3rd person.
The imperative receives most of its forms from the old injunctive.
The subjunctive, optative, future indicative, infinitive and participle are all used imperativally.
The imperative lacks a regular set of its own suffixes.
The imperative appears in a present form sometimes indistinguishable from the 2nd person plural present indicative active and middle.