Historical texts are OT stories. Historical narrative makes up 40–50 percent of our OT and relays a succession of contingent events one after another, usually in past time. In the historical text type, it’s wayyiqtol clauses—also known as vav consecutive imperfect clauses—that serve as the unmarked or default verb pattern. Unless other features tell us otherwise, we expect that every wayyiqtol is simply carrying ahead the storyline. This is the “story verb.” When a single clause departs from the