commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?


Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?



If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, that they may put it into the king's treasuries.



I am stumped by this sentence construction. First, there is "Let it be," which is a common English idiomatic phrase, but then it follows another subjunctive. Is that to say you can actually have a subjunctive followed by another subjunctive? Also, why does the sentence use "please"? If that's the subjunctive tense there, then why is it followed by another subjunctive instead of a conditional, or maybe "Let it be" is the conditional? Lastly, I wish to know how the that is used in the sentence. Perhaps, the simplified sentence can be restated like so:



Let it be decreed that they be destroyed and that they may put it into the king's treasuries.



If not, maybe the simplified sentence can be restated like so:



I will pay [insert direct object here] so that they may put it [insert prepositional phrase here].



Maybe the "so" word is eliminated and replaced by a comma?


For reference, this lengthy sentence comes from the Esther 3:9 (English Standard Version of the Holy Bible).




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

word choice - Which is the correct spelling: “fairy” or “faerie”?