Subjunctive of Prohibition (A negative command)

a) It is used to forbid in advance the initiation or occurrence of an action.

b) It is formed by using the negating adverb (mh) with the aorist subjunctive, typically in the second person. It is equivalent to imperative after mh.
    i) In second person verb forms, the subjunctive takes the place of a verb in the imperative mood. In third person verb forms, either the subjunctive or the imperative may be used.
    ii) The subjunctive of prohibition is usually seen with the aorist tense, rather than the present tense.

c) It is translated "don’t ever…" or just "do not…."  It does not have the sense that "You should not…."

d) Examples:

    i) Matthew 6:34
    "Therefore don’t ever worry about tomorrow;"
    "mh; ou\n merimnhvshte eij" th;n au[rion,"
    ii) John 3:7
    "Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew’."
    "mh; qaumavsh/" o{ti ei\povn soi, Dei' uJma'" gennhqh'nai a[nwqen."
e) Comparative Note: A prohibition can be formed by using the negative adverb (not) with the present imperative or with the aorist subjunctive (or with the future indicative).  As seen earlier, in general the present tense emphasizes the continuation of an action and the aorist sees the action as a whole (and thus sometimes has an ingressive idea). When used in prohibition, the present tense (imperative) can mean to cease the continuation of an action, i.e. "stop doing…" something.  The prohibition formed with the aorist tense (subjunctive) can mean to not start the action, i.e. "don’t start doing…" something.  This is a generality but cannot always be assumed to be the case. One needs to take caution and not blindly apply this generality.  The context of the prohibition always needs to be taken into consideration.
    i) The present tense prohibition may also just be telling a ‘general or customary precept’, without commenting on whether the action is going on or not.
    ii) The aorist tense in prohibitions does not always have an inceptive sense, but can just be looking at the action as a whole, also as a general precept.

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