Lesson 6 | About Verbs
[2] Illustrating Verbs
Consider this verse:
There are five verbs in this verse. Let’s examine the parsing of each. The point here is not to understand all the details (you won’t!), but simply to get a sense for the five parsing categories for standard verbs.
“blessed”
stem: piel (the intensive verb stem)
aspect: sequential-imperfect (indicates a step forward in the narrative)
person: 3rd (because the subject is a 3rd party and not I/we or you)
gender: masculine (because the subject is a masculine noun—God)
number: singular (because the subject—i.e. God—is one)
“sanctified”
stem: piel (the intensive verb stem, giving this verb the meaning “sanctify” and not just “be holy”)
aspect: sequential-imperfect (indicates a step forward in the narrative)
person: 3rd (because the subject is still God)
gender: masculine (because the subject is still God)
number: singular (because the subject is still God)
“rested”
stem: qal (the most basic stem)
aspect: perfect (indicates a completed action)
person: 3rd (because the subject is still God)
gender: masculine (because the subject is still God)
number: singular (because the subject is still God)
“had created”
stem: qal (the most basic stem)
aspect: perfect (indicates a completed action)
person: 3rd (because the subject is still God)
gender: masculine (because the subject is still God)
number: singular (because the subject is still God)
“and made” (literally “to make” as mentioned in the NASB footnote)
stem: qal (the most basic stem)
aspect: infinitive-construct (in English, infinitives are always preceeded by the word “to” as in “to do.”)
Infinitives do not use the other parsing categories.
Now take a moment to scroll back up to the beginning of this step and click on the different Hebrew verbs. You will note that the top line of the information bubble that appears gives the verb’s parsing in the same order that it is presented on this step.
Roadmap to learning verbs
We will begin with the perfect aspect in the next lesson, and will introduce you to the most basic stem, the qal stem. We will learn the other six stems in Lesson 9 and the imperfect aspect in Hebrew III.
Basics of Biblical Hebrew: Introduction to VerbspdfBy Bill Mounce // An optional supplement
You may find this a helpful reference for Hebrew verb categories. Just be aware that Mounce uses the term “verbal conjugations” where we are speaking of “aspect”—but we mean the same thing.