The Verb — seven stems, and the chain of “and then”
Where Hebrew is least like English
Lesson one gave you the consonants and lesson two the vowels, and with those you can read a Hebrew word aloud. This lesson is about the one part of the language that will not map onto English at all. A Hebrew verb does not have tenses in our sense — there is no past, present and future sitting in a row. It has a stem, which says what kind of action it is, and an aspect, which says whether the action is finished. Everything else, including when it happened, comes from the sentence around it. Nearly a quarter of the Hebrew words on this site are verbs, so this is the machinery under most of what you will read.
The root and the seven stems
Almost every Hebrew word is built on a root of three consonants carrying a bare idea — ק־ט־ל, killing; ל־מ־ד, learning. The root is then poured into one of seven moulds, called binyanim, "buildings". The plain one is qal, and it is most of what you will meet: about seven verbs in ten on this site are qal. Then niphal (usually passive or reflexive: he was killed), piel (intensive or resultative), pual (piel made passive), hiphil (causative — he caused someone to do it), hophal (hiphil made passive), and hithpael (reflexive: he did it to himself). Hiphil is the second most common, about one verb in eight.
One verse, two stems
Genesis 12:1 shows the difference doing real work. God tells Abram לֶךְ, lekh — qal imperative, "go". Then, at the end of the verse, אַרְאֶךָּ, 'ar.'E.ka — the root ר־א־ה, seeing, in the hiphil: not "I will see" but "I will cause you to see", which English renders "I will show you". Same idea of sight, one mould further on. That is what a stem does, and it is why the reader's panel names the stem before anything else.
Perfect and imperfect: finished, or not
The two main conjugations are traditionally called perfect and imperfect, and the names are about completeness rather than time. The perfect presents an action as a whole, done; the imperfect presents it as incomplete, ongoing, or not yet. Between them they are nearly two fifths of the verbs here. Exodus 20:13 is an imperfect — לֹא תִּרְצָח, lo tirtsach — and it is usually rendered "You shall not murder": not a prediction about the future but a standing, unfinished, never-finished prohibition. English has to choose a tense; Hebrew does not have to.
The waw that drives the story
Now the most common verb form in the Hebrew Bible, and the one with no English equivalent at all. Put a particular waw in front of an imperfect and it flips — the panel calls it the consecutive waw, and it is the first thing it prints on such a word: the form that means unfinished becomes the narrative past, and the waw means "and then". About one Hebrew verb in five on this site is one of these. Genesis 2:7 is three of them in a row — וַיִּיצֶר, and he formed; וַיִּפַּח, and he blew; וַיְהִי, and he became. That chain of and-thens is what Hebrew narrative is made of, and it is why so many English Bibles begin so many verses with "And". It works in reverse too: a waw on a perfect makes the sequential perfect, which is how a command reaches into the future. Deuteronomy 6:5 is one — וְאָהַבְתָּ, ve.'A.hav.ta, "and you shall love the LORD your God."
The same root twice, in one verse
Genesis 1:27 puts both conjugations side by side. It opens וַיִּבְרָא, vai.yiv.Ra' — the sequential imperfect, and-then-he-created, the story moving. Then twice more, בָּרָא, ba.Ra' — the plain perfect, created, done. "And God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." The first pushes the narrative forward; the two that follow stand still and look at what was made. Tap all three in the reader and the panel will tell you which is which.
The passive stems, where the Servant is
Isaiah 53:5 is a short course in the passive moulds by itself. מְחֹלָל, me.cho.Lal, and מְדֻכָּא, me.du.Ka' — both pual participles, the passive of the intensive stem: not merely wounded but pierced through, crushed. Then נִרְפָּא, nir.pa' — niphal perfect, the plain stem made passive and complete; the word itself glosses "it was healed", and the clause is the one English gives as "with his stripes we are healed". Three passives in one verse, and every one of them is something done to him rather than by him. The grammar is carrying the theology, and you can see it in the panel.
Two more words the panel keeps saying: construct and absolute
A Hebrew noun has no word for "of". Instead the first noun leans on the second and changes shape to do it: that leaning form is the construct, and the ordinary standing form is the absolute. Genesis 1:2 has a chain of them — פְּנֵי, pe.Nei, "the surface of", masculine plural construct, leaning on תְהוֹם, te.Hom, "the deep", feminine singular absolute. The surface of the deep. And in the same verse וְרוּחַ, ve.Ru.ach, feminine singular construct: the Spirit of God. Only the last word in such a chain can take the definite article, which is why הַשָּׁמַיִם, ha.sha.Ma.yim, "the heavens", is absolute and carries its ha- while a construct never can. This is a noun matter rather than a verb one, but it belongs here for the same reason the rest of the lesson does: the panel prints these two words on a great many of the nouns you will tap, and until now nothing on this shelf had said what they meant.
Why it matters on this site
Tap any Hebrew verb in the reader and the panel has always said something like "verb · qal · perfect · third person masculine singular". Until this lesson, qal was a word nobody here had defined, and it sits on roughly seven of every ten verbs you touch. Now the line reads: plain stem, action complete, he did it. The panel has two more words for the in-between forms: it writes "participle active" for a doing-one and "participle passive" for a done-to-one, and a Hebrew participle is as happy being a noun as a verb. רֹעִי, ro.'I, at Psalm 23:1 is a participle active with a suffix — literally a shepherding-one-of-me — and that is how "the LORD is my shepherd" is built.