Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- verbs with middle vav or yod

I said that there were five possibilities for a verb that had an alef first in future tense and seemed to have only two root letters.  I’ve dealt with three of them.  The other two are a specific kind of verb that loses the middle letter at times.  They are ayin yod and ayin vav.  The single most important ayin vav verb is bo, “go, come”.

 

Present

Singular	Plural	Gender
בָּא	בָּאִים	Masculine
בָּאָה	בָּאוֹת	Feminine

 

Past

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
בָּאתִי	בָּאנוּ	First
בָּאתָ	בָּאתֶם	Second/masculine
בָּאתְ	בָּאתֶן	Second/feminine
בָּא	בָּאוּ	Third/masculine
בָּאָה	בָּאוּ	Third/feminine

 

Future/aorist

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אָבוֹא	נָבוֹא	First
תָּבוֹא	תָּבוֹאוּ	Second/masculine
תָּבוֹאִי	תָּבֹאנָה	Second/feminine
יָבוֹא	יָבוֹאוּ	Third/masculine
תָּבוֹא	תָּבֹאנָה	Third/feminine

 

When you seem to have only two root letters, and you’re sure it’s not one of the other three forms, look in the dictionary under the first root letter, and then go first to vav and then to yod as a middle letter.

 

So: how do you tell “went” from “goes” in third person?  With masculine singular, you can’t tell just from the verb form.  It’s all context.  In the feminine, you can tell if you hear it, because the past tense is stressed on the first syllable and the present tense on the last syllable.  But if you’re only reading, again, it’s context.

 

“Come” uses the vowel o in the future, which you can think of as coming from the infinitive, lavo.  Another frequent ayin vav verb, qum, “get up,” has the infinitive laqum and so, as you might guess, it uses u in the future.  But they both use the patach (“a”) in the present tense and past tense.  And those are the tenses where the vav of the root drops out.

 

Ayin yod verbs function the same way.  The infinitive lasim gives us asim in first person singular future tense, but the present and past tense are sam/samti.

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved