21st Century Bible Hebrew -- piel/polel comparison

Genesis 1:20-21

כ וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים יִשְׁרְצ֣וּ הַמַּ֔יִם שֶׁ֖רֶץ נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֑ה וְעוֹף֙ יְעוֹפֵ֣ף עַל־הָאָ֔רֶץ עַל־פְּנֵ֖י רְקִ֥יעַ הַשָּׁמָֽיִם:

Translation: Gd said the waters will swarm with swarming things, soul of life; and fliers will fly over the earth against the raqia of heaven.

Gd created the large taninim; and all souls of life that creep that swarm the waters for their kinds, and all the fliers of wing for its kind, Gd manifested its goodness.

First verb issue. There are two verb root classes that some writers mix up just because they look alike without the vowels. Remember what I said a couple of lessons ago about that?

Here, “fly” is in piel imperfect. It is a “hollow verb”; its middle letter is vav (middle letter in yod is also a hollow verb).  The dictionary form is עוֹף. 

Singular	Person/gender
אֲעוֹפֵף	First
תְּעוֹפֵף	Second/masculine
תְּעוֹפְפִי	Second/feminine

And so on.  Notice that the vowel under the first peh is tseire. That’s the clue that this is piel.

Here are the same three forms for a verb that really has duplicate letters. This verb root class is called polel or sometimes ayin ayin (don’t ask me why, I will call them polel).

Singular	Person/gender
אֲחַבֵּב	First
תְּחַבֵּב	Second/masculine
תְּחַבְּבִי	Second/feminine

This verb has a dagesh-able letter in the middle. I chose it because of the chet, another of those gutturals, which seems to have grammatical relationships with ayin.

Here’s a polel verb without a guttural.

Singular	Person/gender
אֲבַסֵּס	First
תְּבַסֵּס	Second/masculine
תְּבַסְּסִי	Second/feminine

And here’s a hollow verb using vav in piel that DOESN’T double the last letter.

Singular	Person/gender
אֲכַוֵּן	First
תְּכַוֵּן	Second/masculine
תְּכַוְּנִי	Second/feminine

The vav in this verb is pronounced “v”, not “u”.

You’re probably tearing your hair out wondering how you’re going to remember all this but unlike some teachers, I am never going to ask you to reproduce these conjugations. I have them here to show you that a hollow verb is not a polel even if it doubles a letter in piel or any other form (there are two other possibilities).  Polel verbs mostly show up in piel, pual, and hitpael (more on those later) but some of them are also used in nifal, hifil, and even qal.

Notice that the alef in the first person singular has a chataf vowel under it instead of the shva under the first letters in the other forms. This is what I meant by gutturals requiring chataf vowels instead of shva. 

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