Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- strong verbs

We’re going to start with a verb I already conjugated for you.  It doesn’t belong to any of the three classes I named last time.  It is said to have “strong” root letters and it will contrast with verbs that have “weak” root letters which I will discuss soon enough.

 

Present

Singular	Plural	Gender
מֹשֵל	מֹשְלִים	Masculine
מֹשֶׁלֶת	מֹשְׁלוֹת	Feminine

 

Past

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
מָשַׁלְתִּי	מָשַׁלְנוּ	First
מָשַׁלְתָּ	מְשַלְתֶּם	Second/masculine
מָשַׁלְתְּ	מְשַלְתֶּן	Second/feminine
מָשַׁל	מָשְׁלוּ	Third/masculine
מָשְׁלָה	מָשְׁלוּ	Third/feminine

 

Future/aorist

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אֶמְשֹׁל	נִמְשֹׁל	First
תִּמְשֹׁל	תִּמְשְׁלוּ	Second/masculine
תִּמְשְׁלִי	תִּמְשֹׁלְנָה	Second/feminine
יִמְשֹׁל	יִמְשְׁלוּ	Third/masculine
תִּמְשֹׁל	תִּמְשֹׁלְנָה	Third/feminine

 

First, the roots of this verb are mem shin lamed.  They are present in every tense.  That is what makes this a strong verb.  Verbs with “weak” letters may lose them in conjugation. 

 

Second, notice that the “past” has no prefixes.  That suggests that this is the qal or binyan.  For purposes of looking in a dictionary, when you have a strong letter as the first root letter, you look under that in the dictionary.

 

So if you had a root of qof tet lamed, you would look under qof.

 

Now notice that the “future/aorist” has prefixes before the mem.  They will often appear with a vav at the start, for reasons I’ll discuss later.  But you see here all three root letters expressed after a prefix which shows person, number and gender. 

 

Notice the prefixes alef, nun, and yod.  Those are the ones we have to address when we have verbs with weak roots in this tense. 

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