Tenses in Biblical Hebrew

Bible teachers sometimes make a point from the tense of a verb in the Hebrew text of the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament). They might say something like, “In Hebrew, this word is in the future tense. This means that…”

However, this is not appropriate, since Biblical Hebrew does not have tenses like in English. After all, English and Biblical Hebrew are different languages, so we should not expect that verbs in Biblical Hebrew work in the same way as verbs in English.

This is also the case for Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew. There are areas where Biblical Hebrew does not work in the same way as Modern Hebrew. For example, Modern Hebrew has past, present, and future tenses—but Biblical Hebrew does not have such tenses!

Let us consider a sentence in Genesis 2:6:

וְאֵ֖ד יַֽעֲלֶ֣ה מִן־הָאָ֑רֶץ

In this sentence, the verb yaʿăleh (יַֽעֲלֶ֣ה) is in the Yiqtol form. In Modern Hebrew, the Yiqtol form is equated with the future tense. Hence, a Modern Hebrew reader would take yaʿăleh as a future tense verb, and understand the sentence as, “And a mist will go up from the land.”

However, in Biblical Hebrew, the Yiqtol verb form does not indicate the future tense, but rather the imperfective aspect. The timing of the verb’s action cannot be determined by its form. In Genesis 2:6, the context makes it clear that this sentence narrates something which happened in the past—even from the perspective of the original writer. Hence, in translation, yaʿăleh here should be rendered in the past tense with an imperfective aspect: “and a mist was going up from the land.” (ESV)

Conclusion

We should be careful not to think that Biblical Hebrew works in the same way as the languages that we speak today. We should also note that the Hebrew that is spoken today in the land of Israel is not the same as the Hebrew that is found in the Bible. Thus, we should not assume that something is true in Biblical Hebrew just because it is true in Modern Hebrew.