Biblical Hebrew: 07. Intensive Verbs (Piel, Pual, Hitpael)

In this lesson, you will learn three intensive stems: piel, pual, and hitpael.

What is characteristic for all intensive stems is doubling of a middle consonant discernible by the presence of dagesh. Next distinguishing mark is that imperfect has shewa under its prefix. These two rules apply to all stems we are going to discuss in this lesson.

Piel

Piel conveys active-intensive action. However, we need to note here, that the intensive force of verbs does not have to be employed in every instance. There are words in Hebrew that have predetermined meaning regardless of their stem. This is, for example, the case of a word ברך “to bless” which is usually used in piel. This applies to all verbs and stems in Hebrew. We need to be careful not to impose grammar onto the text.

Conjugation of perfect and imperfect forms goes as follows:

Perfect

Imperfect

This well works for all consonants except gutturals (throat letters). As we have noted in the introductory lesson, this set of consonants cannot be doubled with dagesh and cannot take simple shewa. We need to be aware of this since the resulting form of the word will be a bit different from the table above. The middle guttural letter of a word will cause its preceding letter to be prolonged as for example here: יְפָעֵל.

Participle

Verbal adjectives work as same as in Qal. However, in intensive and causative stems a prefix letter מ is present (see table below). In this way, you are sure to discern that a word is a participle of higher stems (be aware of similarity with suffixed preposition מִן “with”).

All other verbal categories follow the same pattern as Qal. (for a general description of other verbal categories see lesson 06 of this course).

Pual

Pual is one of the easiest stems. It conveys passive-intensive action. What applies for Piel, applies also for Pual. The only difference is a change in vocalization which is quite regular. Instead of i-e/a vocalization, Pual goes with u-a here as demonstrated in conjugation table:

Perfect

Imperfect

Hitpael

The last stem of the intensive family is Hitpael. This stem conveys reflexive-intensive action. It is also very similar to Piel. What is special on this stem is its prefix הִת. It affects the outlook of all the other prefixes in the conjugation. This effect is most obvious in imperfect aspect:

Perfect

Imperfect

Another specialty is that sibilant consonants ז צ ס ש tend to alter their connection with stem prefix. This effect is called metathesis of ת. For example in the case of word שׁמר this will happen: