The Seven Stems

In lesson 2 you met the qal, the basic stem. Hebrew can build the same root into other stems, and each one adjusts what the verb does. English does something like this with separate words or helping verbs: fall and fell, rise and raise, be holy and make holy, consecrate and consecrate yourself. Hebrew does it inside the verb, by changing its vowels, doubling a letter, or adding a prefix. The traditional names come from the shape of the model verb פָּעַל (pa'al, to do) in each stem, so they tell you the pattern to look for.

Here are the seven, with the share of Hebrew verb forms each has in the Open Scriptures tagging of the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC), so you know how often you will meet them. Qal, the basic stem, about 69 percent. Niphal, about 6 percent, usually the passive or reflexive of the qal: to be sent, to be given, to show oneself; in the perfect it has a נ (nun) on the front, as in נִתַּן (nittan, it was given). Piel, about 9 percent, recognised by a doubled middle letter, shown by a dot in it, as in דִּבֶּר (dibber, he spoke); its meaning is the subject of section 4. Pual, under 1 percent, the passive of the piel, with a u vowel, as in יֻלַּד (yullad, he was born) in Isaiah 9:6. Hiphil, about 13 percent, usually causative, to make someone do or be something; in the perfect it starts with הִ (hi-), as in הִקְדִּישׁ (hiqdish, he consecrated). Hophal, under 1 percent, the passive of the hiphil, as in יוּמַת (yumat, he shall be put to death). And hithpael, about 1 percent, usually reflexive or reciprocal, to do something to or for oneself, with הִתְ (hit-) on the front and a doubled middle letter, as in הִתְקַדְּשׁוּ (hitqaddeshu, consecrate yourselves).

That leaves about 1 percent in rarer stems with names like polel and pilpel. Most of them are what the piel and hithpael look like when the root is a weak one, and the tools label them correctly, so you need only know that they exist. When you see one, read it as you would the stem it stands in for; the lexicon entry will usually say which.

Two warnings before we go further. First, the meanings just given are the usual ones, not rules. Each stem has a typical job, but each verb has its own history, and some verbs simply occur in one stem and mean what they mean there. Second, the English names, passive, causative, reflexive, are descriptions of English. They help, and you will use them, but the real test of what a stem does with a given root is how that root is used, which is what the lexicon and the concordance show you.

The best way to see the stems working is to follow one root through several of them, and the books of Moses give us a perfect example in the root of our anchor, קדשׁ (q-d-sh), the root of holiness. In the WLC it appears as a verb in six of the seven stems.

In the qal it is a stative verb: to be holy. Exodus 29:37 says of the altar that whatever touches it יִקְדָּשׁ (yiqdash, will be holy), a qal imperfect. In the same verse, a few words earlier, Moses is told וְקִדַּשְׁתָּ אֹתוֹ (we-qiddashta oto, and you shall consecrate it), a piel. Here the piel turns the state into an act: not to be holy but to make holy. Exodus 20:8 uses the piel infinitive in the same sense: 'Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy', where by keeping it holy is לְקַדְּשׁוֹ (leqaddesho, to make it holy, to treat it as holy).

In the hiphil, the causative, God says in Numbers 3:13 הִקְדַּשְׁתִּי לִי כָל בְּכוֹר (hiqdashti li khol bekhor, I consecrated to myself every firstborn); the hiphil of this root usually means to set something apart as holy, to dedicate it. In the niphal, Leviticus 10:3, after the death of Nadab and Abihu, God says בִּקְרֹבַי אֶקָּדֵשׁ (biqrovai eqqadesh, among those near me I will show myself holy), which the BSB renders 'To those who come near Me I will show My holiness'. In the hithpael, the reflexive, Israel is told in Leviticus 11:44 וְהִתְקַדִּשְׁתֶּם (we-hitqaddishtem, and you shall consecrate yourselves). And in the pual, the passive of the piel, Isaiah 13:3 has God speak of לִמְקֻדָּשָׁי (limqudashai, to my consecrated ones), rendered 'My sanctified ones'.

Notice what has happened. The lexicon gives one root and one core idea, holiness, set-apartness for God. The stems turn that idea into a family of related actions: to be holy, to make holy, to dedicate, to show oneself holy, to make oneself holy, to be made holy. You do not have to guess at any of them; each is shown by its use. That is how to read a stem: start from the root's core meaning, ask what the stem typically does, and then check the verse and the lexicon to see what this stem does with this root.

Now the anchor. The WLC reads דַּבֵּר אֶל כָּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל (dabber el kol adat bene yisrael, speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel), then וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם (we-amarta alehem, and say to them), then the command and its reason: קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם (qedoshim tihyu ki qadosh ani YHWH elohekhem, holy you shall be, for holy am I, the LORD your God).

Take the verbs one at a time. דַּבֵּר (dabber) is a piel imperative, second person masculine singular, of דבר. וְאָמַרְתָּ (we-amarta) is the conjunction with a qal perfect second person masculine singular of אָמַר (amar, to say); lesson 5 will explain why a perfect with and can carry on a command, which is what it does here. תִּהְיוּ (tihyu) is a qal imperfect, second person masculine plural, of hayah, the verb of lesson 1. And notice that holy itself is not a verb in this verse at all. קְדֹשִׁים (qedoshim) and קָדוֹשׁ (qadosh) are adjectives from the root קדשׁ, plural for Israel and singular for God, each placed first in its clause for emphasis: holy you shall be, because holy am I.

The imperfect tihyu deserves a moment. The Hebrew imperfect is the normal way to give a command in the second person, especially in law, which is why it is rendered 'Be holy'. But it is also the form for future statements, and some readers hear both: you shall be holy, as a command, and you will be holy, as what God intends and will bring about. Leviticus itself holds the two together. The command to be holy in 19:2 sits a chapter away from 20:8, where God says אֲנִי יְהוָה מְקַדִּשְׁכֶם (ani YHWH meqaddishkhem, I am the LORD who sanctifies you), a piel participle with the suffix you. Israel is to be holy, Israel is to consecrate itself (hithpael, 20:7), and God is the one who makes Israel holy (piel, 20:8). The stems let the book say all three without strain, and Peter can quote the command in 1 Peter 1:16 to people whom he has just described as chosen and sanctified by the Spirit.

And so to the first verb. A preacher who has read that the piel is the intensive stem may tell you that dabber means speak with emphasis, or speak with authority, and that God was telling Moses to deliver this message with special force. That is a mistake, and section 4 explains why.

The older grammars called the piel the intensive stem, and that label is still printed in many beginners' books and some reference tools. Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, in the edition by Emil Kautzsch translated by A. E. Cowley (1910), described the piel's basic idea as intensifying or repeating the action of the qal, and it gave examples where that fits. The label came partly from the form: a doubled letter, it was reasoned, doubles the action. It also fits a number of real verbs. With the root שׁבר (sh-b-r), the qal means to break, as in Leviticus 26:13, where God says וָאֶשְׁבֹּר (wa'eshbor, and I broke) the bars of Israel's yoke, and the piel is used of thorough smashing, as when Moses shatters the tablets in Exodus 32:19, וַיְשַׁבֵּר (wayshabber, and he shattered). Defenders of the traditional description also point to piels that seem to mark many objects or repeated action, and some recent comparative work on the corresponding stem in Akkadian, notably N. J. C. Kouwenberg's study of gemination in the Akkadian verb (1997), has argued that plurality and intensity were part of the doubled stem's original function in the Semitic languages. On this view the intensive label is not a myth but a simplification of something real.

The case against the label is that, for most piel verbs, it does not describe what the stem actually does. Albrecht Goetze argued in 1942, in an article in the Journal of the American Oriental Society titled The So-called Intensive of the Semitic Languages, that the doubled stem in Akkadian is not basically intensive at all. Ernst Jenni's major study, Das hebräische Pi'el (1968), argued from the whole of the Hebrew evidence that the piel usually expresses bringing about a state: with a stative root, the piel is factitive, it makes something be what the qal says, as qiddash makes something holy, and כַּבֵּד (kabbed) in Exodus 20:12, 'Honor your father and mother', makes someone weighty, that is, honours them; with an action root, it often presents the result of the action rather than the action itself. Bruce Waltke and Michael O'Connor's An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (1990), probably the most used reference grammar in English-speaking seminaries, adopted a version of this account, and most modern grammars now teach the piel's main functions as factitive, resultative, denominative (making a verb from a noun) and, for some verbs, plural or repeated action, with intensity, if mentioned at all, as one possible nuance rather than the stem's meaning.

Both sides have their texts, and the honest summary is that the argument is about how best to describe the stem as a whole. Neither side thinks that every piel is stronger than its qal, and that is the point that matters for preaching. Look at our anchor. The verb דבר occurs in the WLC over a thousand times in the piel and only about forty times in the qal, almost all of those as a participle. Dibber is simply the ordinary Hebrew verb for speaking. Saul's 'Tell me' in 1 Samuel 15:16 is the same form as God's 'Speak' in Leviticus 19:2. Nobody thinks Saul was demanding intensely. The same is true of בִּקֵּשׁ (biqqesh, to seek), found almost only in the piel, as in Psalm 34:14, 'seek peace and pursue it', and of צִוָּה (tsivvah, he commanded), found only in the piel and its passive, the pual: there is no qal to be stronger than.

Even with שׁבר, where the intensive description looks most natural, it does not hold every time. In Psalm 46:9 the BSB says 'He breaks the bow', and the verb is again a piel, יְשַׁבֵּר (yeshabber). The translators did not feel any need to make it stronger than the qal, and neither should you. So here is the rule to keep. Never preach a piel as intensive on the strength of its label. If you believe a particular piel is stronger or more thorough than the qal of the same root, show it from the qal and piel uses of that root, and from the context. If you cannot, say what the lexicon says the piel means, and leave the intensity out.

The same caution applies, more gently, to the other stems. The hiphil is usually causative, and often beautifully so. In Exodus 3:12, God's sign to Moses comes בְּהוֹצִיאֲךָ אֶת הָעָם (behotsi'akha et ha'am, when you bring out the people), a hiphil infinitive of יָצָא (yatsa, to go out): to make the people go out. In Psalm 46:9 the LORD is מַשְׁבִּית מִלְחָמוֹת (mashbit milchamot, making wars cease), a hiphil participle of שָׁבַת (shavat, to cease, to rest). But in Genesis 22:3 Abraham וַיַּשְׁכֵּם (wayyashkem, rose early), a hiphil of a verb that occurs only in the hiphil, and nobody is caused to do anything. The hiphil of raphah in lesson 2 means to let go, which is causative only if you squint.

The niphal is usually passive or reflexive, as in נִתַּן (nittan, has been given) in Isaiah 9:6 and אֶקָּדֵשׁ (eqqadesh, I will show myself holy) in Leviticus 10:3, but some verbs are simply niphal, with an ordinary active meaning in English. The hithpael is usually reflexive, as in consecrate yourselves, but הִתְפַּלֵּל (hitpallel, to pray), a hithpael, is just the normal verb for praying, used of Abraham praying for Abimelech in Genesis 20:7. The passives, pual and hophal, are the most predictable: they make the piel and the hiphil passive. Exodus 21:12 says the murderer מוֹת יוּמָת (mot yumat), which the BSB renders 'must surely be put to death'; yumat is a hophal imperfect of מוּת (mut, to die), whose hiphil means to put to death, so the hophal means to be put to death. Lesson 6 will explain the mot in front.

So the stems are a map, and a good one, but the territory is the actual use of each verb. When a tool gives you a stem, use it to ask the right question. If it is a niphal, is something being done to the subject, or is the subject doing something to itself, or is this just how the verb is used? If it is a hiphil, is someone causing something, and who? If it is a piel, is there a qal of this root to compare with, and if so what is the difference in use? You will usually find the answer quickly, because Brown-Driver-Briggs and Gesenius, both free in Blue Letter Bible, divide their entries by stem and give examples under each.

There is one more benefit to knowing the stems. A great deal of the theology of the Old Testament is carried by stem changes of a single root: holiness that God has, holiness God gives, holiness his people are to pursue, holiness they are to show. Seeing the stems lets you watch an idea move between God and people inside a single family of words, and that is not over-reading. It is reading what is there.

Open your verb table. You already have a Stem column and, for the qal verbs, a Qal meaning column. Now add one more column, headed What the stem does. For every verb that is not qal, do three things on your phone.

First, open the lexicon entry and read the Qal block, if there is one, then the block for the stem your tool gave. Second, ask the questions from section 5: is something being done to the subject, is someone causing something, is the subject acting on itself, or is this simply the ordinary use of the verb? Third, write one word or short phrase in the new column: passive, causative, reflexive, makes it so, result, or ordinary use. If the root occurs only in this stem, as baqash and tsavah do in the piel and shakam does in the hiphil, write only in this stem.

Do not write intensive for any piel unless you can do what section 4 asks: find the qal of the same root and show from its uses and from your passage that the piel says something stronger. If you think you have found one, write the references you compared beside it, so that you can show your working if anyone asks.

Last, look for a root in your passage that appears in more than one stem, as קדשׁ does in Leviticus. If you find one, write two or three sentences about how the passage uses the change of stem. If you do not, choose any non-qal verb in your passage, search for its root in your tool, and find one verse where the same root appears in the qal. Copy the two verses side by side in your notebook and write one sentence on what the change of stem changes.