An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

a happening, but in (9) it denotes an achieved state. As (5) and (6) are the reflexive
counterparts of (1), so (9) is the reflexive counterpart of (7).
k In sentence 10 Sarah causes the airplane to participate in the act of flying. Here the
object of the “causing” is the subject of the flying, as in (7), but unlike (7) the second
subject has a more agential role. This notion of causing a (grammatical) object to
participate as a subject in the action is represented by the Hiphil.
l In sentence 11 both causative and reflexive notions are implicit. The full sense is
‘Sarah caused herself to fly higher in the airplane.’ Such an “internal” Hiphil would
be distinguished from other Hiphils by being a one-place predicate.
m In sentence 12 we have the passive counterpart of (10). One syntactical equivalent
might be ‘The highjackers made Sarah fly the plane higher.’ In contrast to (8), where
‘Sarah’ undergoes both the “causing” and the verbal idea, here she is both passive and
active—passive with reference to the “causing” (‘is made’) and active with reference
to the verb (‘she flies the plane higher’). Hophal conveys this passive counterpart to
Hiphil.
n We can now return to the chart presented earlier and define both axes with reference
to voice. The vertical axis represents the voice of the primary subject, the horizontal
axis represents the voice of the secondary subject, the object of the “causing”
predicate, if there is one. On the horizontal axis I represents the absence of a causation
notion;[Page 358] II, causation with a passive state (‘made flown’); III, causation
with active participation (‘made to fly’). The numbers in parentheses indicate the
sentence that illustrates the basic relations.
Voice of
Undersubject
I. Ø II. Passive III. Active
Voice
of
Primary
Subject
1. Active Qal (1–2) Piel (7) Hiphil (10)
II.
Middle/Passive
(Subject < object
of transitive verb)
III. Reflexive
Niphal (3–4) Pual (8) Hophal (12)
Niphal (5–6) Hithpael (9) Hiphil (“internal,”
(Double-status)
11)
o Thus the Hebrew stem system functions to connote Aktionsarten (voice, causation,
transitivity; 20.2). The various interrelated inflections serve to represent varying
categories of relationships between the subject and the predicate(s). The system is far
more complex than the one familiar to us in English. In Hebrew, unlike English, the
inflected forms of the verb indicate whether a non-agential subject of an intransitive