13
VERBS: PART 3
VERBAL SEMANTICS
13.1. We have already met some basic verbs in chapters 5 and 7, but we did not discuss any of the intricacies of the various semantic nuances communicated by verbs. The verb system in Greek is more complex than in English, so it is important to understand the various categories by which verbs are described. This chapter will help you develop a conceptual framework to understand verbs.
The material in this chapter is more detailed and technical than in other chapters, and you may not grasp the significance of all the content the first time through it. As you progress to later chapters on the verb you can return to this chapter for clarification or further study as needed. For now, your goal should be to grasp the framework of the verbal system. Do not be surprised if some of it seems a bit muddy (or even a bit obtuse) right now. It will become clearer as you press on into subsequent chapters.
The heart of the Greek language is the verb. Thus far we have not focused on verbs, though you have seen and read many of them. You actually know quite a bit about verbs and how they work already, much of which you have absorbed unconsciously as you have seen them in context with other forms we have studied. We will begin with a review of the basics of English verbs and then move to Greek verbs—which are much easier than English verbs. Though there may be more forms and seemingly more details due to the morphology of verbs (since Greek is an inflected language), that makes Greek verbs much more regular and explicit than English ones. English can be infuriating for non-native speakers to learn, due to all the exceptions we have in our language, especially for verbs.
13.2. Verbs may be described grammatically in several categories, some of which we have already studied, since they are also used with nouns, adjectives, or pronouns. These categories should be familiar to you (if not, review the discussion in earlier chapters):
Person: first (I, we), second (you), third (he, she, it, they)
Number: singular, plural
Verbs must agree with their subjects in person and number. You know this, but perhaps unconsciously, in that certain sentences sound right and others do not because you learned such principles by hearing correct English spoken rather than by learning a rule regarding grammatical agreement.
Correct: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set.”[1]
In this sentence the singular form of the verb “is” agrees with the singular subject in its clause, “it” and “what”; the plural verb “are” agrees with the plural subject “we.” To exchange the singular and plural forms destroys the grammatical agreement between subject and verb, as can be seen in the following example.
Incorrect: It are not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what are in us for the succor of those years wherein we is set.
13.3. English verbs do not usually change spelling to indicate a change in person or number. Singular or plural is marked in the subject of an English sentence, not in the verb in many cases. (The verb to be is unusual in this regard.) Notice that in the following sentences the verb does not change spelling even though the subject changes from singular to plural.
I studied Greek thoughtfully last night.
He studied Greek thoughtfully last night.
They studied Greek thoughtfully last night.
Some English verbs do add a suffix to indicate number, though this is restricted to third-person singular, in which an “s-form” is used for the singular.
I/we study Greek every Saturday.
She/he studies Greek every day.
They study Greek every morning.
Voice is another grammatical category we use to describe English verbs. In English there are two voices: active and passive. This is a description of the relation between the grammatical subject of a sentence and the situation referenced by the verb. If the subject is performing the action, we call it active voice: “Aiden hit the ball.” By contrast, if the action described by the verb is done, not by, but to the subject, we call it passive voice: “Aiden was hit by the ball.”
Mood (sometimes called mode or attitude) is said to describe the relationship between the statement and reality. That is not a particularly helpful definition, is it? Here is how one English grammar describes it; note especially the final sentence.
Mood . . . is that property of a verb which indicates how the verbal idea is to be regarded—whether as a statement of fact; a command; a supposition, a doubt, or impossibility. The three moods generally recognized are the indicative, the imperative, and the subjunctive. But neither in form nor in meaning are these three moods sharply distinguished from one another in modern English.[2]
The subjunctive is less common in English than it once was (we will talk more about it in chap. 28), so for now the difference between an indicative (an assertion, a statement of fact) and an imperative (a command) is adequate.
Indicative: Liam hit the ball.
Imperative: Hit the ball! (Or, since imperatives do not have subjects, add a vocative: Liam, hit the ball!)
13.4. Tense is “a grammatical category referring to the location of a situation in time.”[3] We usually think of tense as being composed of three categories: past, present, and future. Some English grammars, however, list only two (past and present). Other grammars have six tenses, and some twelve.[4] In addition to the basic three (which are sometimes called the simple tenses), the six-tense advocates add three more perfect tenses: present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect. Since Greek does not use these same tenses, we do not need to spend a lot of time here, and you could get by nicely by thinking only of the three simple tenses for our purposes. But here is an example of each in case you are interested. Each tense-form actually has more than one use in relation to time;[5] only the most common use of each tense is illustrated here.
Simple Tenses
| Present: He is living in the country. | He is living there presently. | ||
| Past: He lived in the country. | In the past he lived there, but may not be doing so presently. | ||
| Future: He will live in the country. | He will live there in the future. | ||
Perfect Tenses
Present perfect: He has lived in the country since 2003.
Past perfect: He had lived in the country when he was a child.
Future perfect: He will have lived in the country for ten years as of [some future date].
English also expresses what is called verbal aspect, although that terminology is not commonly used.[6] For example, what is the difference between these two statements?
I read Tolkien last week.
I was reading Tolkien last week.
The first sentence merely says that an event occurred last week. It does not tell us the nature of your reading other than that it happened. It views the action as a simple event. Linguists call this perfective aspect: action viewed as a whole.[7] The English phrasing in the first example does not require that you read the entire Tolkien corpus last week. (That is feasible if you are a fast reader, but you would get very little else done that week.) It might mean that, or it might mean that you read one of his many writings (perhaps The Children of Húron), or it might just mean that you read a few sentences from The Silmarillion.
We typically add an -ed to English verbs to indicate perfective aspect, though there are other ways to do it. In English, perfective aspect often refers to events in the past (“I studied,” “I ate”), but it can also be used for present time (“I study,” “I eat”).
The second statement, “I was reading Tolkien last week,” pictures the action of reading as an ongoing action that took place over a period of time. We still do not know how long you read or whether you finished. If you were reading The Lord of the Rings, you would have read for quite some time if you read all of it. But the same statement would be equally true if you read only the words “The Road goes ever on and on.”[8] The way the action is viewed in the second statement is what a linguist might call imperfective aspect: action viewed as a process. In English we typically use a helping verb and append -ing to the end of the verb to indicate this. In English, imperfective aspect is often used of events in the present (“I am reading,” “I am eating”), but it can also be used to refer to past time (“I was reading,” “I was eating”).
This difference between perfective (a simple event) and imperfective (a process) is what we mean by verbal aspect in English. Greek will be similar, but there are some significant differences in how the verb functions and what meanings it conveys.
13.5. The Greek verb is, in many ways, quite similar to English in that most of the grammatical categories summarized above still apply in Greek. Some of them are expanded in that they have more subcategories, but the basic concepts will be familiar.
Grammatical Agreement
13.6. Grammatical agreement in Greek is the same principle as in English: subject and verb must agree in person and number. Since Greek is an inflected language, this agreement is more evident than it is in English. Greek uses personal endings to indicate person and number, both of which must match between subject and verb. (Remember that English verbs usually do not change spelling to reflect grammatical person.) These endings are suffixes that are appended to every verb, much like the case endings that are added to nouns and adjectives. For each verb form there are six endings: first-, second-, and third-person singular, and first-, second-, and third-person plural. (There were eight case/number endings for nouns.) Here is a typical set of verb forms for the verb βάλλω, “I throw.” You will recognize them as the same forms that you learned in chapter 5 when you first met present active indicative verbs.
| 1S | βάλλω | I am throwing | |
| 2S | βάλλεις | You are throwing | |
| 3S | βάλλει | He/she/it is throwing | |
| 1P | βάλλομεν | We are throwing | |
| 2P | βάλλετε | You are throwing | |
| 3P | βάλλουσι(ν) | They are throwing |
The stem of this word is βαλλ-. In each case a suffix is added to indicate the subject, whether first, second, or third person, singular or plural.[9] In other words, every Greek verb has a built-in, default subject. This is not like English. If I say just “throw” in English, I have no idea who is doing the throwing.[10] I must have an explicit word for the subject—for example, “I throw” or “they throw.” In Greek we can have a complete sentence with just one word, since all verbs have this built-in subject. Thus βάλλει does not mean just “throw,” but “he (or she or it) is throwing.”
Tense-Form
13.7. In English, tense refers primarily to the time when the action of the verb takes place[11] and secondarily to the verb’s aspect. If you are studying Greek right now, then the verb is in the present tense (“I am studying”). If you are planning on doing it tomorrow, then the verb is in the future tense (“I will study”). If you did it last night (I am sure that you did!), then the verb is in the past tense (“I studied”). In other words, in English the terms tense and time largely refer to the same thing: when the subject of the verb performs the action.[12]
The traditional term tense has a somewhat different meaning in Greek than it does in English. When we use tense in Greek, our natural inclination is to think “time,” because that is the primary meaning of tense in English. Since there is some pragmatic overlap (as you will soon see), you might be tempted to use tense and time synonymously in Greek as well, but it is more complex than that.
In Greek a verb tense-form expresses primarily the grammatical meaning of aspect; it is not synonymous with nor primarily focused on where a situation is located in time. The aorist tense-form, to pick just one form as an example, refers to the way the verb is formed/spelled (to be technical, we could say that it refers to the morphology): the grammatical form that identifies perfective aspect. In itself it does not tell us when an event occurred. An aorist form usually refers to a situation located in the past but may sometimes be used in reference to the present or the future, or to a situation for which time is not relevant. The same principle is basically true of the other tense-forms as well: present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect.[13] Each has common uses in reference to the location of a situation in time as well as some less common ones.
13.8. The complicating factor is that traditional Greek grammars have used the same name for the form of the Greek verb as English does for the time of the action: tense. In this grammar the term tense-form refers only to the morphological form of the verb. For example, present tense-form refers to a specific morphological pattern, not to the fact that the form is often used to refer to events located in present time. Tense-form in and of itself primarily communicates aspect. Of course, in a specific context verbs also have some temporal reference, though that is not the primary point. It might be better if we could jettison the term tense altogether and just refer to the form of the verb, but the tradition is so well entrenched that we are probably stuck with a term that is not ideal.[14] Do not confuse tense (as it is used in Greek) with time (tense in English). This grammar uses the hyphenated term tense-form to distinguish the Greek category from English tense yet still maintain some connection with traditional terminology.[15]
A logical question to ask next would be: if the Greek tense-form (the morphological form of the verb) does not have an invariable, fixed time reference in and of itself, then how do we know for sure to what time a writer refers? There are common patterns, but they cannot be automatically assumed to be the situation every time; we need to verify the time reference from the context. Greek uses various temporal indicators in the context, which, along with other contextual factors (e.g., genre), help us verify the writer’s intended time reference.[16] That may seem subjective to us, but it is only because “English verbs, whatever else they do, always seem to indicate time reference, [but] a rather large number of languages around the world manage quite nicely, thank you, with verbs that do not by themselves have that reference.”[17]
Aspect
13.9. Because aspect in English is not as prominent as it is in Greek, it may seem to be more complicated than it really is. Aspect is the category that tells us how the author portrays the situation (as a whole, as a process, or as a state).[18] It is a subjective category in that a writer may chose to portray the same situation either as a complete event or as a process or as a state. The examples used earlier show you that English can also make similar distinctions.
I read Tolkien last week.
I was reading Tolkien last week.
Greek can describe the same situation from different viewpoints. In Mark 12:41 this statement is made about Jesus: ἐθεώρει πῶς ὁ ὄχλος βάλλει χαλκὸν εἰς τὸ γαζοφυλάκιον (“He was observing how the crowd was throwing money into the offering box”). This statement uses imperfective aspect to describe the actions of the crowd in terms of a process. Yet a few verses later (v. 44), referring to the same event, we are told that πάντες ἐκ τοῦ περισσεύοντος αὐτοῖς ἔβαλον (“All out of their abundance threw [money into the offering box]”). The second statement uses perfective aspect, which views the action as a whole. We would be foolish to insist that two different kinds of actions are being described just because one verse uses βάλλει and the other ἔβαλον.[19]
13.10. The category of aspect is expressed in Greek by the tense-form of the verb. How the verb is spelled (stem, endings, etc.) tells us how the writer has chosen to portray/view the situation. In Greek there are three aspects.
Imperfective aspect: verbs that describe a situation as a process
Perfective aspect: verbs that describe a situation as a complete event, without commenting on whether or not it is a process[20]
Stative aspect: verbs that describe a state of affairs (a condition) that exists, with no reference to any progress, and that involves no change
If we use this third aspect in a sentence similar to the examples given above, we might say: “I have read Tolkien.”[21] The point of this statement is not the action that took place, and not that it was either a process or a complete event, but the state of affairs that exists: I have read, and therefore I know something. The fact that you spent time doing something (reading) at some particular location in time (presumably in the past) is not particularly relevant to the statement (though sometimes it can be inferred from the context).[22] The focus is on the “read state” in which you now find yourself. English has no exact equivalent to stative aspect. It will often be communicated as a simple present tense in English (“I am read” in the sense that “I know”) or sometimes as an English perfect (“I have read”). A biblical example is Jesus’ statement from the cross: τετέλεσται, “It is finished” (John 19:30). This cry declared that his work on the cross was now in a state of completion.[23] Although there certainly was a preceding event that brought about this state, that is not the writer’s focus in this statement. You will not encounter stative aspect verbs until a later chapter. We will talk more about them then.
13.11. The three aspects that we have just described can be identified by the verb forms that are used. The following table lists the tense-forms with their aspects.[24] The aspect of a tense-form does not change. That is, aorist forms always express perfective aspect, present forms always express imperfective aspect, and so on. (That does not mean that they will always be expressed the same way in English or that other contextual factors may not affect the meaning; we will say more about these differences later.)
| Perfective aspect | aorist tense-form | |||
| Imperfective aspect | present and imperfect tense-forms | |||
| Stative aspect | perfect and pluperfect tense-forms |
Here is an illustration of the three aspects using two words that are basically synonymous (τελέω and τελειόω); all three refer to the cross.
Luke 12:50, I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed! (aorist tense-form = perfective aspect)
Luke 13:32, Go tell that fox, “I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.” (present tense-form = imperfective aspect)
John 19:30, When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (perfect tense-form = stative aspect)
Note that you cannot distinguish these aspects in English. That is why you are learning Greek.
There are some general patterns that will facilitate our beginning efforts at understanding the meaning of verbs. We will use a common English equivalent for each verb form in the paradigm charts. This will be an expression that often works in English, but you must realize that there are many variations that may also be legitimate. The common equivalents are only for pedagogical purposes as we are learning verbs and are not absolutes that must be used every time in every context.
Aktionsart
13.12. In Greek, aspect must be distinguished from another category called Aktionsart. Both of these categories relate to the type of action that is involved. Aktionsart is a more objective statement of the actual nature of the action/situation. This is based not on the tense-form of the verb (the tense-form specifies aspect) but on a combination of lexis (what the word means) and context. Though the terminology is not always used, and though the meaning is often attributed (incorrectly) to the tense rather than lexis and context, this is what many intermediate and advanced Greek grammars and some commentaries are discussing when they talk about such categories as iterative, customary, tendential, gnomic, and so on. There is not much discussion of Aktionsart in this textbook; that is left for more advanced study at a later time. You should, however, be aware that it is a valid category and that it is neither synonymous with aspect nor based on the tense-form of the verb.
Voice
13.13. The grammatical category of voice in Greek refers to the same basic concept as in English: the relation between the subject and the verb. Greek, however, describes this relationship somewhat differently and introduces a third category that is not present in English.
The Greek voice system consists primarily of contrasting situation-focused and subject-focused verbs (see fig. 13.1). The first of these, situation-focused verbs, refers to verbs that are in the active voice. The primary focus of these verbs is on that which is described by the verb itself. When we say that these verbs are “active,” we mean that the subject performs or causes the action, or, in the case of a state, the subject is the focus of the state. Although such verbs obviously include reference to a subject,[25] no particular emphasis on that subject is intended by the voice of the verb.
The second category of voice includes verbs that are subject-focused.[26] This category draws particular attention to the role/relationship of the subject in the situation.[27] Verbs that are subject-focused shift attention from the situation itself to the role of the subject. “Its specific feature is the affectedness of the subject of the verb in, or by, the event denoted by the verb.”[28]
In the subject-focused category, there is a further choice between passive voice, in which the subject receives the action, and middle voice, in which the subject performs the action but with a self-interest nuance. In both these situations the speaker/writer deliberately chooses to formulate the statement to focus attention on the subject in a way that a situation-focused, active-voice verb does not.
Figure 13.1. Voice Morphology
13.14. As you will discover in the next few chapters, there are usually two basic sets of forms: one set for active and another for middle or passive.[29] The middle forms can function as either middle or passive. This dual-purpose form usually functions as a middle but may function as a passive if the context indicates that meaning.[30]
When we say that a form functions actively, we mean that the subject is performing the action described in the verb and that the focus is on the action (e.g., “I hit the ball”). When we refer instead to a middle form, we mean that the subject is performing the action described in the verb but that the focus is on the subject rather than on the action itself (e.g., “I hit the ball”).[31] When we describe the form as passive, we mean that the subject is receiving the action described by the verb and that this action is performed by someone other than the subject (e.g., “I was hit by the ball”).
Mood
13.15. In Greek, mood is defined the same as in English: a grammatical category that describes how the verb is to be viewed in relationship to reality. Greek, however, has categories of mood not used in English.
Initially we will study the indicative mood. Verbs in this mood make an assertion about reality—they portray a situation as “real.” Such verbs might be used in a statement (“I love learning Greek”) or a question (“Do you enjoy learning Greek as much as I do?”) and may relate to an action (“I studied Greek for three hours last night”) or a state (“I understand Greek”). This is by far the most common mood in both English and Greek.
The other moods that we will meet later are as follows. The subjunctive is the mood of potential. That is, it is not “real,” but it could be—for example, “If you would study Greek with me, I’d buy supper.” You are not studying with me now, but you could. The potential situation is only conceptualized in the speaker’s (or writer’s) mind. The imperative is the mood of command—for example, “Study your Greek tonight!” This assumes you are not studying now, but you know what I want you to do tonight. The optative is the mood of wish—for example, “May you study Greek all night.” (This, of course, is a prayer of blessing.) We will talk more about mood when we get to chapters 28 and 29, which deal with these three additional moods.
Verb Morphology
13.16. Verbs consist of two major parts: stem and ending.[32] The ending, in turn, is typically composed of two parts: connecting vowel and personal ending.[33]
| Stem | Ending | |
| Connecting Vowel | Personal Ending | |
The verb stem carries the lexis—the basic meaning of the word. (Remember that nouns have stems also.) The ending is the suffix added to the stem to indicate person and number. The ending consists of the technical personal ending that marks person and number as well as the connecting vowel—which serves a phonological, morphological function: it makes it easier to pronounce the stem and ending together.
For example, in the word βάλλομεν (see fig. 13.2), the stem is βαλλ- (it tells you that this word refers to the action of throwing), the connecting vowel is omicron (which makes it easier to pronounce), and the personal ending is -μεν (which tells you who is doing the action: first-person plural, “we”).
Figure 13.2
Parsing
13.17. Parsing a verb means to describe all its grammatical pieces that collectively tell us what a particular grammatical form means. The pattern used in this textbook to parse finite[34] verbs is as follows:[35]
person, number, tense-form, voice, mood ► lexical form, gloss
For example, λύει = third singular present active indicative ► λύω, “I loose.” In abbreviated form: 3rd sg. pres. act. ind. ► λύω, “I loose.”
The symbol ► means “from” and identifies the lexical form of the verb being parsed.[36] The gloss (= a common English equivalent) represents the lexical form, not the inflected form (for which you need context to represent accurately).
Parsing Abbreviations
| Category | Abbreviation | Meaning | Short Form |
| Person | 1st 2nd 3rd | first, second, third | 1 2 3 |
| Number | sg. pl. | singular, plural | S P |
| Tense-Form | aor. pres. impf. pf. plpf. fut.a | aorist, present, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, future | A P I R L F |
| Voice | act. mid. pass. | active, middle, passive | A M P |
| Mood | ind. impv. subj. opt. inf. ptc. | indicative, imperative, subjunctive, optative, infinitive, participle | I M S O N P |
| Gender | masc. fem. neut. | masculine, feminine, neuter | M F N |
| Case | nom. gen. dat. acc. voc. | nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative | N G D A V |
a A superscript 1 or 2 before a tense-form means “first” or “second” (e.g., 1aor. = first aorist; 2R = second perfect).
Non-finite verbal forms are parsed in a slightly different pattern since the grammatical information they contain differs from finite forms. The infinitive displays only tense-form, voice, and “mood”[37] (e.g., λύειν = present active infinitive ► λύω, I loose; in short form: PAN ► λύω, I loose). The participle includes tense-form, voice, “mood,” gender, number, and case (e.g., λύων = present active participle masculine singular nominative ► λύω, I loose; in short form: PAPMSN ► λύω, I loose). The last two rows of this chart—gender and case—are used only for participles.
The short-form system[38] shown in the last column is a lot faster to write and is much more compact, but if you use this system, the letters must always be in exactly the same order as the formula above. That is necessary since several of these abbreviations mean different things in different positions. For example, “P” can mean either plural (if it is in second position), or present (if it is in third position), or passive (if it is in fourth position), or participle (if it is in fifth position).
Optional Reading Passage: Genesis 1:1–10
13.18. For words that are glossed, the gloss appears with only the first occurrence of the word and is not repeated later in the passage.
Creation
1Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν. 2ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν (was) ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος,a καὶ σκότος ἐπάνω τῆς ἀβύσσου, καὶ πνεῦμα θεοῦ ἐπεφέρετο (was moving/rushing) ἐπάνω τοῦ ὕδατος. 3καὶ εἶπεν (said) ὁ θεός, Γενηθήτω (let there be!) φῶς. καὶ ἐγένετο (came to be) φῶς. 4καὶ εἶδεν (saw) ὁ θεὸς τὸ φῶς ὅτι καλόν. καὶ διεχώρισεν (divided) ὁ θεὸς ἀνὰ μέσονb τοῦ φωτὸς καὶ ἀνὰ μέσονb τοῦ σκότους. 5καὶ ἐκάλεσεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ φῶς ἡμέραν καὶ τὸ σκότος ἐκάλεσεν νύκτα. καὶ ἐγένετο ἑσπέρα καὶ ἐγένετο πρωί, ἡμέρα μία.
6Καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός, Γενηθήτω στερέωμα ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ ὕδατος καὶ ἔστω διαχωρίζονc ἀνὰ μέσονb ὕδατος καὶ ὕδατος. καὶ ἐγένετο οὕτως. 7καὶ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ στερέωμα, καὶ διεχώρισεν ὁ θεὸς ἀνὰ μέσονb τοῦ ὕδατος, ὃ ἦν ὑποκάτω τοῦ στερεώματος, καὶ ἀνὰ μέσονb τοῦ ὕδατος τοῦ ἐπάνω τοῦ στερεώματος.d 8καὶ ἐκάλεσεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ στερέωμα οὐρανόν. καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς ὅτι καλόν. καὶ ἐγένετο ἑσπέρα καὶ ἐγένετο πρωί, ἡμέρα δευτέρα.
9Καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός, Συναχθήτω (let it be gathered together!) τὸ ὕδωρ τὸ ὑποκάτω τοῦ οὐρανοῦe εἰς συναγωγὴν μίαν, καὶ ὀφθήτω (let it appear!) ἡ ξηρά. καὶ ἐγένετο οὕτως. καὶ συνήχθη (it was gathered together) τὸ ὕδωρ τὸ ὑποκάτω τοῦ οὐρανοῦe εἰς τὰς συναγωγὰς αὐτῶν, καὶ ὤφθη (it appeared) ἡ ξηρά. 10καὶ ἐκάλεσεν ὁ θεὸς τὴν ξηρὰν γῆν καὶ τὰ συστήματαf τῶν ὑδάτων ἐκάλεσεν θαλάσσας. καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς ὅτι καλόν.
a ἀκατασκεύαστος, ον (a two-form adjective, not found in NT and only here in LXX), “unformed, incomplete” (LEH, 20)
b ἀνὰ μέσον, “between”
c ἔστω διαχωρίζον, “let it divide!”
d τοῦ ἐπάνω τοῦ στερεώματος, “which was above the firmament”
e τὸ ὑποκάτω τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, “which was under the sky”
f σύστημα, ατος, τό, “a whole that has accumulated” (MLS, 542), “gathering”
13.19. There is no vocabulary for chapter 13.
13.20. Key Things to Know for Chapter 13
The key to this chapter is understanding the various grammatical categories that are discussed.
At this point you should understand very well all the terms in the section “English Grammar.”