Remembering Verbs

I forget things.  Sometimes I forget important things.  So I need to be reminded, my memory refreshed from time to time.  I have mentioned that I am working through Psalm 119.  Part of that exercise is forcing me to knock a significant amount of rust off of my Hebrew.  Really significant.  But one of the benefits has been a renewed focus on verbs in the text.

In the text, in both Greek and Hebrew, verbs carry a lot of the weight.  The tense, mood, and voice are helpful in making good observations.  One can do much of that in the translations, doing it in the languages speeds up and enriches one's observations.

This evening I was working on the 5 Psalms we are studying in the Tuesday morning group.  I spent most of the time identifying the verbs and parsing them.  Frankly, I am so rusty in Hebrew I leaned heavily on my Bible program, Logos, to parse the verbs.  Working through that exercise in Psalm 119 and the 5 I worked on this evening has helped.  I am slowly beginning to begin to remember.

One of the tenets I share in the workshops and when I work with men one on one in Bible study is the need to slow down and see, observe.  Working through these Psalms in this way has done that for me.  Additionally, I have seen connections and threads I would have probably otherwise missed.

You do not have to have a formal education to do this in either Greek or Hebrew.  There are abundant resources that will allow you to not only identify the verbs in either language but also parse them and learn what that tells you about their function.  I did that with books before seminary.  Now with the Bible programs and websites that are available you can do what took me several books to dig out, with a few clicks, and in some cases just by hovering your mouse over a word.

That allows you a lot of power in your Bible study.