Harkening back to the Pixar classic Finding Nemo, imagine for a moment that you are Marlin and Dory watching the East Australian Current (EAC) go by. Fish and sea turtles and a variety of sea creatures go rocketing past. As you look more closely you realize that most of them aren’t even swimming but are being carried effortlessly forward by the current. Some are having a blast near the edges, spinning and flipping in the eddies, but others are confused and fearful as they are buffeted about by powers they cannot understand. The EAC isn’t fiction: in reality the EAC is really big, about 62 miles across and almost a mile deep, so most of the sea creatures in it are just drifting calmly in the center, so accustomed to the current that they don’t even realize they are moving at all. However, from your tentative perch at the edge you can see where each one is going and where they have been. Their motions and trajectories make sense because you can perceive the current surrounding them. Is it safe? Will I get to where I want to go? Before you take the plunge and jump in you watch and wait to choose just the right moment. Sploosh, you jump in to go find Nemo and save him.
God sits perched outside of time. He created time just like he created the other three dimensions. In fact, in modern physics we learn that time is just another physical dimension. Perhaps God perceives the flow of time like this current. He sees the joy of some, and the confusion and fear of others who are carried along in its flow. He knows our trajectories, seeing clearly the wild eddies in our paths: the cancer diagnosis, the fall and the broken femur, or the handsome kindly stranger who “randomly” sits down next to us on the city bus, and ends up being our spouse. Our paths are changed forever. None of it surprises Him. Of course, the analogy falls way short. God does not just see and know our trajectories; he is intimately involved in creating them. Perhaps he is more like the author who writes the story, or the painter who paints the mural, or the weaver who makes the tapestry, with each of us a single string.
But how does such a being communicate with us? How does an eternal being reveal to us anything of his nature and essence? What would a language look like if your reference frame did not experience time as we know it?
One of the first things you notice as a student of Hebrew is that it has a bunch of tenses to learn with funny names to be memorized:
Just like in English there is a simple active conjugation (“Qal” – I killed a man) and a passive verb conjugation (“Niphal”– A man was killed). Then Hebrew has some new forms to express intensive action (“Piel” – I massacred a man) and causative action (“Hiphal” – I purposely murdered the man). And all the combinations of these shown in the table. In Hebrew the verbs are made from 3 consonants, called the root. The vowels vary based upon the conjugation. These funny names are actually useful, because the vowel pattern in the name of the conjugation tells you the vowel pattern of verbs expressed in that conjugation. Once you learn the names of the conjugations you have a good clue as to which conjugation you are looking at just from the vowel pattern of the verb. Next a Hebrew student learns that there are perfect forms for punctiliar, one time, actions (I killed the man) and imperfect forms that express ongoing incomplete actions (I am killing the man – say you are slowly poisoning him) .
Pretty soon it dawns on you that something is missing. Past, present and future tenses!! There is no simple verb form to designate in Hebrew whether I killed the man yesterday, I kill the man today or I will kill the man tomorrow. Notice that in English we add an “ed” to most verbs to make them past tense and we add the helping verb “will” to express the future. In Greek they have an aorist tense for past punctiliar actions and add a sigma before the personal endings of most verbs to make them future tense. But in Hebrew you get no help about the time in which things happen. You can’t tell the tense from the verb form, you must deduce the tense from context. What a curious language!
In Hebrew God has created a language that intrinsically expresses the concept of timelessness.
This lack of tense is perfect for expressing God’s name: יהוה (called the tetragrammaton and sometimes transliterated “Yahweh” in English texts). There is truly power in this ambiguity in Hebrew. First let me give one potential translation of its meaning: היה (Hi yah) is the verb that means “to be” or “to exist”. Adding a leading yod י normally indicate a 3rd person masculine imperfect form. The addition of a waw ו can stand for a u class vowel (and then it is called a Shureq). This would make God’s name a Pual form (an intensive passive form). So one possible translation is: “He intensively is existing” / “He intensively was existing” / “He intensively will be existing”.
In some sense it means all three of these simultaneously.
Listen to how Jesus expresses his name to John in Revelation 1:8 “I am the alpha and the omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, who was and who is coming, the almighty.”
Expressly writing out “I am…who is, who was and who is coming” in Greek is an attempt to express the fullness of the tense ambiguity in Hebrew. Furthermore, Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. This idiom expresses that the Lord is the entire alphabet (not just the start and end!). It is an attempt to make clear the concept of always being present.
In Hebrew the first and last letters are Alef א and Taw ת . One might rightly ask, is this a significant title for God in Hebrew too?
This combination את is ubiquitous in Hebrew. It is called the “direct object marker” and it sits untranslated in most sentences connected to the direct object. You might say that Jesus is saying that his name is sitting as the focal point of all of Hebrew! However, there are some places where perhaps we should translate it:
Zech12:10b “And they will look upon את-me whom they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.”
Ecc 3:11a את-Everything He has made beautiful in its time, Also את-eternity He has placed in their hearts, Without which, no not one can find את-the work that God does from beginning to end.
Oh, by the way, not having past, present and future tenses can make understanding and translating Hebrew in the Bible a real challenge.
Atheist to Elder 
One thought on “Hebrew Tenses: Language of an Eternal Being – no Past, Present and Future”