The causative sense of hif'il is real, it is systematic, and it covers a large slice of the binyan's most useful members. It is also not a rule you can run forwards. This page does the half that works: what the relation is, how to recognise it, and what the sentence looks like on both sides of it. The other half — the very frequent hif'il verbs that mean nothing causative at all — is a page of its own, and the two are meant to be read together.
What "causative" actually changes
A causative is not a shade of meaning. It is a change to the sentence's cast. The hif'il adds one participant at the top — the causer — and everything else shifts down a place: the pa'al's subject becomes the hif'il's direct object, marked with את if it is definite.
הקטן כבר אוכל לבד.
hakatán kvar okhél levád
The little one already eats by himself.
הרופאה אמרה להאכיל אותו כל שלוש שעות.
harof'á amrá leha'akhíl otó kol shalósh sha'ót
The doctor said to feed him every three hours. (f. doctor)
המחירים עלו שוב בינואר.
hamekhirím alú shuv beyánuar
Prices went up again in January.
העלו את המחירים בעשרה אחוז בלי להודיע לאף אחד.
he'elú et hamekhirím ba'asará akhúz bli lehodía le'áf ekhád
They put prices up ten per cent without telling anyone.
Between the first two sentences the eater has moved from subject to object; between the third and fourth, the prices have. That is the whole mechanism, and it is the thing to check when you suspect a causative: did the old subject become the new object?
The pairs that work
| Root | Base verb | hif'il | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| א־כ־ל | אָכַל akhál ate | הֶאֱכִיל he'ekhíl fed | literal |
| ל־ב־שׁ | לָבַשׁ lavásh wore | הִלְבִּישׁ hilbísh dressed someone | literal |
| י־שׁ־ב | יָשַׁב yasháv sat | הוֹשִׁיב hoshív seated someone | literal |
| י־ר־ד | יָרַד yarád went down | הוֹרִיד horíd took down; downloaded | literal + lexicalised |
| י־צ־א | יָצָא yatsá went out | הוֹצִיא hotsí took out; spent (money) | literal + lexicalised |
| ע־ל־ה | עָלָה alá rose; cost | הֶעֱלָה he'elá raised; uploaded | literal + lexicalised |
| כ־נ־ס | נִכְנַס nikhnás went in (nif'al) | הִכְנִיס hikhnís put in, brought in | literal |
| ר־ד־ם | נִרְדַּם nirdám fell asleep (nif'al) | הִרְדִּים hirdím put to sleep; anaesthetised | literal + lexicalised |
| ז־כ־ר | זָכַר zakhár remembered | הִזְכִּיר hizkír reminded | literal |
| ר־א־ה | רָאָה ra'á saw | הֶרְאָה her'á showed | literal |
| י־ד־ע | יָדַע yadá knew | הוֹדִיעַ hodía informed | lexicalised |
Two things about that table. The base verb is not always a pa'al — כ־נ־ס and ר־ד־ם have no living pa'al, and their hif'il pairs with a nif'al instead: נכנס / הכניס, נרדם / הרדים. And "lexicalised" in the last column means the causative reading is still visible but the verb has acquired its own life: הוריד really is "make go down", and it is also simply the word for downloading a file. "Show" is "cause to see", "inform" is "cause to know" — but nobody chooses הודיע by computing it.
תזכיר לי להתקשר אליהם מחר בבוקר.
tazkír li lehitkashér aleihém makhár babóker
Remind me to call them tomorrow morning. (to a man)
הרדמתי אותה סוף סוף, אל תדבר בקול רם.
hirdámti otá sof sof, al tedabér bekól ram
I finally got her to sleep — keep your voice down. (to a man)
הוא הראה לי את התמונות מהטיול.
hu her'á li et hatmunót mehatiyúl
He showed me the photos from the trip.
תלבישי אותה משהו חם, בחוץ קר.
talbíshi otá máshehu kham, bakhúts kar
Put something warm on her, it's cold out. (to a woman)
אל תכניס את הכלב לסלון, בבקשה.
al takhnís et hakélev lasalón, bevakashá
Don't let the dog into the living room, please. (to a man)
Why you still cannot build one
Here the page has to be careful, because this is where references overreach in both directions.
What is documented. Bolozky (2007) finds hif'il's position to be register-conditioned: it remains the preferred causative pattern in literary Hebrew, while colloquial Hebrew has largely handed agentive verbs, causatives among them, to pi'el. Alongside that, hif'il keeps live coining niches — the inchoatives and the consonant-cluster loans set out on what each binyan means. So hif'il is register-restricted, not closed. A dictionary bears the same thing out from the other end. ויקימילון marks both הִמְחִיז "dramatise" and הִפְנִים "internalise" עברית חדשה, and derives the second straight from the noun — גזירת פועל מן פְּנִים; the first is built the same way on מַחֲזֶה "a play", whose מ has been reanalysed as a root letter (Pealim files הִמְחִיז under מ־ח־ז). Two nouns, two new verbs, both landing in hif'il.
What is not. You will see percentages quoted for how often speakers choose hif'il over pi'el for a novel causative. The figures reported from Bolozky's elicitation work differ substantially between publications, so this page states the direction of the finding and prints no number.
What follows for you. The relation runs backwards, as a way of reading a verb you have met — meet הִשְׁכִּיב and you can reasonably guess "lay someone down" from שָׁכַב. It does not run forwards. There is no procedure that takes an arbitrary pa'al verb and yields the hif'il that means "make someone do it", because for most roots that hif'il either does not exist or means something else entirely.
The causative you can always build: גרם ל־
Modern Hebrew's general-purpose causative is periphrastic, and unlike the binyan it works on every verb in the language.
- גָּרַם ל־
- infinitive — "cause to", neutral, and the workhorse. Note the ל־: גרם לי לחשוב, גרם לה לבכות.
- הִכְרִיחַ את
- ל־ + infinitive — "force, compel". Stronger, and the person is a direct object here, not a ל־.
- הִצְלִיחַ לְשַׁכְנֵעַ, שִׁכְנֵעַ את — persuasion rather than causation, when that is what you mean.
זה גרם לי לחשוב שוב על כל העניין.
ze garám li lakhshóv shuv al kol ha'inyán
It made me think the whole thing over again.
הכריחו אותי לחתום על זה לפני שקראתי.
hikhríkhu otí lakhtóm al ze lifnéi shekaráti
They made me sign it before I'd read it.
When a hif'il partner exists, Israelis use it — הרדמתי אותה, not גרמתי לה להירדם. When it does not, גרם ל־ is not a fallback or a clumsy workaround; it is the ordinary way to say it.
Common Mistakes
1. Coining a hif'il because English says "make someone X". The slot is either occupied or empty, and neither outcome is what you built.
❌ אחותי ניסתה להלמיד אותי לנהוג
Incorrect — there is no hif'il of ל־מ־ד. 'Teach' is the pi'el לימד: אחותי ניסתה ללמד אותי לנהוג. Where a causative hif'il does not exist, the language uses another binyan or גרם ל־ — it does not let you build one.
✅ אחותי לימדה אותי לנהוג בקיץ שעבר.
akhotí limdá otí linhóg bakáyits she'avár
My sister taught me to drive last summer.
2. Giving the base verb the causative's object. ישב, עלה, נכנס and נרדם take no direct object — that is precisely why a separate hif'il exists.
❌ אמא ישבה את הילדים ליד השולחן
Incorrect — ישב means 'sat' and has no room for an object. Seating someone is the hif'il: אמא הושיבה את הילדים ליד השולחן.
✅ אמא הושיבה את הילדים ליד השולחן והביאה צלחות.
íma hoshíva et hayeladím leyád hashulkhán veheví'a tsalakhót
Mum sat the kids down at the table and brought plates.
3. גרם with את. English "made me think" has a direct object; Hebrew's גרם governs ל־.
❌ הסרט הזה גרם אותי לבכות
Incorrect — גרם takes ל־ for the person: הסרט הזה גרם לי לבכות. את never appears after גרם. הכריח is the one that takes a direct object: הכריחו אותי.
4. Using את for the person after הודיע. The causative here is "cause to know", but the person told is still a ל־.
❌ הודעתי אותו על השינוי בלוח הזמנים
Incorrect — הודיע takes ל־ for the person and על or ש־ for the news: הודעתי לו על השינוי בלוח הזמנים.
✅ הודעתי לו על השינוי בלוח הזמנים רק אתמול.
hodáti lo al hashinúy belúakh hazmaním rak etmól
I only told him about the schedule change yesterday.
Key Takeaways
- The causative relation is a change of argument structure, not a shade of meaning: hif'il adds a causer and demotes the old subject to a direct object with את.
- It is genuine and productive-looking across a large set — האכיל, הלביש, הושיב, הוריד, הוציא, העלה, הכניס, הרדים, הזכיר, הראה, הודיע.
- The base verb is not always a pa'al: כ־נ־ס and ר־ד־ם have no living pa'al and pair their hif'il with a nif'al (נכנס / הכניס, נרדם / הרדים).
- Several of these are lexicalised — הוריד is also "download", העלה is also "upload", הודיע is simply "inform".
- Read the relation backwards, never forwards. It helps you decode a hif'il you have met; it will not let you build one you have not.
- Bolozky (2007): hif'il's retreat is register-conditioned — still the literary causative, with pi'el taking over colloquially — and hif'il keeps live coining niches, with הִמְחִיז and הִפְנִים marked עברית חדשה by ויקימילון. Not closed. No percentage is quoted here because the published figures disagree.
- The general-purpose causative is periphrastic: גרם ל־ plus an infinitive, or הכריח את … ל־. גרם never takes את.
- Beware the occupied slot: הכתיב is "dictate", הבשיל is "ripen", העביד is "employ".
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- Hif'il Verbs That Aren't Causative (הרגיש, החליט, הבטיח)B1 — "Hif'il equals causative" is false for a large share of the binyan's most frequent members. הרגיש, החליט, הבטיח, הצליח, הגיע, הכיר, התחיל, המשיך, הסכים, הבין and הזמין are all hif'il, all common, and none of them makes anybody do anything — הגיע does not even take an object.
- Binyan Pairs: Active, Passive, ReflexiveB1 — Which passive a Hebrew verb takes is decided by the binyan of its active — never by what it means. Here is the pairing, the place the tidy grid falls apart, and what Israelis say instead of a passive.
- Hif'il פ״י: הוריד, הושיב, הודיעB1 — A root that begins with י turns that letter into a long o in hif'il, written with a vav: י־ר־ד gives הוֹרִיד, י־שׁ־ב gives הוֹשִׁיב, י־ד־ע gives הוֹדִיעַ. This is the class where the causative relation to pa'al really does hold — and where מוריד can be mistaken for a huf'al.