Hif'il ל״ה: הראה, השווה, הקנה

ל״ה verbs in hif'il are the ones you already use daily without noticing what class they belong to: הראה, העלה, הפנה, השווה, הנחה, הקנה. The citation form ends in ה, and that ה is a spelling for a final vowel rather than a consonant — so it is the one root letter that almost never appears as itself. Everything odd about these verbs follows from that.

The past of הראה

Read the third radical down the column and it has three lives, exactly as in the pi'el ל״ה verbs: a yod before the consonant endings (הראיתי, הראינו), a bare ה where nothing follows (הראה), and nothing at all before ־וּ (הראו). The 3fs הראתה has a ת that comes from the ending, not from the root.

Two notes on the pointing before you copy it anywhere. The segol under the ה — הֶרְאֵיתִי rather than הִרְאֵיתִי — is not a ל״ה property at all: it is the א. Every other ל״ה verb on this page has an ordinary consonant in that slot and keeps the chirik — הִפְנָה, הִשְׁוָוה, הִנְחָה, הִקְנָה. (Hif'il does the same thing, more commonly, when the guttural is the first radical: הֶחְלִיט, הֶעֱלָה.) Both readings are in print — Pealim lists a chirik variant (הִרְאָה, הִרְאֲתָה) beside the segol throughout, and Milog lemmatises the chirik. And the 3fs takes a chataf-patach under that א — הֶרְאֲתָה — because a guttural cannot carry a bare shva.

Present, future, infinitive

Three cells in that table are where the trouble is. The infinitive ends in ־וֹת, which is the class's announcement of itself — להראות, להעלות, להפנות, להשוות, להנחות, להקנות all share it, and none of them can be predicted from the citation form. The two present singulars are the same string: מראה is mar'é for a man and mar'á for a woman, separated by a vowel nobody writes. And the 3fs past הראתה is the one form that adds a visible ת.

מראה is four words

This is the class's showpiece, and it is a double homograph rather than an ordinary one. All four are root ר־א־ה, all four are spelled with the same three letters, and each pair is pronounced identically:

Milog carries both nouns under their own headwords — מַרְאֶה glossed appearance, מַרְאָה glossed mirror — and Pealim files מַרְאָה as a מִקְטָל noun, the instrument pattern: a mirror is the thing that shows. The plural doubles up too: מַרְאוֹת is mirrors and also the feminine plural participle.

What separates them in a real sentence is grammar, not spelling. The nouns take an article, an adjective or a possessive; the participles take a subject and usually a ל־ and an את.

העלה: the guttural adds a step

ע־ל־ה is ל״ה and first-radical guttural, so it takes chataf vowels through the whole paradigm. Nothing else about it is irregular.

The rest of the class

Now the causative question, which this class answers in three different ways. ראה → הראה and עלה → העלה work exactly as advertised: see becomes make see, rise becomes raise, and the old subject turns into a direct object. שווה → השווה works too, from the pa'al לִשְׁווֹת "to be equal" — Pealim marks its government as ב־ or ל־. הקנה has a pa'al partner in form only: ק־נ־ה gives קנה "bought", so הקנה ought to mean "make someone buy", and it does not — it means impart, confer, as in a qualification that confers a right. And הנחה has no partner at all: there is no living pa'al on נ־ח־ה, and the verb לנחות "to land" belongs to a different root, נ־ח־ת. Five verbs, three different relationships to the same rule — which is why the causative reading is something you read backwards from a verb you have met, never forwards.

הראה takes two complements at once

Learn this frame as a unit: ל־ for the person, את for the thing. Every example sentence under Milog's הראה entry carries both complements, and always in that order: person first, thing second. English show someone something has two bare objects, so the ל־ has to be added rather than translated. הפנה splits the two differently: the person is a direct object there, and the destination takes ל־ (הפניתי אותו לרופא).

Common Mistakes

1. Building the infinitive on the citation form. Every other hif'il infinitive is לְ + הַ + the stem you already know, so learners assemble one here too — and the ־ות ending is the only thing that makes it a word.

2. Treating the final ה as a consonant. It looks like one, it is written like one, and it is not — so the past-tense endings cannot simply be stuck onto הראה.

3. Giving הראה a direct object for the person. English show him the photos has two bare objects; Hebrew allows only one.

4. Using the 3ms for a feminine subject. הראה looks like a finished past-tense verb, and with a feminine subject it is the wrong one.

Key Takeaways

• The third radical ה is never a consonant: a yod before endings (הראיתי), a bare ה where nothing follows (הראה), nothing before ־וּ (הראו), and ־וֹת in the infinitive (להראות).
• The infinitive ending is the class marker — להראות, להעלות, להפנות, להשוות, להנחות, להקנות — and it cannot be predicted from the citation form.
• The two present singulars are one string: מראה is mar'é (m.) and mar'á (f.).
• מראה is four words — the m. sg. participle, the masculine noun appearance, the f. sg. participle, and the feminine noun mirror. מראות is both mirrors and the f. pl. participle.
• הראה's segol (הֶרְאֵיתִי) comes from the guttural א, not from ל״ה; Pealim prints a chirik variant beside it throughout.
• העלה adds chataf vowels because its first radical is ע: הֶעֱלָה, מַעֲלֶה, יַעֲלֶה, לְהַעֲלוֹת — but the 3fs is הֶעֶלְתָה, with a plain segol.
• הראה takes ל־ for the person and את for the thing, both at once. הפנה reverses the pattern: את for the person, ל־ for the destination.
• The causative relation holds for ראה→הראה, עלה→העלה, שווה→השווה, is lexicalised beyond recognition in הקנה, and has no partner at all for הנחה.