Nif'al as Middle Voice: נשבר, נפתח, נגמר | Hebrew Grammar

Here is the sentence to fix in place before anything else: a very large share of nif'al verbs are not passive but anticausative — they describe something that happens to the subject, with no agent anywhere in the picture and no room in the sentence for one. הַכּוֹס נִשְׁבְּרָה does not mean the glass was broken by somebody unnamed. It means the glass broke.

Nif'al is pa'al's passive, and it is also this, and the two are genuinely different things. Read a middle-voice nif'al as a passive and you spend the rest of the sentence looking for an agent Hebrew never put there.

Agent, event, state — three separate forms

English collapses two of these. The glass broke and the glass is broken look related and I broke the glass uses the identical verb. Hebrew gives each its own form, and the three are not interchangeable.

Root	Somebody does it — pa'al	It happens — nif'al	It is in that state — פָּעוּל
שׁ־ב־ר	שָׁבַרְתִּי אֶת הַכּוֹס I broke the glass	הַכּוֹס נִשְׁבְּרָה the glass broke	הַכּוֹס שְׁבוּרָה the glass is broken
ס־ג־ר	סָגַרְתִּי אֶת הַדֶּלֶת I closed the door	הַדֶּלֶת נִסְגְּרָה the door closed	הַדֶּלֶת סְגוּרָה the door is shut
פ־ת־ח	פָּתַחְתִּי אֶת הַחַלּוֹן I opened the window	הַחַלּוֹן נִפְתַּח the window opened	הַחַלּוֹן פָּתוּחַ the window is open

The middle column is the one this page is about. Notice what it does to the sentence's shape: the thing that was the object of the pa'al verb has become the subject, exactly as in a passive — but unlike a passive, there is no demoted agent hiding behind the verb. The event simply has no one in it. The right-hand column is a different animal again, an adjective with no tense of its own; it is worked out on the פעול participle.

הכוס נשברה כשהוצאתי אותה מהמדיח.

hakós nishberá kshehotséti otá mehamedíakh

The glass broke as I was taking it out of the dishwasher.

מי שבר את החלון של המרפסת?

mi shavár et hakhalón shel hamirpéset?

Who broke the balcony window? (pa'al — the question is asking for an agent, which is why it has to be pa'al)

החלון שבור כבר שבועיים ואף אחד לא בא לתקן.

hakhalón shavúr kvar shvu'áyim ve'áf ekhád lo ba letakén

The window's been broken for two weeks and nobody's come to fix it. (a state, not an event)

The working list

These are the middle-voice nif'al verbs you will meet in a normal week. Learn the future with them, because that is where the class becomes unrecognisable — the נ־ vanishes, a dagesh appears in the first root letter (or, where that letter cannot take one, a tsere appears in front of it: יֵעָצֵר), and in ktiv male a second י shows up at the start.

Past 3ms	Present ms	Future 3ms	Future, ktiv male	Meaning
נִשְׁבַּר	נִשְׁבָּר	יִשָּׁבֵר	יישבר	break, come apart
נִפְתַּח	נִפְתָּח	יִפָּתַח	ייפתח	open
נִסְגַּר	נִסְגָּר	יִסָּגֵר	ייסגר	close, shut
נִגְמַר	נִגְמָר	יִגָּמֵר	ייגמר	end; run out
נִדְלַק	נִדְלָק	יִדָּלֵק	יידלק	come on, light up
נִכְבָּה	נִכְבֶּה	יִכָּבֶה	ייכבה	go out, go off
נִשְׁפַּךְ	נִשְׁפָּךְ	יִשָּׁפֵךְ	יישפך	spill
נִקְרַע	נִקְרָע	יִקָּרַע	ייקרע	tear, rip
נִפְסַק	נִפְסָק	יִפָּסֵק	ייפסק	stop, cut out
נֶעֱצַר	נֶעֱצָר	יֵעָצֵר	ייעצר	come to a stop

Recount the future column and the class splits three ways. Seven of the ten end in a tsere — יִשָּׁבֵר, יִסָּגֵר, יִגָּמֵר, יִדָּלֵק, יִשָּׁפֵךְ, יִפָּסֵק, יֵעָצֵר — which is the default nif'al shape. Two end in a patach, because a final guttural pulls the tsere down: יִפָּתַח and יִקָּרַע. It pulls rather than forbids — Pealim prints יִפָּתֵחַ and יִקָּרֵעַ as uncommon alternatives, with the furtive patach a final ח or ע adds after a tsere, and the same variation runs through the infinitive, לְהִיפָּתֵחַ beside לְהִיפָּתַח. The tenth, נכבה, is outside the pattern altogether: its root כ־ב־ה ends in ה, so its future ends in a segol — יִכָּבֶה — and its infinitive is לְהִיכָּבוֹת.

הדלת נפתחה לבד באמצע השיעור.

hadélet niftekhá levád be'emtsá hashi'úr

The door swung open on its own in the middle of the lesson.

המסך נכבה אחרי חמש דקות בלי שנוגעים בו.

hamasákh nikhbé akharéi khamésh dakót bli shenog'ím bo

The screen goes dark after five minutes if nobody touches it. (present נִכְבֶּה)

החלב נגמר, אני קופץ למכולת.

hekhaláv nigmár, aní koféts lamakólet

We're out of milk — I'll nip down to the shop. (m. speaker; literally 'the milk has finished')

Nobody is named, and that is the point

A middle-voice nif'al has no slot for an agent. That is a grammatical fact about the form, not a claim about who really did it — and it is what makes these verbs so useful when you would rather not appoint a culprit. הַכּוֹס נִשְׁבְּרָה is the ordinary way to report a broken glass whether it slipped, whether the cat did it, or whether you dropped it: the sentence has nowhere to put that information, so it doesn't.

נשפך לי קפה על המקלדת ועכשיו היא דביקה.

nishpákh li kafé al hamiklédet ve'akhsháv hi dvíka

I spilled coffee on the keyboard and now it's sticky. (literally 'coffee got spilled to me' — the ל־ says whose problem it is, not who did it)

That ל־ is worth a paragraph of its own, because it is everywhere in speech and it is not an agent marker. It is a dative of interest: it names the person the event landed on. nishpákh li is "it got spilled on me", and it stays silent about whose elbow was involved.

נגמר לי הכסף באמצע החודש.

nigmár li hakésef be'emtsá hakhódesh

I ran out of money halfway through the month.

💡

Two things learners meet as if they were idioms, described as the dictionaries actually treat them. נשבר לי "I've had enough" (informal): Milog lexicalises the figurative sense on the verb itself — נשבר senses 3–4, התייאש; איבד את כוח הרצון להמשיך and התמוטט מבחינה נפשית או רגשית — but has no entry for the string נשבר לי. נגמר לי הכסף: Milog does file the dative construction, under a different filler (נִגְמַר לוֹ האויר "he ran out of steam"), and Hebrew Wiktionary adds נגמר לו הסוס. So נגמר לי הכסף is a fresh instance of an attested pattern, not a fixed phrase — which means you can build your own: נגמר לי הסבלנות, נגמר לנו הזמן.

נשבר לי מהעבודה הזאת, אני מחפש משהו אחר.

nishbár li meha'avodá hazót, aní mekhapés máshehu akhér

I've had it with this job — I'm looking for something else. (informal, m. speaker)

Why this looks passive to an English eye

English has exactly this alternation. I broke the vase / the vase broke. She opened the door / the door opened. They stopped the train / the train stopped. Same verb, two argument structures, and no morphology at all to tell them apart — English simply drops the object and lets word order do the work.

So an English speaker arrives at Hebrew with no category for "the anticausative form of a verb". The only English form that does differ from the active is the passive — was broken, was opened — and so a Hebrew verb that visibly differs from its active gets filed under "passive" by default. That single wrong filing produces most of the errors below.

The honest counter-observation: Hebrew is not being exotic here. Spanish marks the same alternation with se (se rompió el vaso), German with sich, Russian with the reflexive -sya. English is the outlier for marking it with nothing.

Common Mistakes

1. Using the transitive pa'al verb with nothing after it. This is direct English transfer — the phone broke looks like it needs the same verb as I broke the phone, and in English it does.

❌ הטלפון שבר כשהוא נפל

Incorrect — שבר must have an object; on its own it says 'the phone broke [something]'. When the thing itself comes apart, Hebrew changes binyan: הטלפון נשבר.

✅ הטלפון נשבר כשהוא נפל מהכיס.

hatélefon nishbár kshehú nafál mehakís

The phone broke when it fell out of my pocket.

2. Hunting for a by-phrase that was never there. Translate נִפְתְּחָה as "was opened" and the next question is "by whom?" — but the Hebrew sentence has no answer and was not asked.

✅ הדלת נפתחה מהרוח ולא הצלחנו לסגור אותה.

hadélet niftekhá meharúakh veló hitslákhnu lisgór otá

The door blew open in the wind and we couldn't get it shut. (middle voice — מ־ gives the cause, and a cause is not an agent)

✅ הדלת נפתחה על ידי איש האבטחה בכניסה.

hadélet niftekhá al yedéi ish ha'avtakhá baknisá

The door was opened by the security guard at the entrance. (formal — add על ידי and the same verb form is read as a true passive)

Both sentences are correct, and they are not the same sentence. על ידי is the switch: without it the nif'al is read as a middle, with it as a passive. The default reading of a bare nif'al in speech is the middle one.

3. Dropping the ktiv-male yod in the future. The nif'al future is where the binyan is hardest to see, and the spelling is the only cue left.

❌ הישיבה תגמר בשלוש והמשרד נסגר בחמש

Incorrect as ktiv male — the pointed forms are תִּיגָּמֵר and נִסְגָּר, but unpointed the nif'al future needs its second yod: תיגמר. (Bare תגמר reads as the pi'el תְּגַמֵּר, 'you will finish off'.)

✅ הישיבה תיגמר בשלוש והמשרד נסגר בחמש.

hayeshivá tigamér beshalósh vehamisrád nisgár bekhamésh

The meeting will finish at three and the office closes at five.

4. Reaching for a full passive where Hebrew wants the middle. Grammatical, and it reads like a report.

✅ הקו נפסק באמצע השיחה ולא הצלחתי לחזור אליו.

hakáv nifsák be'emtsá hasikhá veló hitslákhti lakhazór eláv

The line cut out halfway through the call and I couldn't get him back. (middle — nobody cut it)

Key Takeaways

Most nif'al verbs are anticausative, not passive: the event happens to the subject and the sentence has no slot for an agent at all.
Hebrew keeps three forms apart that English runs together: שָׁבַרְתִּי אֶת הַכּוֹס · הַכּוֹס נִשְׁבְּרָה · הַכּוֹס שְׁבוּרָה.
Learn the ten workhorses with their futures — נשבר · נפתח · נסגר · נגמר · נדלק · נכבה · נשפך · נקרע · נפסק · נעצר — because the future is unrecognisable: ייגמר, ייסגר, ייפתח.
Seven of the ten futures take a tsere; נפתח and נקרע take a patach (יִפָּתַח, יִקָּרַע) because of their final gutturals; נכבה is a ל״ה root and ends in a segol, יִכָּבֶה.
The ל־ in נשפך לי, נגמר לי is a dative of interest, not an agent. It says who the event happened to.
נשבר לי: the figurative sense is lexicalised on the verb (Milog senses 3–4), not on the phrase. נגמר לי הכסף is a live instance of an attested dative pattern, not a frozen idiom.
על ידי is the switch between the two readings: a bare nif'al defaults to the middle; add על ידי and it reads as a passive.
English has the same alternation (break, open, stop) and marks it with nothing — which is why the marked Hebrew form gets mistaken for a passive.

Now practice Hebrew

Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.

Start learning Hebrew →