Nif'al as the Passive of Pa'al (נכתב, נאכל, נמכר)

Say the important thing before the useful thing: nif'al is not simply the passive of pa'al. It is pa'al's passive plus a middle voice, a set of inchoatives, a set of statives and a set of reciprocals — and נִכְנַס, נִשְׁאַר, נִפְגַּשׁ, נִמְצָא and נִגְמַר are not the passive of anything.

This page covers the part that genuinely is a passive. It is a real and productive corner of the binyan, and it is also the corner an English speaker will over-use, for reasons that are entirely predictable.

The pairing

Which passive a Hebrew verb takes is decided by the binyan of its active, never by what it means: a pa'al verb passivises into nif'al, a pi'el verb into pu'al, a hif'il verb into huf'al. The two-step is worked out on binyan pairs; here is the pa'al column filled in.

Look down the last two columns and read the transcriptions rather than the pointing. Every pair is identical in sound. The past and the present of a nif'al differ by one vowel sign — a patach against a kamatz — which Israeli Hebrew does not distinguish. That is not a quirk of these seven verbs; it is the whole binyan, and it comes back at the bottom of this page.

Two honest qualifiers before you use the table as a machine. Not every pa'al verb has a nif'al passive in live use — some are grammatical but never met, and the reference to check is a dictionary, not the pattern. And most nif'al verbs are not passives at all, which is what nif'al as a middle voice is about.

The transformation, both ways

The object of the active becomes the subject of the passive, the verb agrees with it, and the old subject — if you keep it — moves into an על ידי phrase.

Notice that את disappears. It marked a definite direct object, and the passive has no direct object left to mark — הַמִּכְתָּב is now the subject. Learners who transform the sentence mechanically leave the את in place and produce a sentence with two subjects and no object.

The fact that matters more than the rule

You can build these forms correctly and still sound wrong, because the finite passive belongs to written and formal Hebrew. That is a claim about register, and the honest evidence for it is the labels the examples on this page have to carry — newspaper, packaging, recipe, report — not a frequency figure this page cannot source. Nobody says הדלת נסגרה על ידי דני out loud.

What Israelis reach for instead is the agentless third-person plural: a bare plural verb with no subject and nobody in particular in mind. Hebrew grammar files both of these under סְתָמִיּוּת — impersonal constructions — as two devices for leaving the agent out, so treat them as parallel options rather than as one replacing the other.

Both are correct Hebrew about the same kind of event. They differ in register, not in accuracy, and the full inventory of agentless strategies is on the impersonal plural.

Where the nif'al passive genuinely dominates

Turn the register fact around and it stops being a warning and becomes a map. In news writing, legal and administrative prose, academic writing, and instructions on packaging, the nif'al passive is not merely permitted — it is the default, and the impersonal plural would be the odd choice.

נכתב is two forms, and the page will not tell you which

Because the past and the present differ only in a vowel that Hebrew does not write, an unpointed nif'al is systematically ambiguous between "was X-ed" and "is X-ed". Nothing in the letters resolves it. Only the sentence does.

The two sentences contain the same string, nikhtáv, read the same way aloud. בכל ישיבה forces the habitual present; אחרי הישיבה forces the past. This is not a defect in the writing system so much as a demand on the reader: Hebrew expects you to have the context before you have the tense.

Common Mistakes

1. Not agreeing the passive verb with its new subject. In the active you were watching the agent; in the passive the patient has become the subject, and the verb follows it.

2. Writing the nif'al infinitive without its yod. The nif'al infinitive begins הִ־, and in ktiv male that chirik has to be written with a י.

3. Using a written passive in speech. This is the big transfer error, and it produces sentences that are correct and still wrong. English prose passivises freely, so English speakers passivise Hebrew freely — and land in the newspaper.

4. Reading נשלח as a passive when it is a future active. Verbs whose pa'al future has an a build a 1pl future that is spelled exactly like their nif'al — and this one is a genuine trap on this very page.

The tell is את: a passive cannot have a direct object, so an את after נשלח settles it as the active future. The whole collision — נפתח, נשמע, נשכח against the safely distinct נכתוב, נסגור — is laid out on pa'al ל״א.

Key Takeaways

• pa'al passivises into nif'al, by binyan and not by meaning: כתב → נכתב, מכר → נמכר, אכל → נאכל, לקח → נלקח.
• Not every pa'al verb has a live nif'al passive, and most nif'al verbs are not passives at all. The pairing is a set of individual facts, not a machine.
• The object becomes the subject, את drops, and the old subject moves into an על ידי phrase — which belongs to written and formal registers.
• The finite passive belongs to written and formal Hebrew, not to conversation. Israelis use the agentless third-person plural instead.
• Where the passive does dominate: news, law and administration, academic prose, and instructions. Learn it as a reading and writing tool first.
• Past and present nif'al are homophones — nikhtáv is both — so an unpointed passive is ambiguous until the sentence resolves it.
• A nif'al can look identical to a pa'al 1pl future (נשלח, נפתח, נשמע). An את after the verb proves it is the active.