A small but very frequent group of pa'al verbs does not name an action. It names a state — being asleep, hungry, thirsty, glad — or a slow drift into one: growing, ageing. Semantically that much is easy to feel. The part worth getting right is where the grammar marks it, because the usual textbook sentence ("statives have a different past tense") points at the wrong cell.
The signature is the present, not the past
Take the past of these verbs first, so the point lands: יָשַׁן, רָעַב, גָּדַל, שָׂמַח are shaped exactly like כָּתַב. Nothing distinguishes them there. What distinguishes the class is the present, which comes out קָטֵל — an a then a tsere — instead of the ordinary קוֹטֵל:
| Present m.sg | f.sg | Past (he) | Future (he) | Sense |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| יָשֵׁן yashén | יְשֵׁנָה yeshená | יָשַׁן yashán | יִישַׁן yishán | asleep / sleeps |
| רָעֵב ra'év | רְעֵבָה re'evá | רָעַב ra'áv | יִרְעַב yir'áv | hungry |
| צָמֵא tsamé | צְמֵאָה tsme'á | צָמֵא tsamé | יִצְמָא yitsmá | thirsty |
| שָׂמֵחַ saméakh | שְׂמֵחָה smekhá | שָׂמַח samákh | יִשְׂמַח yismákh | glad, pleased |
| גָּדֵל gadél | גְּדֵלָה gdelá | גָּדַל gadál | יִגְדַּל yigdál | growing / grows up |
| זָקֵן zakén | זְקֵנָה zkená | זָקַן zakán | יִזְקַן yizkán | old / ages (formal) |
Plurals are built the same way: יְשֵׁנִים / יְשֵׁנוֹת, רְעֵבִים / רְעֵבוֹת, שְׂמֵחִים / שְׂמֵחוֹת. Note the vowel in the non-masculine cells: the first vowel reduces to a shva, which surfaces as a short e where the cluster needs one and vanishes where it does not — yeshená but smekhá, and never yashená.
אל תדליק אור, התינוק ישן.
al tadlík or, hatinók yashén
Don't turn the light on, the baby's asleep. (to a man)
אני רעבה, יש משהו לאכול?
aní re'evá, yesh máshehu le'ekhól?
I'm hungry — is there anything to eat? (f. speaker)
אנחנו שמחים שבאתם.
anákhnu smekhím shebatém
We're glad you came.
Which is why these sentences have no verb in them
אני רעב is a complete Hebrew sentence, and there is nothing missing from it. That is not a special rule for statives — no Hebrew present tense has a copula — but here the effect is sharper, because the word doing the work is simultaneously the present tense of a verb and an ordinary adjective. רָעֵב is what you are and what you do; Hebrew does not distinguish them.
That double life shows up in the dictionary. זָקֵן is listed twice, once as a pa'al verb "to grow old" and once as the everyday adjective "old"; כָּבֵד "heavy" is the same shape with the verb behind it long dead — the pa'al כָּבַד survives only in Biblical Hebrew, while the adjective is used a hundred times a day. The general question of when a participle has hardened into an adjective is on participle adjectives.
גדלתי בקיבוץ, ורק אחרי הצבא עברתי לעיר.
gadálti bekibúts, verák akharéi hatsavá avárti la'ír
I grew up on a kibbutz, and only moved to the city after the army.
רעבנו כל היום כי שכחנו לקחת אוכל.
ra'ávnu kol hayóm ki shakhákhnu lakákhat ókhel
We were hungry all day because we forgot to bring food.
They take the patach future
Every verb in the table above has a patach where כתב has a cholam: יִישַׁן, יִרְעַב, יִשְׂמַח, יִגְדַּל, יִזְקַן — and the imperative goes with it, שְׂמַח, גְּדַל. This is the same split described on the pa'al future vowel, and the statives are the largest coherent block inside its otherwise unpredictable a-class.
Coherent, but not the whole of it: the a-class also contains למד, לבש, שכב and רכב, which name perfectly ordinary actions. Conjugation dictionaries — Pealim among them — label that entire class "stative", which is a morphological label inherited from the Semitic history of the pattern, not a claim about meaning. Read it as "takes a patach", and you will not be surprised by לָמַד.
אם לא תאכל עכשיו, תרעב אחר כך.
im lo tokhál akhsháv, tir'áv akhár kakh
If you don't eat now you'll be hungry later. (to a man)
הוא יגדל ויהיה בדיוק כמו אבא שלו.
hu yigdál veyihyé bediyúk kmo ába sheló
He'll grow up to be exactly like his father.
The near miss: כאב
כאב "hurt, ache" is a state if anything is, and it is not in this class. Its present is כּוֹאֵב ko'év — the ordinary קוֹטֵל shape, with a feminine כּוֹאֶבֶת. Its future is יִכְאַב with a patach, but that tells you nothing about statives: the א in the middle of the root forces a patach on any verb, exactly as it does in יִשְׁאַל and יִבְחַר.
So כאב is semantically stative and morphologically an ordinary pa'al verb. The two criteria come apart, and when they do, the morphology is what this page is about.
כואב לי הגב כבר שבוע.
ko'év li hagáv kvar shavúa
My back's been hurting for a week now.
Three words spelled ישן
Unpointed ישן is three different words, all of them common, and a reader has to choose between them from the sentence alone:
| Pointed | Reading | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| יָשֵׁן | yashén | asleep — the stative present |
| יָשַׁן | yashán | he slept — the past |
| יָשָׁן | yashán | old, not new — an adjective; the dictionaries file it on י־שׁ־ן beside the verb, but it is a different word |
הוא ישן עכשיו, תתקשר אחר כך.
hu yashén akhsháv, titkashér akhár kakh
He's asleep right now, call back later. (to a man)
הוא ישן היטב אתמול בלילה.
hu yashán heitév etmól baláyla
He slept well last night. (same four letters, past tense)
הספר הזה ישן, יש מהדורה חדשה.
haséfer hazé yashán, yesh mahadurá khadashá
This book is out of date, there's a new edition. (same four letters again — the adjective)
Common Mistakes
1. Building the present on the ordinary קוֹטֵל pattern. Learners who have drilled כותב, יושב, לומד apply the shape to a stative root, and produce a form that does not exist.
❌ אני יושן עכשיו, נדבר מחר
Incorrect — there is no such verb form. The present of ישן is יָשֵׁן: אני ישן עכשיו. (יושב is a different verb, 'sit'.)
✅ אני ישן עכשיו, נדבר מחר בבוקר.
aní yashén akhsháv, nedabér makhár babóker
I'm going to sleep now, we'll talk tomorrow morning. (m. speaker)
2. Giving the future a cholam. The cholam is the pa'al default and it does not reach this class.
❌ הילד יגדול מהר מאוד
Incorrect — the stative future takes a patach and is written without a vav: הילד יגדל מהר מאוד, yigdál. Compare יגמור, which does have the cholam.
✅ הילד יגדל מהר מאוד, תראה.
hayéled yigdál mahér me'ód, tir'é
That boy is going to shoot up, you'll see. (to a man)
3. Giving כאב a direct object. English I hurt my back makes the sufferer the subject; Hebrew makes the body part the subject and puts the person in a ל־ phrase.
❌ אני כואב את הגב שלי
Incorrect — כאב is intransitive and cannot take את. The thing that aches is the subject: כואב לי הגב.
✅ כואב לי הגב מאז שהתחלתי לרוץ.
ko'év li hagáv me'áz shehitkhálti larúts
My back has hurt ever since I started running.
4. Confusing גדל with גידל. They differ by one binyan and by the whole argument structure, and both are common words. גָּדַל (pa'al) is what you do — grow up, get bigger. גִּידֵּל (pi'el) is what you do to something else — raise, bring up, grow.
גדלתי בחיפה, ליד הים.
gadálti bekhéifa, leyád hayám
I grew up in Haifa, by the sea.
גידלתי שם כלב ושתי חתולות.
gidálti sham kélev ushtéi khatulót
I raised a dog and two cats there. (pi'el — it takes an object)
Key Takeaways
- Stative pa'al verbs name states and gradual changes of state: ישן, רעב, צמא, שמח, גדל, זקן.
- The class is marked in the present tense, which is קָטֵל — יָשֵׁן, רָעֵב, שָׂמֵחַ, גָּדֵל — and doubles as an ordinary adjective.
- The past is completely ordinary: יָשַׁן, רָעַב, גָּדַל, שָׂמַח are built like כָּתַב. Only צמא keeps an older ־ֵ־ past all through (צָמֵאתִי), and גָּדֵל survives as a recorded variant of גָּדַל.
- Because the present is an adjective, אני רעב is a whole sentence — nothing has been left out.
- They take the patach future and imperative: יִישַׁן, יִרְעַב, יִשְׂמַח, יִגְדַּל. The dictionaries' "stative" label marks that vowel, not the meaning — למד and לבש are in the same class.
- כאב is the near miss: semantically a state, morphologically ordinary (present כּוֹאֵב), and its patach future comes from the guttural א, not from this class.
- Unpointed ישן has three readings — יָשֵׁן asleep, יָשַׁן he slept, יָשָׁן old — and the last two are pronounced identically.
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Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
- פָּעַל, פָּעֵל, פָּעֹל: Three Past-Tense Vowel PatternsC1 — Hebrew inherited three vowel patterns for the pa'al past. Only one of them is still a working pattern; the second has retreated into a handful of ל״א verbs and a single cell, and the third is down to one living verb. Read this as an etymology and reading aid, not as a rule for building forms.
- Participles Used as Adjectives: מעניין, עייף, סגורA2 — A large share of everyday Hebrew adjectives are not adjectives at all — they are verb participles that settled down. Once you can see which binyan a word came out of, you stop memorising pairs like מעניין and מעוניין and start deriving them.
- Future Vowel: יִכְתּוֹב vs יִלְמַד vs יִשְׁמַעB1 — Why the pa'al future is יִכְתּוֹב here and יִלְמַד there: a cholam by default, a patach forced by a guttural, and a residue class that simply has to be learned verb by verb — plus the ktiv male spelling trick that tells you which one you are looking at.
- בניין פעל (קל): The Basic BinyanA1 — pa'al is the binyan that adds nothing to the root — which is why it is the easiest to spot, why it holds almost every verb a beginner needs, and why it is also the one most disfigured when a root letter is weak.
- Pa'al Present: Regular Roots (כותב, כותבת, כותבים, כותבות)A1 — The Hebrew present has four forms, not six — it marks gender and number and says nothing at all about person, so one form covers I, you and he. That single fact explains why the present, alone among the tenses, has to keep its subject pronoun, and why the same word is also a noun.