Breakdown of Het graf dat onder de stenen was verborgen, was leeg.
zijn
to be
leeg
empty
dat
that/which (relative pronoun)
de steen
stone
Questions & Answers about Het graf dat onder de stenen was verborgen, was leeg.
Why does "had been hidden" use was instead of had?
In Dutch, passive sentences in the perfect tenses use the helper verb zijn (to be) instead of hebben (to have). To form the past perfect passive, you use the past tense of zijn (was or waren) plus the past participle. If you had used had verborgen, it would mean the tomb actively hid something!
Doesn't a passive perfect tense need a word for "been", like geworden?
You might expect to see geworden (been/become), but in Dutch, it is almost always dropped in perfect passive tenses. Therefore, was verborgen is the complete and correct way to say "had been hidden"—no extra word is needed.
Why do we use dat here instead of die for "that"?
dat is a relative pronoun pointing back to Het graf. Because graf is a het-word, you must use dat. If it were a de-word, like de kist (the coffin), you would use die.
Why are the verbs was verborgen placed right before the comma?
The phrase dat onder de stenen was verborgen is a relative clause, which functions as a subclause giving more information about the tomb. In Dutch subclauses, all verbs are pushed to the very end.