Infinitives

A verb that acts like a noun

Genesis 11 tells of Babel. After the LORD scatters the people, the story ends like this.

So the LORD scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city.

Genesis 11:8

After "they ceased" comes לִבְנֹת, "livnot", "to build" (from בָּנָה, "build"). The panel labels it infinitive and construct. An infinitive comes from a verb but has no person or tense of its own; it names the action, like English "to build" or "building". Who builds, and when, must come from the surroundings.

Hebrew has two infinitives, and the panel calls both "infinitive", adding construct or absolute to tell them apart. These are the same two labels you met on nouns in the lesson on the construct state, now attached to verbs. The panel also names a stem for each of these verbs. You already know Qal; other stems, such as the Hiphil, come in later lessons.

The construct infinitive: "to do", "when you do"

The construct infinitive is by far the more common of the two. Its usual partner is the one-letter preposition לְ "to", joined to the front just as in the lesson on prepositions, and its vowels shift a little. So לְ plus an infinitive often means "to do it" or "in order to do it".

לַעֲשׂוֹת, "la'asot", is "to make": In Genesis 2:3 it follows the verb "created", and translations fold the two into one idea, the work God had accomplished. לֵאמֹר, "lemor", is "saying", and it is very common in the Old Testament. It sits right before quoted speech, as when God blessed the creatures and spoke to them (Genesis 1:22), and it is how Hebrew often opens a quotation. Notice that these forms share an o vowel near the end (לִבְנֹת, לֵאמֹר, לַעֲשׂוֹת). That is a handy, though not universal, mark of the Qal construct infinitive.

An infinitive often stands beside a verb such as "be able". God promises Abram offspring like the dust:

I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if one could count the dust of the earth, then your offspring could be counted.

Genesis 13:16

יוּכַל, "yukhal", means "he is able" (from יָכֹל, "be able"). Right after it comes לִמְנוֹת, "to count": "able to count".

A second common use is "when". Put בְּ ("in") before the infinitive and a suffix after it, and you get a time clause with the doer built in. Look at Deuteronomy 6:7.

בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ, "beshivtekha", is literally "in your sitting", so "when you sit". The suffix ־ְךָ is "your", and it names the one who does the action. The same pattern gives וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ "and when you walk", וּבְשָׁכְבְּךָ "and when you lie down" and וּבְקוּמֶךָ "and when you rise". Those are the four "when you…" clauses of the English Bible's verse.

Genesis 2:17 builds the same idea with a noun in front: בְּיוֹם אֲכָלְךָ, "in the day of your eating", "in the day that you eat". The word "day" is construct, linked to what follows, just as in "the Spirit of God". An infinitive can be the "Y" in an "X of Y".

The absolute infinitive: "surely"

The absolute infinitive is rarer and has a different job. It usually stands right before a finite verb of the same root, and it strengthens that verb. Here is the warning given to the man.

מוֹת, "mot", is the absolute infinitive, and תָּמוּת, "tamut", "you will die", is the verb it strengthens. Both come from the same root, מוּת, "die". Word for word it is "die, you will die", and English puts it as "you will surely die". Exodus 21:12 has the same shape with a different verb form: מוֹת before יוּמָת, "he must surely be put to death" (the second verb belongs to a passive stem, the Hophal, which we will study later).

As a rule of thumb: when the same root appears twice in a row, the first one in the absolute infinitive, read it as "surely" or "certainly". The absolute infinitive has no person or number; the verb after it supplies them. It has other, rarer uses, but this one is enough for now.

Summary

An infinitive is a verbal noun, labelled infinitive plus construct or absolute. The construct infinitive, usually with לְ, means "to do", and with בְּ and a suffix means "when you do" (לַעֲשׂוֹת, לִבְנֹת, לֵאמֹר, בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ). The absolute infinitive in front of the same root means "surely" (מוֹת תָּמוּת). Next lesson we look at another verbal noun, the participle.

Words in this lesson

• מוּתmutto die839 times in the OT
• יָכֹלyakholbe able194 times in the OT
• בָּנָהbanahto build376 times in the OT

Practice