Imperfect middle/passive, aorist middle, pluperfect middle/passive

Chapter 12 gave the primary middle and passive endings, used by the present, the perfect and the future. This chapter gives the other set — the secondary middle and passive endings, used by the past tenses — and then applies them to four stems you already know how to build.

There is genuinely one new thing here. Everything after it is assembly.

The secondary middle and passive endings

Compare them with the primary set from chapter 12 and the family resemblance is obvious: the plurals -μεθα and -σθε are identical, and the singulars differ only in their final vowel.

As with the primary set, one series does duty for both voices. In the imperfect and the pluperfect, middle and passive are spelled the same, and only the sentence separates them.

The imperfect middle and passive

Augment, present stem, connecting vowel, secondary ending. The second singular ἐλύου is ἐλύεσο with the σ dropped and the vowels contracted — the same change that produced λύῃ and λύσῃ, and the last time it will surprise you.

καὶ ἐβαπτίζοντο ἐν τῷ Ἰορδάνῃ ποταμῷ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ

"And they were being baptised in the river Jordan by him." An imperfect passive with its agent named, and the imperfective aspect is the point — a queue of people, not a single event.

ἐξεπλήσσοντο οἱ ὄχλοι ἐπὶ τῇ διδαχῇ αὐτοῦ

"The crowds were astonished at his teaching." Passive in form; in English we would not call it passive at all.

The aorist middle

Augment, then the first aorist stem with its σα, then the same endings. Set it beside the imperfect above and the only difference is that σα.

The aorist passive is a different stem entirely and is the whole of chapter 15. So in the aorist, unlike everywhere else in this chapter, the middle and the passive really are distinguishable.

καθὼς ἐξελέξατο ἡμᾶς ἐν αὐτῷ πρὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου

"Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world." ἐξελέξατο is unmistakably a middle, and the aorist is where you can see that. What the voice adds is a harder question, and chapter 12 gave you the one to ask first: ἐκλέγομαι has no active anywhere in the New Testament. Of its twenty-two occurrences, twenty-one are middle and one is passive — there was nothing to choose against. A lexicon glosses the verb "to pick out for oneself", so that sense belongs to the word itself; it is not a decision the writer made in this verse.

Second aorist middles

A verb with a second aorist forms its middle on that stem, and conjugates it exactly like an imperfect middle. The stem is the only difference — which means the two are told apart by the stem and nothing else.

One verb dominates the category. γίνομαι gives ἐγενόμην, and ἐγένετο alone occurs 201 times: nearly a third of every aorist middle indicative in the New Testament.

Ἐγένετο ἄνθρωπος ἀπεσταλμένος παρὰ θεοῦ

"There came a man sent from God." Learn ἐγένετο as a word in its own right, rather than as a paradigm slot, and a third of the aorist middle indicatives in the New Testament come free with it.

The pluperfect middle and passive

Augment, reduplicated perfect stem, secondary endings straight on with no connecting vowel. The augment is often dropped, since the reduplication already identifies it.

Now the number, because it should govern how long you spend here. There are seven pluperfect middle or passive indicatives in the whole New Testament — seven different verbs, one occurrence each. Recognise the shape and move on.

οὐκ ἔπεσεν, τεθεμελίωτο γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν

"It did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock." That is one of the seven, and it is the house on the rock — so you have already met the form without knowing it.

How much of this you actually meet

Four chapters of middle and passive forms invite the question of where a week is best spent. The New Testament answers it:

The aorist passive is next chapter and is the largest of them. The pluperfect middle and passive is a rounding error. Spend accordingly.

What to watch for

The imperfect middle and the second aorist middle are identical but for the stem. ἐγίνετο against ἐγένετο — one vowel, and it is the whole tense.

The second singular contracts, again. ἐλύου and ἐλύσω do not look like they belong to their paradigms. They do.

Deponents stay deponent in the imperfect. ἔρχομαι gives ἤρχετο, πορεύομαι gives ἐπορεύετο. The imperfect is built on the present stem, so if the present had no active, neither does the imperfect. Do not extend that to the aorist: ἔρχομαι has ἦλθον, active in form, and the principal parts have to be learned one verb at a time.