Fifteen chapters have added one piece at a time. This one puts them together, adds nothing new, and gives you a way of taking any indicative verb apart.
It is worth knowing what you now have. There are 15,589 indicative verbs in the New Testament — 56% of all its verb forms — and between chapters 3 and 15 you have met every tense and every voice they use.
The slots a Greek verb fills
A Greek verb is built in slots, and each slot carries one piece of meaning. Not every slot is filled in every form, but they always come in this order:
| Slot | What it says | Example |
|---|---|---|
| preposition | a compound verb (ch8) | ἀπ- |
| augment or reduplication | augment: past time in the indicative (ch7). reduplication: the perfect (ch10) | ἐ- / λε- |
| stem | which verb it is | λυ |
| tense or voice marker | σ future, σα aorist, κα perfect, θη passive | -σα- |
| connecting vowel | ο before μ or ν, otherwise ε | -ο- |
| ending | person, number, and often voice | -μεν |
The endings do double duty, which is worth holding onto: -μεν is active, -μεθα is middle or passive, -νται is present, future or perfect, -ντο is past.
The whole indicative on one page
Six tenses and three voices, and the marker that identifies each. Read down the middle column: that is what you are looking for.
| Tense | Marker | Active | Middle / passive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | nothing at either end | λύω | λύομαι |
| Imperfect | augment, no aspect marker | ἔλυον | ἐλυόμην |
| Future | σ | λύσω | λύσομαι |
| Aorist | augment + σα | ἔλυσα | ἐλυσάμην |
| Aorist passive | augment + θη | — | ἐλύθην |
| Perfect | reduplication (+ κα active) | λέλυκα | λέλυμαι |
| Pluperfect | augment + reduplication | ἐλελύκειν | ἐλελύμην |
That is the entire indicative system, and you have met every row of it. The full paradigms are in Tables; what is worth carrying in your head is the middle column.
How to take a verb apart
Four questions, in this order. It is worth doing them in order, because each one narrows what is left.
1. Is there an augment or reduplication at the front? An augment means imperfect, aorist or pluperfect. Reduplication means perfect or pluperfect. If there is neither, it is a present or a future. In a compound, look inside the word for it.
2. Is there a σα, or a bare σ? σα with an augment is a first aorist. σ without one is a future.
3. Is there a κα, or a θη? κα is a perfect active. θη is an aorist passive — or, with a σ after it, a future passive.
4. What does the ending say? Person and number, and whether the voice is active or not.
If nothing at the front and nothing in the middle, it is a present. That last step is the one with an exception waiting: chapter 19 meets verbs whose stem ends in λ, μ, ν or ρ, and they build a future with no σ at all. Until then, nothing in the middle does mean present. If an augment and nothing in the middle, it is an imperfect or a second aorist, and only the stem will tell you which.
Working one out
Ὃ ἐγὼ ποιῶ σὺ οὐκ οἶδας ἄρτι, γνώσῃ δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα
"What I am doing you do not know now, but you will understand afterwards." Three verbs, three different answers, and every one of them a thing this course has warned you about.
ποιῶ — no augment, no marker, so present. The ending is first singular active. (Its odd look is contraction, which is chapter 19.)
οἶδας — this one the algorithm will not give you. οἶδα is irregular, and you know it is a perfect because the lexicon says so. Second singular active, and perfect in form only: it means "you know", not "you have known" (chapter 10).
γνώσῃ — no augment, a σ before the ending, so future. The ending is middle. Second singular: "you will know" (chapter 13).
The verse opens with ἀπεκρίθη … καὶ εἶπεν: an aorist passive that means "he answered" (chapter 15) beside a second aorist active (chapter 7). Five finite verbs in one sentence and five different answers.
Where time actually lives
One last thing to carry out of the indicative, because everything after this chapter depends on it.
Only the indicative marks time. The augment is the single genuinely temporal element in the Greek verb, and it appears nowhere else. In the subjunctive, imperative, infinitive and participle, a tense gives you aspect first, and any time it carries is relative to the main verb rather than fixed to when the writer wrote. Chapter 20 works that out for participles.
So an aorist participle is not a past participle. An aorist infinitive is not a past infinitive. In the chapters ahead the question is never "when?" but "how is the writer viewing the action?" — as a whole, as going on, or as a standing result.
That distinction is the single most useful thing in the course, and the indicative is the one place where it is partly hidden, because there tense really does carry time as well.