אָבַל ʼâbal — to bewail
Translated in the KJV as lament, mourn.
a primitive root; to bewail.
ʼâbal in each stem
Hitpa'el
Wayyiqtol 8Participle (active) 6Jussive 2Perfect (qatal) 1Imperative 1Imperfect (yiqtol) 1
And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days.
And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments.
And Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel: and the people mourned greatly.
Qal (Pa'al)
Perfect (qatal) 11Imperfect (yiqtol) 4Sequential perfect (weqatal) 3
But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn.
And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.
The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish.
Hiph'il
Wayyiqtol 1Perfect (qatal) 1
The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.
Thus saith the Lord God; In the day when he went down to the grave I caused a mourning: I covered the deep for him, and I restrained the floods thereof, and the great waters were stayed: and I caused Lebanon to mourn for him, and all the trees of the field fainted for him.
What the stems mean
A Hebrew verb is its root letters set into a pattern. The pattern — the binyan — is the grammar's way of saying three things at once: whether the action is simple, intensive or causative, and whether its subject is active, passive or reflexive. That is why one Hebrew word can need six English ones. All seven binyanim, explained ›