Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/337

 ports himself in imagination into the future that he describes the future event as if it had been already seen or heard by him, e.g.  therefore my people are gone into captivity ;  ff.,,  (after , as frequently elsewhere); , ,. Not infrequently the imperfect interchanges with such perfects either in the parallel member or further on in the narrative.

(c) To express actions or facts, which are meant to be indicated as existing in the future in a completed state (futurum exactum), e.g. =when he shall have washed away (an  follows in the co-ordinate sentence; cf. the conditional sentences in );  (after, as in , ; also  after ,  after  and elsewhere frequently after temporal conjunctions);  ;  —if I am bereaved (orbus fuero), I am bereaved, an expression of despairing resignation. Cf. ,.

4. To express actions and facts, whose accomplishment in the past is to be represented, not as actual, but only as possible (generally corresponding to the Latin imperfect or pluperfect subjunctive), e.g. except the God of my father... had been with me, surely now hadst thou sent me away empty ;,  ( almost put forth, &c.); , , ,  ; ; so frequently after , ,  (where  is probably to be connected with the word after it), , , ,. Cf. also, ,  (if I should think, &c.; cf. ); in the apodosis of a conditional sentence, .—So also to express an unfulfilled desire,   ( with the imperfect would mean would that we might die! ). Finally, also in a question indicating astonishment,.

The imperfect, as opposed to the perfect, represents actions, events, or states which are regarded by the speaker at any moment as still continuing, or in process of accomplishment, or even as just taking place. In the last case, its occurrence may be represented as certainly imminent, or merely as conceived in the mind of the speaker, or simply as desired, and therefore only contingent (the modal use of the imperfect).