I Am Come A Light Into The world: AN Introduction To Deponent Verbs
At some stage early on in your study of New Testament Greek you will learn that, among other important features such as aspect, tense and mood, Greek verbs have a thing called voice.
Greek verbs have three voices as outlined below. The descriptions below are elementary only. Later posts will delve into the nature of Greek verb voices in more detail.
Active Voice
In the active voice, the subject of the verb is the one acting, the one doing. It is the voice that emphasises the action.
In Revelation 19:15 we read καὶ αὐτὸς πατεῖ τὴν ληνὸν “and he treads the wine press”. Here the verb πατεῖ is in the active voice. The act of treading is front and centre. The vision on the white horse is acting.
The Passive Voice
A little earlier on in Revelation 14:20 we read a similar phrase καὶ ἐπατήθη ἡ ληνὸς “and the winepress was trodden”. Here the verb ἐπατήθη is in the passive voice. Here the subject, i.e. the winepress, is emphasised. The action, while present, recedes into the background.
So far, so good. We are familiar with the active and passive voice in English. Compare the two sentences below.
The queen passes the poisoned chalice
The poisoned chalice is passed by the queen.
Sentence number 1. is in the active voice; the evil queen is carrying out the action. Sentence number 2. is in the passive voice. The action of passing is being performed on the chalice.
You can think of it like a movie shot. In sentence number 1. the director has the camera linger on the figure of the queen as she passes the poisoned chalice The act is all. In sentence number 2. the director has the camera pan with the chalice as it is passed. The chalice is the centre of attention. The action, while still occurring, is secondary.
A simple rubric is that the active voice indicates that the subject is carrying out the action of the verb, while the passive voice indicates that the action of verb is being performed on the subject.
New Testament Greek has a third voice that English does not possess.
The Middle Voice
In the middle voice, the subject acts on himself, herself or itself i.e. the subject is affected by the action of the verb.
The middle in this sense was widely used in Classical Greek. It is important to know that it is far less commonly used this way in Koine Greek.
Jeremy Duff in The Elements of New Testament (p. 173) points out that only a small number of verbs in the New Testament have a true active, middle and passive meaning and that it is primarily the author of Luke and Acts who makes use of verbs in their middle form with a middle voice meaning. You only need to read the opening passages of Luke’s Gospel to appreciate that here was an author steeped in Classical Greek.
As a result of this, it is important to remember in your reading of New Testament Greek that the vast majority of times that you come across a middle verb, it is because it is something called a deponent verb.
Deponent Verbs
It is important at the outset not to get too hung up on this concept. It is not some form of black magic.
A deponent verb is a verb that is middle in form but active in meaning. It is a verb that does not have an active form. (There is a tiny group of deponent verbs that are passive in form but active in meaning but this only becomes apparent in the Aorist tense).
The fact that it is a deponent verb does not change the meaning of the word. It simply means that when you go to look it up in a lexicon, you will not find the standard -ω or -μι active ending of the verb listed. You will find the -ομαι middle form of the verb listed.
If you want some background, the word deponent is from the Latin word depono, “I lay aside”. It is thought that at some stage in the history of the language, these verbs somehow “lay aside” their active forms in preference for their middle forms, although there is currently much scholarly debate about almost everything to do with deponent verbs. Thankfully, you do not need to get involved.
They are sometimes called middle-only verbs. All you need to know is that this small group of verbs exists and deponent is as good a label as any and the traditional nomenclature, the one you will find in most text books.
You need to know about deponent verbs because, although it is a pocket-sized group, there are some very commonly used words within it.
Common Deponent Verbs
The following are the ten most common deponent verbs in the New Testament.
γίνομαι - I am born
ἔρχομαι - I come
ἀποκρίνομαι - I answer
ἐξέρχομαι - I come out
δύναμαι - I can
εἰσέρχομαι - I come in
πορεύομαι - I travel
ἀπέρχομαι - I go away
κάθημαι - I sit
προσέρχομαι - I approach
In total, these words occur over 2,600 times in the New Testament. As you can see, ἔρχομαι and its cognates account for a large slice of them.
A Final Thought
If you stop and look at this list for a moment, you will see that most of these verbs express an action that essentially engages the self i.e. they express an action that the subject can experience only his or her self. Deponent verbs may not be as weird as you first thought.
