Piotr Wójcik John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin mail: piotr_wojcik@icloud.com The tense category of Biblical Hebrew verbs and ways of its translation Introduction This paper aims at presenting the notion of tense category in Biblical Hebrew and how Hebrew verbs were translated in chosen English translations of the Bible. Hebrew verbs are very difficult and complicated to understand for contemporary people. Even Biblical scholars cannot agree whether the language had just two tenses, that is the past and the future, or whether just aspects: perfect and imperfect. This is because the verbs had only two forms for each grammatical person. Therefore, the paper will briefly deal with basic knowledge about Biblical Hebrew verbs and describe how the tenses are seen from the point of view of English grammar (basing on the ways how Hebrew structures are translated into English). Then, it will compare excerpts from the Psalter, which has always been the most frequently translated portion of the Bible, with chosen English translations to exhibit the variety of possible translations. 1. Biblical Hebrew tenses Biblical Hebrew verbs were based on roots, which usually consisted of three consonants. The basic form of the verb was the past form of the third person masculine singular. It was made of the above-mentioned three root consonants and vowels that were added between them. In order to change the person or the tense, 1 at least one process of affixation took place. Usually it was the infixation of a vowel between the root's consonants, prefixation of a consonant to indicate the future tense, or affixation of a consonant and a vowel to exhibit a different grammatical person. Although it may seem easy at first, it is not so, because Biblical Hebrew 1 The category of tense will be clarified and described later on.