Untitled Sermon (6)

Past time – Imperfect always describes something that happens in the past.

Continued action – Imperfect always describes something that is continued, repeated or habitual

When you encounter an imperfect verb in Greek, imagine that you have been zapped in a time machine and dumped into a scene in the past.  You look around and ask, “What’s going on?” chopping down trees.  You don’t know when they started their task, and you don’t know how long they will keep it up.  You just know that the work was in process when you looked.

That’s when Greek uses the imperfect tense.  When you return to the 21st century to give your report, you say, “The peasants were chopping down trees.” 

Summary:  The imperfect tense is the ideal way to describe an action that was in the process of happening at some time in the past.