No, the usage of the verb forms in Biblical Hebrew is not identical with that of Modern Hebrew (or Mishnaic Hebrew for that matter). In Modern Hebrew Yiqtol is future, Qatal is past, and participle is present tense (more or less). Mishnaic Hebrew is largely the same. It clearly isn't so in Biblical Hebrew.
And no, the perfective/imperfective distinction doesn't work either. It works about half the time -- which is what you would expect of a coincidence. My impression is that European scholars, used to Indo-European languages with their complex encoding of time/sequencing/modes by verb forms, are and have always been baffled by the Hebrew verb forms which don't seem to work in the same way, and try to impose some non-existent rules by any means possible. It just doesn't work.
Vav conversive + yiqtol form ("imperfect") is a past event in Biblical Hebrew, pretty much always (at any case, I can't think of exceptions). The very same action, though, can be encoded in the qatal form ("perfect") if the author chooses to put the subject first, before the verb. And the reason for that choice can be any number of things: it can be a focus on the subject rather than the verb, it can be in order to mention an action which is not a part of the same series of actions (which may or may not be the equivalent of a perfect verb in English in a particular context), it can simply be a signal for the end of a series of actions (as in the last verb in Genesis 1:5a, which ends a list of actions of God that starts at 1:4).
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