Exactly! At least that's how we learned it . . . ;-)
Of course, it's not entirely clear -- to me, anyway -- just how the ancient Hebrews perceived time as indicated by tense: there's the rather odd (again,to me anyway) "vav conversive" and the fact that Biblical Hebrew just doesn't have a present tense. (Modern Hebrew, probably influenced by the Western languages, uses what was originally a participial -- to borrow from Latin grammar, as English grammatical terminology does -- form as the present tense.)
I read an article years ago on the Hebrew verb that said in Biblical Hebrew, the important aspect of a verb was not whether it indicated past or future action but whether it indicated a completed or not-completed action. I guess it's the sort of thing you just have to read enough of it to let it soak in -- which I haven't yet, but I'm trying!
There was a made for TV movie about some American Indians a bazillion years ago. it tried for some kind of "authenticity" which seemed to include translating Sioux into literal English. I remember thinking at the time that it was almost as weird in tense as Hebrew.
I don't know how to think a bout this, except possibly to conjecture that "we" are very comfortable with the idea of time as a line with our back to the past and our face to the future, and so forth. But how to wrap my head aqround a language that seems to say, "I went to the store and I will pickup some milk and I will check out the peanut butter and I will pay for it," all about something that happened yesterday ... well, yes. Tea I think.