Learn Biblical Hebrew

Well you may be asking yourself, isn’t it a little bit too early to just, jump right into the Hebrew Text? In this matter there are two schools of thought, 1) learn the grammar, then get into the text; 2) get into the text, learn the grammar as you go along. Neither one is necessarily right; however, I am choosing to go the later route. This is the way my teacher taught me. We will get right into the text and learn the grammar as we go along. This allows you to get right into the Bible, as opposed to spending months and months on boring (sorry to all those grammatarians out there) grammatical issues without even looking at the text itself. So, without further ado, let’s start at the beginning, Genesis 1:1.

• The first thing you need to be aware of is that Hebrew is read right to left and not left to right as in English (and thus, the Hebrew Bible is read back to front - for English speakers that is!).
• Try to name each letter in each of the words starting at the right of the word and moving left until the end of the word. For example, the first word contains in order a Beyt, Shewa, Resh, Tsere, Aleph, Shin, Hireq Yod, and Tav.
• To pronounce the Hebrew words, you will need to understand the syllables. There are both open and closed syllables, open when it ends in a vowel, closed when it ends in a consonant. A syllable will never begin with a vowel, always with a consonant. With some practice you will be able to determine the number of syllables in a word. For example the first word contains three syllables:
  • Beyt, Shewa (Open)
  • Resh, Tsere, Alpeh (Closed)
  • Shin, Hireq Yod, Tav (Closed)
• To aid in pronouncing the Hebrew words, you can transliterate the words. This means to take the Hebrew letters and put them into English letters. This can make it easier to pronounce and can be used as a “crutch” early on in the learning process. To help in that process here is Genesis 1:1 transliterated (transliterations are read left to right as in English).
  • berēshît bārā’ ’ĕlohîm ’ēt haŝŝāmayim ve’ēt hā’ārets.
• Learn the meanings of each of the words or group of words. Here is where the fun begins. For now, I will simply give you the translation without going into much detail. The next lesson will show how we got to these meanings.
  • - “In the beginning”
  • - “God created”
  • - “the heavens”
  • - “the earth”
• Read it out loud. Start by reading it from the transliteration until you know how it should sound. From there, read it from the Hebrew letters themselves. The more you read the better, reading out loud is the best because it involves more of your senses: sight and sound.
• Memorize it. One of the big helps for me was to memorize the Hebrew. While this can take some time, it is valuable to at least start it. Start with the first three words, anything will help. This will help you to familiarize yourself with the sound of the language and improve reading skills.

Part two will focus on some of the grammar involved in this verse and how we came to the translation given beside each word or group of words.

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