Learn Biblical Hebrew

The other day we started by giving an overview of Genesis 1:1, including all the Hebrew words and their translated meaning. We also saw that Hebrew is to be read from right to left (and back to front), the syllables are either open or closed, how to transliterate the words, and how to pronounce them.

Today we will take a closer look at the words themselves and how we came to the translation we did. So let’s dive right in!

This Hebrew word, transliterated berēshît is actually two words combined into one. Think of combing to words as similar to the word “can’t”. The word “can’t” is made up of two words, “can” and “not,” which combined can become either “cannot” or “can’t.” I use the illustration of “can’t” because when we combine these two words they have changed (the ‘o’ is replaced by the ”’). In Hebrew often times a preposition is attached to the noun forming one word.
In this particular case the preposition is the beyt and the shewa. This is the preposition which in this case is translated as “in.” The remaining part of the word, rēshît, is the word of “beginning.” Putting the two words together we come to the translation “In the beginning.”

This word, transliterated as bārā’, is a verb. It carries the idea of creating something. For the technical parsing of the word (which we will get into more detail later) is a Qal Perfect 3rd Person Masculine Singular. What this basically means is that it is a regular verb taking about past action in the third person and refers to a singular subject. So the basic translation of this word then is “he/it created.”

Generally in Hebrew the verb comes before the subject, unlike in English where the verb comes after the subject. For example in English we say that “Johnny caught the ball.” However the word order in Hebrew is different, if written in Hebrew it would translate into English as “he caught Johnny the ball” - meaning he caught, that is Johnny, the ball.

This is one of the Hebrew words for God. It is transliterated as ’ĕlohîm. Technically this is a plural masculine noun. The plural is the plural of majesty, that is, often kings referred to themselves, or were referred to in, the plural, even though they were just one person. This is the Jewish interpretation of why the word is plural. The Christian might insist that its plurality is a “hidden” indicator of the Trinity. The word ’ĕlohîm is the “generic” word for God; it is not the name of the Lord - Yahweh. However, this word refers, in the Hebrew mind, to the same God.

Putting this word and the previous word together, keeping in mind the word order of verb then subject, we translate these two words as “God created.”

The word ’ēt is not directly translated into English. It is the “sign of the direct object.” In other words, this Hebrew word is a “pointer” word which points to the word right after it and declares that the word to which it points is the direct object. Going back to our previous example of Johnny and his ball catching, the direct object in the sentence “Johnny caught the ball” is “the ball.” In Hebrew the word ’ēt simply points to that word.

This word contains both a noun and the definite article. It is transliterated as haŝŝāmayim. It is believed that originally the definite article was probably the word hal, but somewhere along the line it was “assimilated” into the connecting noun. So the hey and the pathak indicate the definite article “the.” In Hebrew there is no indirect article as there is in English (”a” or “an”), there is only the definite article. Context is also an indication of the need to have a direct or indirect article when translating the text.

The remaining word ŝāmayim is the word for “heavens.” Technically it also is a plural masculine noun. So this word would be translated as “the heavens.”

This is another word that has two words in one. It is the combination of the conjunction “and” with the sign of the direct object. The waw and the shewa indicate the conjunction and context determines its meaning (usually either “and” or “but”). Here is means “and.” We have a repetition of the word for the sign of the direct object. This indicates that there are actually two direct objects in our sentence. An English example would be “Jimmy cooked eggs and ham.” The words “eggs” and “ham” are both direct objects of the verb. This word then is translated simply as “and”

The word hā’ārets is again combines the definite article along with the noun. Does it look familiar? It’s close, but slightly different (the joys of language). The hey followed by a qamets is our definite article. If you look two words above you’ll recall that there the hey was followed by a pathak to make the definite article. The simple reason there is a difference is because of the aleph… let’s just say it makes things “difficult.” Nonetheless, this is the definite article. It is followed by the word ’ārets which is the word for earth. (Technically it would be ’erets, but because of the definite article it changes, but don’t worry yourself about that right now). This word would be translated as “the earth.”

Putting it all together we have “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (The character at the very end which looks similar to the English colon, is the symbol for the end of the sentence.)

So there you have it. You just translated a portion of the Hebrew text! And in fine fashion I might add! That wasn’t too bad now was it? Next time we’ll take a look a little deeper into some of the grammatical issues this verse has raised (don’t worry, I’m not going to go that deep on you!).

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