Initiation to Biblical Hebrew (the First Day)

Welcome! This is a page specially written for readers of The Genesis Blog who would like to learn a little about the language in which Genesis was originally written, Biblical Hebrew. We will take the first five verses of Genesis and study the Hebrew words in these verses.

Hebrew script

In reality you need to learn the Hebrew writing system if you really want to study Hebrew seriously, but that takes time and practice and I won't assume you have done that, so for this lesson we are going to study Hebrew in transcription.

Pronouncing Hebrew

Here is a thumbnail sketch of Hebrew pronunciation based on the transcription system used here, just so you have an idea how to read it. Note that there are different ways and traditions of reading Hebrew: don't worry about it or ask why that is, for now!

• If a vowel has an accent written on it, that is the stressed syllable: shamáyim 'sky', xóshekh 'darkness', rúax 'breeze', máyim 'water', láyla 'night', ‛érev 'evening', bóqer 'morning'.  Otherwise the last syllable of words is stressed: reshit 'beginning', bara 'created', elohim 'God', haor 'the light', qara 'called'.
• Five vowels: a, e, i, o, u and an unstressed "half vowel" called sh'wa which will be indicated by an apostrophe, e.g. b'reshit [bәreshít] 'in the beginning of', w'haáretz [vәhaáretz] 'and the earth', p'ney [pәnéy] 'the face of', t'hom [tәhóm] 'Tehom, the Deep'. Sometimes the sh'wa is silent and there is a lot of leeway, so it's okay to pronounce b'reshit as [breshít] if you like, and p'ney as [pnéy], way'hi [vay(ә)hí] 'was (m.)', hay'ta [hay(ә)tá] 'was (f.)'.
• Between two like vowels (e.g. aa), you can pronounce a glottal stop if you want: haáretz [ha(ʔ)áretz] 'the earth'. When sh'wa is next to a vowel, do pronounce the glottal stop, e.g. b'er [bәʔér] 'well, water hole'.
• Consonants to note: both w and v are pronounced [v], both x and kh are pronounced [x] (like ch in Bach, j in viejo), both k and q are pronounced [k], both t and T are pronounced [t], sh is pronounced like in English. ‛ (called ‛áyin) is a special throaty sound but you can ignore it if  you like.
• Consonants that are written double should in theory be pronounced double, but we often forget to: hashshamáyim [hash(sh)amáyim] 'the sky', hammáyim [ham(m)áyim] 'the water', wayyómer [vay(y)ómer] 'said (m.)', etc.

Now try getting your mouth around the Hebrew lines we are going to study today:

1 b'reshit bara elohim 
et hashshamáyim w'et haáretz
2 w'haáretz hay'ta tóhu wavóhu
w'xóshekh ‛al p'ney t'hom
w'rúax elohim m'raxéfet
‛al p'ney hammáyim
3 wayyómer elohim: y'hi or
way'hi or
4 wayyar elohim et haor ki Tov
wayyavdel elohim beyn haor uveyn haxóshekh
5 wayyiqra elohim laor yom
w'laxóshekh qara láyla
way'hi ‛érev way'hi vóqer yom exad


Listen to an audio recording of this.

Study verse 1

Vocabulary:
reshit beginning
elohim God
shamáyim heaven
éretz earth
bara created (masculine subject)
et with, or object marker
b' in
ha the
w' and

The last four are grammatical words: et and b' are prepositions, ha is the definite article, and w' is a conjunction. The last three are written attached to the following word: b'-reshit 'in beginning', ha-shamáyim 'the sky', w'-et 'and + (obj.)'. The article ha causes most following consonants to double: ha + shamáyim makes hashshamáyim 'the sky'. The noun éretz 'earth' is irregular, with the definite article it changes to -áretz: haáretz 'the earth'.

Study verse 2

Vocabulary:
xóshekh darkness
t'hom "the Deep"
rúax breeze, wind, spirit
máyim water
tóhu wavóhu in chaos, void
hay'ta was (feminine)
m'raxéfet flitting, fluttering (participle, feminine)
p'ney face of (construct form)
‛al on, above, over

In the genitive construction ('of'), the thing possessed is followed by the possessor, e.g. rúax elohim '(the) wind of God' or '(the) spirit of God'. The possessed noun (here, rúax) is said to be in the construct state. Sometimes the construct state is different from the absolute state (used elsewhere), for example the construct state of panim '(sur)face' is p'ney: p'ney hammáyim '(the) (sur)face of the water'. Therefore we say that p'ney means 'face of'. Even if the noun in the construct state is definite in meaning, it never takes the definite article: ‛al p'ney hammáyim 'above the (sur)face of the water'. The phrases with construct states in this verse are:

‛al p'ney t'hom
w'rúax elohim
‛al p'ney hammáyim

Every noun in Hebrew is grammatically either masculine or feminine. Verbs agree with their subject in gender, so they have a masculine and a feminine third-person-singular form:

bara (m.), bar'a (f.) created
haya (m.), hay'ta (f.) was, became

In verse 1, bara is masculine because the subject is elohim. In verse 2, hay'ta is feminine because the subject is a feminine noune, xóshekh.

Study verse 3

Vocabulary:
or light
wayyómer said (m.)
way'hi was (m.)
y'hi let there be! (m.)

In addition to meaning 'and', w' is sometimes placed at beginning of a clause in narrative texts with no special meaning, just linking sucessive clauses together loosely. That might be the case of the w' in w'ruax elohim... in v. 2, for example. The form of verbs such as bara, haya (which usually express past tense) changes when the verb comes first in the clause and is preceded by the w' particle (which then changes to wa and causes the following consonant to double). For example, take the verb amar 'said (m.)'. The other form of this verb is y-ómer, y- being the prefix for masculine in the third person in this set of forms. Wa is prefixed to this, and causes the y to be doubled, giving wayyómer 'said (m.)'. So there are two ways to say 'said': the plain form amar and the w- form wayyómer. In narrative texts, wayyómer is used when the verb comes first in the clause, and amar is used if it is not first in the clause: wayyómer elohim... 'God said'.

The masculine plain form of 'was' is haya, and the other masculine form is y'hi; in this form wa doesn't cause doubling, so the other way to say 'was (m.)' is way'hi. Thus: way'hi or 'there was light'. The feminine of haya is hay'ta. Notice that this plain form is used in w'haáretz hay'ta... 'the earth was...' (v. 2) because the verb doesn't come first in the clause!

Placing a word other than the verb first in the clause sometimes puts emphasis on (topicalizes) that word, and it may indicate a change of discourse topic.

Notice that the form y'hi without wa has a jussive sense.

Study verse 4

Vocabulary:
Tov good
ki that (conjunction)
beyn between
raa, wayyar saw (m.)
hivdil, wayyavdel divided (m.)

The consonants b, p and k sometimes change (mutate) to different sounds, which are v, f and kh respectively. The conjunction w' is irregular: when a labial consonant follows it (p, b or m), it changes from w' to u. Following u, p and b mutate. So from w' and beyn we get u-veyn 'and between'. In English we say 'between X and Y'; in Hebrew, beyn X and beyn Y.

Study verse 5

Vocabulary:
yom day
láyla night
‛érev evening
bóqer morning
exád one (m.)
qara, wayyiqra called (m.)
la to the (= l' to + ha the)

Notice that the preposition l' is also used for the object of some verbs, such as qara here. The prepositions l' and b' contract with the definite article, with loss of ' and h: laor 'to the light', bammáyim 'in the water', etc.

Notice how the verb can stand first or second in the clause. The effect of putting something before the verb (w'laxóshekh in this instance, in the second line) may be to express contrast, as here. Notice again how the change results in a completely different form of the verb being used: qara in the second clause because it is not initial and doesn't take wa, but wayyiqra in the first clause because of the presence of wa prefixed to the verb itself. Both clauses begin with w-, the difference between them is in their word order.

The numeral exad follows the noun: yom exad.

The reason why bóqer mutates to vóqer in the last line is that it is preceded by way'hi which ends in a vowel.

Exercise

Now see if you can remember the meaning of these phrases and sentences:

‛al p'ney hammáyim

way'hi or

b'reshit bara elohim et hashshamáyim w'et haáretz

wayyómer elohim: y'hi or

w'xóshekh ‛al p'ney t'hom

wayyiqra elohim laor yom

yom exad

wayyar elohim et haor

w'laxóshekh qara láyla

way'hi ‛érev

ki Tov

w'haáretz hay'ta tóhu wavóhu

way'hi vóqer 
w'rúax elohim m'raxéfet
wayyavdel elohim beyn haor uveyn haxóshekh