Hoffman, Joel. In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language. New York: NYU Press, 2006.

Hoffman traces the history of the Hebrew language from its antiquity to modern times. This book filled in some gaps in my knowledge of the language especially as it pertains to the differences in spelling, grammar and pronunciation of Hebrew in its different stages of development. People who have studied biblical Hebrew will benefit from his chapters on the Masoretes since most students are familiar with the Tiberian tradition but most likely never heard of the Babylonian or Palestinian families. Hoffman walks the reader through what we can learn from the Dead Sea scrolls followed by a tour of the different dialects in the Hebrew Bible and post-biblical Hebrew. I especially appreciated his chapter on Modern Hebrew with the fascinating story of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who brought Hebrew back to life. Some readers may find some portions of the book a bit tedious, especially his discussion on spelling. But people like me who can’t get enough of Hebrew will appreciate the balance between a popular treatment of the subject and his attention to the details of the language.

Rachel is weeping for her children
She refuses to be comforted by her children
Because they are gone

“Jeremiah could not have known that he was right in writing down his thoughts to ensure their preservation. Along with Psalm 122 and the rest of the Jewish canon, they would later be translated into Greek, buried in caves in Qumran, translated into Latin, analyzed by medieval grammarians who sought (and failed) to preserve their ancient sounds, and preserved for the future in a codex kept in Leningrad, eventually to be used as the foundation for a modern spoken language of Hebrew” (Hoffman 2004: 212-3).

These are just a few books that I’ve read recently that have helped me get a little beyond the basics of Biblical Hebrew.

Arnold, Bill T., and John H. Choi. A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Bilingual. Cambridge University Press, 2003. This is a great book for a quick review of Biblical Hebrew syntax, and the wealth of examples makes it an enjoyable reading. Although it was written to be used as a reference, I recommend reading through the whole book at least once as it may help you get a general sense of syntactical issues and exegetical possibilities. This might be a good book to read before working through An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax by Bruce Waltke and M. O’Connor which is a much larger work and also highly recommended.

Garrett, Duane A. Amos: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text. Baylor University Press, 2008. Tucker, W. Dennis. Jonah: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text. Baylor University Press, 2006. These volumes are useful for those familiar with the basics of Hebrew syntax. The quality varies from book to book, and some passages are more insightful than others. There is some (unnecessary) repetition, so the reader may find himself skipping some sections if he is working his way through a volume. I found the handbook on Amos to be more helpful than the one on Jonah, but that may be due to the book’s genre and size. I recommend that the reader work on the Hebrew text first on their own and then work through the handbook (most will probably just use it as a reference). Often times the authors will point things out in the text that you may have missed in your first reading or will provide some much needed background on the passage. Let me give you an example from a small part in Jonah 1:3 (in red). וַיָּקָם יוֹנָה לִבְרֹחַ תַּרְשִׁישָׁה מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָה וַיֵּרֶד יָפוֹ וַיִּמְצָא אֳנִיָּה בָּאָה תַרְשִׁישׁ וַיִּתֵּן שְׂכָרָהּ וַיֵּרֶד בָּהּ לָבוֹא עִמָּהֶם תַּרְשִׁישָׁה מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָה Tucker points out that בָּאָה is a participle instead of a Qal qatal 3rd femine singular because the accent (which is not in the text above) is on the final syllable. Students familiar with the pronunciation of verbs like בוא will not be surprised by this observation, but it may take a trip to a commentary or article to know that some translators assume this to be a future predicate particle yielding the translation “about to go to Tarshish.” However, Tucker also says that הנה usually appears when impending action is indicated so this reading may not be justified (see NIV). He then talks about Sasson’s contention that בוא “typically directs the movement toward the narrator of the story.” After observing that Tarshish does not have the directive he, this may well imply that the ship has returned from that city. Tucker does not decide on the correct reading, and the student is responsible to evaluate what makes sense. Although this is a small example (and not all comments may be contain this much information), it gives you a flavor of what the handbook does. As you can see, it is more than a parsing guide. Although I think these handbooks can be very helpful if used properly, I still wish something could be written with the same goal of helping students get into the text, but that would also follow the format and approach in Readings in Biblical Hebrew (see below). Update: There is a scathing review by John Engle in the Review of Biblical Literature on Garrett’s Amos. He concludes “that it offers only limited guidance to its readers due to its large number of errors and uncertain methodologies.” My suggestion is that you read the review, mark his observations and then enjoy the rest of the book. That Engle could hardly find anything good to say about a 300+ page book may indicate that his concerns, though legitimate they may be, ignore the usefulness of this resource of which there are not many.

Ehud Ben Zvi, Maxine Hancock, and Richard A. Beinert. Readings in Biblical Hebrew: An Intermediate Textbook. Yale University Press, 1993. This is an intermediate level Hebrew reader that inductively introduces the student to passages in the historical, legal, prophetic and wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible. This textbook is sort of a continuation of the introductory grammar by Kittel. You will be exposed to lots of genres and the notes are fantastic. Because the textbook inductively introduces the student to Hebrew syntax, A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax may be a good complement. You may be wondering how this book may differ from the Baylor handbook series. If we take the same example from Jonah, which is not covered in this book, Zvi and Beinert may start by asking the reader what the function of the accent is in determining how one parses בָּאָה and whom or what this verb is modifying. They may include notes (which may contain different translations of the verse) and a “For Further Thought” section with background information and questions. The main difference is that the handbook is designed to be a reference whereas Readings is like a professor walking you through the passage without giving all the answers but enough to orient the student. Sadly, I think this is the only one there is. I am a bit surprised that nobody has seen fit to write other volumes.

The exchange between Jacob Milgrom and Roy Gane on the proper meaning of the preposition מן (usually translated in its privative sense from) in some passages of Leviticus gives us an opportunity to take a look at the semantic possibilities of מן that may escape the notice of a  student beginning to learn Hebrew.

To be more specific, the question is whether the meaning of מן in the חטאת pericopes in Leviticus– passages concerning purification offerings (traditionally translated as sin offerings)–should be translated as from (privative) or as for, on account of, because of (causitive). My goal in this post is not to summarize the arguments for and against the position of each scholar, but to show how important the right understanding of מן, and prepositions in general, may be for reconstructing whole systems or even getting behind the theology of a book.

But, before we talk about Leviticus, let’s take a look at an example from HALOT where מן is causitive:

וַיָּנֻעוּ אַמּוֹת הַסִּפִּים מִקּוֹל הַקּוֹרֵא וְהַבַּיִת יִמָּלֵא עָשָׁן

The doorposts would shake at the sound of the one who called, and the House kept filling with smoke. (Isaiah 6:4 JPS)

In this verse, מִקּוֹל is translated as at the the sound (voice), and the reason why this translation is possible is because it essentially says that the doorposts (or whatever this means) would shake because of (מן) the voice of the one who called.
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For this parable, we are going to have the benefit of not only seeing its Hebrew but also two translations. John Hobbins was kind enough to translate the text in two posts entitled “The Parable of the Banquet in the Talmud.” In the first part, he looks at the exchange between R. Eliezer and his students culminating in a quote from Qohelet. Hobbins reminds us of the importance of taking the context of the parables into consideration as they may have never been stand-alone units.

I have my doubts about the tendency to treat parables as self-contained units. They may have been (or may never have been), once upon a time, autonomous units. But, just as is the case with the parables of the New Testament, the parables of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud do not stand on their own anymore. Relationship to context needs to be taken into full account.

In the second part, he looks at the parable of a king who invited his servants to a feast (hence the title of the parable). He also provides a list of non-biblical expressions in the Talmud text and a vocalized biblical Hebrew assimilation that makes it a lot easier to read.

In the book They Also Taught in Parables, the authors go all the way to the end of Berakhot 153a since the last unit has R. Meir’s son-in-law expanding on the last parable. To make things a little easier to follow, I will divide this whole section (as demarcated by the book) into three parts. The first two will follow Hobbins’ sense-units and the last will include the conclusion. I will first provide the translation in They Also Taught in Parables (PT) followed by the Hebrew text and Hobbins’ translation (HT) (expect, of course, for the last part).

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John Goldingay talks about blessing as one of the aspects of “God speaking” in creation. God’s speech is life-giving. He mentions something Genesis Rabbah says concerning the fact that Torah does not start with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, ‘aleph. And what does that have to do with blessing? Here is what he says,

“Thus blessing “is not simply a friendly wish” but “a bestowal of life-force… an act whereby the power-for-life monopolized by Yahweh generously is transmitted to Abraham and his descendants” (Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997], p. 165) — and here to humanity as a whole and to other living creatures. God shares power-for-life with the animal world. The prominence of the blessing theme makes for a pointed contrast with the gloomy vision of other Middle Eastern stories of the origins or the world and humanity, as well as with the troubled experience of Israel in; for instance, the exile. Genesis Rabbah 1:10 (on Gen 1:1) sees here another significance in the fact that Scripture begins with a bet, not an ‘alep, the second letter of the alphabet rather than the first, since b is the first letter of the word for blessing (whereas ‘aleph is the first letter of the word for curse). “Bless” has the first word in Scripture” (Israel’s Gospel, 54).

Side Note:

I was curious to find out when blessing and cursing first occur in the Bible. Blessing first makes its appearance in Genesis 1:22:

God blessed them, saying, “Be fertile and increase, fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.”

The noun blessing is used for the first time in Gen 12:2.

I could not find the noun for curse using the root ארר (which is what I think the midrash has in mind), since it is usually קללה which HALOT defines as a curse-formula by which someone or something is designated as cursed (ארור). So the first time the verbal form of ארר is used in the Bible is in 3:14:

Then the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you did this, More cursed shall you be Than all cattle And all the wild beasts: On your belly shall you crawl And dirt shall you eat All the days of your life.

The first time God blesses something is on the fifth day and what He blesses is specifically living beings. The interesting comment in Genesis Rabbah is that the first letter already foreshadows that. I think it is a little ironic that the first curse is also attributed to a living creature.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. (Psalm 23:5)

Even people who may not be too familiar with the biblical text will recognize the phrase “my cup runneth over” as coming from the Bible (and some might even guess it is from a psalm or Psalm 23). But, what does that really mean… my cup runneth over/overflows? Yalkut Shemoni (A haggadic compilation on the books of the Old Testament) has, in my view, an unexpected interpretation:

Said R. Abbaye, “from here we learn that the cup of David in the times to come [Messianic Age] will hold 221 logs [133 liters].”

Now that’s a big cup.

Although here we get no explanation of why David will have such a big eschatological cup in the Messianic Age, we know where the number 221 comes from. Gematria is the calculation of numerical equivalence of letters, words or phrases. For example David in Hebrew is דוד (sometimes also spelled דויד), since each letter has a numerical value we get ד = 4) + (ו = 6) + (ד = 4) = 14). New Testament commentators point out that Matthews’ genealogy revolves around the number 14 which, as we just saw, is David’s number.

The Hebrew word translated as “runneth over” (more literally translated as “satiation” as in JPS’s translation “my cup is full”) is רויה, (ר=200; ו=6; י=10; ה=5) = 221. Therefore, according to this interpretation, the phrase כוסי רויה stands for “my cup is 221″ which is then attributed to David in the future.

This type of interpretation does not seem very promising if we are interested in understanding what it is meant by “my cup is full” without the dubious aid of gematria. But it does put the focus on the very interesting word רויה (satiation).
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As I was reading a book on Jewish folkloric tales, I came across a story called The Aleph-Bet and immediately fell in love with it. It is short, cute and extremely imaginative.

I modified the original by including the Hebrew alphabet and words instead of their transliterations for visual effect. I think that even those who don’t know Hebrew will be able to follow the story and get its message.

The Aleph-Bet

When God was about to create the world, all twenty-two letters of the Aleph-Bet leapt off the flaming crown of God and crowded around the Heavenly Throne, pleading, “Create the world through me!”

First the (tav), the last letter of the aleph-bet, came forward. “I am the first letter of (Torah),” it said. “Create the world through me, for later on I will give Israel all its laws and stories.”

“No,” replied God, “for in future days you will serve as a sign – mayt ** – to be placed upon the foreheads of the dead.”

So the departed from the Heavenly Throne, its head bowed in shame.
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In chapter 2 “Proverbs – The Wisdom of Words,” Roland talks about the nature of the book of Proverbs and that “the true subtlety of the book is seldom recognized in its popular usage. A moral code undergirds it, but the real intent is to train a person, to form character, to show what life is really like and how best to cope with it” (15). One of the main things that Proverbs tries to do is persuade the reader. He looks at the first division, chapters 1-9, and considers verses 1:1-6 its hermeneutical key. Verse 1:7 is the motto of the book (with parallels in 9:10 and 31:30) and he quotes von Rad who said that this verse “contains in a nutshell the whole Israelite theory of knowledge” (16). I thought this was a very insightful way of understanding verse 7. I heard N. T. Wright once talk about being intrigued by the idea of love as a way of knowing. Here von Rad says that the fear of Yahweh is Israel’s epistemological center. I wonder how far we can take that idea. Read more »

The Tree of Life: An Examination of Biblical Wisdom Literature was written by Roland Murphy and seems to be highly recommended (with your usual caveats) as an introduction to wisdom literature. Part of the reason I wanted to read this book was because Murphy also covers Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon, and I wanted to sink my teeth into these books (I plan to read them when I get to chapters 5 and 6). Read more »

One of the things that intrigued me about this psalm is the way it seems to play with the word ‘ak. This has been duly noticed by commentators who take the word to be either restrictive (“only”) or asseverative (“truly”). The question then becomes which of these two senses the psalmist has in mind or if both are meant. James Boice lamented, for example, that Marvin Tate took the word to be asseverative in his translation. Boice believed that what the psalmist really meant was that his confidence was in God alone, the most important theological statement of the psalm. Read more »