First words

Seventy words, nearly half the Hebrew Bible

Learn by ear the seventy commonest words and seven names, before you learn the letters

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אֵת

et: the commonest word in the Hebrew Bible, 10,936 times, and it has no translation

This lesson comes before the alphabet. You cannot read the letters yet, so every word here is shown three ways: the Hebrew, its sound in plain Latin letters, and its meaning. Learn the words by ear, as the film does; the script will catch up from Lesson 1.

Seventy words, plus seven names you already know, make up 47% of all the words in the Hebrew Bible: nearly every second word on the page. (The count is the Hebrew Bible itself, word by word. The little words written joined to the next word, such as "and" and "the", are not counted.)

1. Seven names

You know these already; only the sound is new.

The seventh is God's own name, four letters, and the second commonest word in the Bible (6,522 times). By long custom it is not pronounced: readers say Adonai, "the Lord", where it stands. In this course it is written [the LORD] in transliteration.

Our English names came through Greek and Latin, which is why Mosheh became Moses and Yerushalayim Jerusalem.

2. The glue: sixteen small words

Small, plain, and together nearly a sixth of the whole text.

et, the word that means nothing. It points at the thing an action lands on: בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם bara Elohim et ha-shamayim, "God created et the heavens". English shows that with word order, so it has nothing to put there.

lo and al. לֹא lo states a fact, "you will not"; אַל al asks, "please do not".

Three pairs of twins. al "do not" and al "on", im "if" and im "with", et (the marker) and et "with" sound alike to English ears, but are spelled with different letters. In writing you will never mix them up; when listening, let the sentence decide.

3. The people: nine words

These words hide inside names. אַבְשָׁלוֹם Av-shalom, Absalom, is "father of peace". אַחְאָב Ach-av, Ahab, is "father's brother". אֲבִימֶלֶךְ Avi-melekh, Abimelech, is "my father is king". And in Genesis 2:23 the man calls the woman ishah "because she was taken out of ish".

4. The pointing words: eleven

hinneh is the storyteller taking your arm: older translations say "behold". Joined to ani it becomes הִנֵּנִי hinneni, "here I am", the answer of Abraham (Gen 22:1) and of Moses at the bush (Exod 3:4).

mah. When Israel first saw the bread in the wilderness they asked מָן הוּא man hu?, "what is it?" (Exod 16:15). man is an old form of mah, and the name stuck: manna.

5. The world: fourteen words

Places. בֵּית לֶחֶם Bet-lechem, Bethlehem, is "house of bread"; בֵּית אֵל Bet-El, Bethel, "house of God".

The body thinks. "In the hand of" someone means in their power, "in the eyes of" someone means in their opinion, and "before" someone is "to their face". panim is plural: Hebrew has no word for a single face.

Three of these are also letters. The letter bet is named "house", yod "hand", ayin "eye". You will meet them in Lessons 1 and 2.

davar is both "word" and "thing": in Hebrew a word and a thing are one word.

6. The verbs: twenty

Each verb is given in its plainest form, "he did it".

amar "he said" is the commonest verb in the Bible (5,308 times): this is a book in which people mostly talk. Many of these verbs live on in words and names: Shema Yisra'el "hear, O Israel" (shama), Nathan and Jonathan "gift" (natan), aliyah "going up" (alah), yeshivah "a sitting", a place of study (yashav). shuv "turn back" is also the Bible's word for repentance.

7. Two words together

A small ha- on the front of a word means "the".

The last is the prophet Nathan's answer to King David, after the story of the stolen lamb: two words, and you know both.

8. Whole verses

These verses are made only of your seventy words and the names.

וַתֹּאמֶר אֵלֶיהָ כֹּל אֲשֶׁר־תֹּאמְרִי אֵלַי אֶעֱשֶׂה

vattomer eleha: kol asher tomri elay e'eseh

"And she said to her: all that you say to me, I will do." (Ruth 3:5)

amar twice, el twice, kol, asher, asah. The words wear small additions: va- "and" on the front, endings for "she", "you" and "me". Underneath, they are your words.

וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים אֵת כָּל־הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה לֵאמֹר

vaydabber Elohim et kol-ha-devarim ha-elleh lemor

"And God spoke all these words, saying." (Exod 20:1, before the Ten Commandments)

There is et again, pointing at "all these words" and doing its quiet job. And the six best-known words of Judaism, every one of them on your list:

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָד

shema Yisra'el: [the LORD] Eloheinu, [the LORD] echad

"Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one." (Deut 6:4)

Three of the five books of Moses are named by words you now know: Exodus is שְׁמוֹת Shemot "names" (shem), Leviticus וַיִּקְרָא Vayyiqra "and he called" (qara), Deuteronomy דְּבָרִים Devarim "words" (davar).

9. Next

Try it in Biblion: open Exodus 20:1 in the Study Bible or the Interlinear and find your words in it. Then mark this lesson as done, and go on to Lesson 1: six letters, five vowels, and the first two words of the Bible.