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certain texts-such as the early narrative of the Book of Exodus and the last of the Psalms-
are virtually written in two different dialects and should be studied with this in mind.
E. Characteristics of the Hebrew Language.
Because Hebrew is a Semitic
language, its structure and function are quite different from Indo-European languages
such as French, German, Spanish, and English. A number of Hebrew consonants cannot
be transformed exactly into English letters. Therefore, our English transliterations of
Hebrew words suggest that the language sounded very harsh and rough, but it probably
was very melodious and beautiful.
Most Hebrew words are built upon a three-consonant root. The same root may appear
in a noun, a verb, an adjective, and an adverb-all with the same basic meaning. For
example,
ketab,
is a Hebrew noun meaning "book." A verbal form,
katab,
means to
"write." There is also the Hebrew noun
ketobeth,
which means "decoration" or "tattoo."
Each of these words repeats the basic set of three consonants, giving them a similarity of
sound that would seem awkward in English. It would seem ludicrous for an English
writer to compose a sentence like, "The writer wrote the written writing of the writ." But
this kind of repetition would be very common in biblical Hebrew. Many Old Testament
texts, such as Genesis 49 and Numbers 23, use this type of repetition to play upon the
meaning of words.
Hebrew also differs from English and other Indo-European languages in varying the
form of a single part of speech. English has only one form of a particular noun or verb,
while Hebrew may have two or more forms of the same basic part of speech. Scholars
have studied these less common forms of Hebrew words for many centuries, and they
have developed a vast literature about these words. Any study of the more important
theological terms of the Old Testament must take these studies into consideration.
F. The Form of Words (Morphology).
In principle, the basic Hebrew word consists
of a three-consonant root and three vowels-two internal and one final (though the final
vowel is often not pronounced). We might diagram the typical Hebrew word in this
manner:
C1+V1+C2+V2+C3+V3
Using the word
katab
as an example, the diagram would look like this:
K + A + T + A + B + _
The different forms of Hebrew words always keep the three consonants in the same
relative positions, but they change the vowels inserted between the consonants. For
example,
koteb is
the participle of
katab,
while
katob is
the infinitive.
By extending the verbal forms of their words, Hebrew writers were able to develop
very extensive and complex meanings. For example, they could do this by adding
syllables at the beginning of the three-consonant root, like this:
Root = KTB
yi + ketob-"let
him write"
we + katab-"and
he will write"
Sometimes, a writer would double a consonant while keeping the three basic
consonants in the same position. For example, he could take the root of KTB and make
the word
wayyiketob,
meaning "and he caused to write."
The Hebrew writer could also add several different endings or
suffixes
to a basic verb
to produce an entire clause. For example, using the verb
qatal
(meaning "to kill"), he
could develop the word
qetaltihu (meaning
"I have killed him"). These examples