Notes from a Hebrew Geek

The Hebrew Alphabet starting from the upper right:
aleph, beit, gimel, dalet, hei, vav,
zayin, het, tet, yod, kaf, lamed,
mem (shown in two forms), nun, samekh, ayin, pei,
pe at the end of words, tsadei, qof, reish, shin, tav.

I love taking Hebrew!

I started in 2008 when I needed to know Hebrew to teach Women & Religion at California State University, Northridge.  We surveyed women in ancient religions in Sumeria and Akkadia; women in Greek, Roman and Egyptian religions; women in Judaism; women in Christianity, and women in Islam--all in one semester.

Also I needed Hebrew to read the Psalms.  I like to read five of them daily to complete all 150 in a month.  Sometimes I just skim and pick one to focus on.

But the psalms are poetry--songs!  Why read them in English?  Why read Shakespeare in Russian?

What really drove me to learn Hebrew are the acrostic psalms--the ones in which the first letter of each line begins with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  See the alphabet above.

The acrostic psalms are Psalm 9-10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, and 145.  See also Proverbs, chapter 31, and Lamentations, chapters 1-4.

For example, here's the acrostic part of Psalm 9 and 10.  The two are actually a single poem because the lines of Psalm 9 begin with Aleph, Beit, Gimel, (Dalet is missing), Hei, Vav, Zayin, Het, Tet, Yod--and there the sequence is interrupted by lines that don't match.  Then Psalm 10 takes up the order again with Lamed, Mem, Nun, Samekh, Ayin, Pei, Tsadei, Qof, Reish, Shin, and Tav.  Welcome to Hebrew geek land! 

The meanings of the key words that start each line in Psalm 9 are:
Thank (odeh) as in the common Hebrew word "Todah!" (Thank you)
In You and In turning (B'shuv)
Destroyed & Nations (Goyim--non-Jews, a word that is often used by Jews speaking English)
The (enemy) & He (Hu)
Will be (vihi)
Sing (zamru)
Have mercy  (honeni)
Sank (tavu)
Return (yeshuvu)
For  (qui)
Eternally (lanetzach)

I like to know which are the key words, even when I'm reading in English.

The meaning of the key words that start each line in Psalm 10 are:
Why (lama)  (as in Jesus' words on the cross)
Far removed (marom)
Innocent (naqi)
Lair (sukkah)
Poor (ani)
Mighty limbs
Arise (qumah) as when Jesus told a dead child to rise
See   (raitah)
Break (shevor)
Desire 

Notice how many cognates there are between Hebrew and English:
Shevor  ---   Shiver into pieces
Qumah --- come
Hu --- he
Ha --- the

There are at least four cognates in just this tiny sample of Hebrew words.  That's because both Hebrew and English are Indo-European languages--like German, Latin, French, Spanish, Arabic, etc.  

For me, languages are endlessly intriguing.  And no, I didn't learn Akkadian or Sumerian, Egyptian or Arabic to teach women in religion.

Here's a delightful bit of trivia:  In the first chapter of Genesis, the words often translated "formless and void" are tohu va-bohu in Hebrew.

Tohu is related to the word tehom a few words later, often translated "the Deep." 

Possible depiction of the killing of Tiamat
By Ben Pirard at nl.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3217534

And both are cognates with Tiamat, the watery goddess from which all life is born in the Akkadian creation story, Enuma Elish.  She represents sea water, and she mates with Apsu, representing fresh mater.  She births all life, but her male progeny rise up to kill her, leaving only Apsu and a bunch of male gods.  


I first learned about the tohu-tehom-Tiamat connection while reading a footnote in The Inclusive Bible published by Rowman & Littlefield and translated by Priests for Equality. Bible scholars Robert Graves and Raphael Patai first pointed out the connection.

Akkad and Sumer were cities in the vicinity of Ur, where Abraham and Sarah were living when YHWH told them to Lech lahem --Get up and go "to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1).  

Ur was a great city of Mesopotamia, near the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, in Sumeria.  So of course the emigrants from there knew about the goddess Tiamat and carried her name in their vocabulary to represent primordial salt water and birth.