THE ALPHABET OF BIBLICAL HEBREW

This page is an introduction to the alphabet of Hebrew Scripture.

Hebrew is a Semitic language. The word Semitic comes from the name Shem, named in

Genesis (6:10) as the son of Noah , whose descendants lived in the Middle East. Phoenician,

Hebrew, and Aramaic are Northwest Semitic languages, and Arabic is Southwest Semitic.

All are examples of Semitic languages, which have similar characteristics, such as the

presence of guttural letters formed in the pharynx or larynx; a consonantal system with

three-letter word roots to connote meaning; and changes in the form or morphology of the

word root through the addition of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes to determine the precise

sense and function of the word.

Hebrew tradition, the Torah itself, as well as Jesus and the New Testament writers name

Moses as the divinely inspired author of the Pentateuch (see discussion on Genesis 3:15).

Archeology has yet to discover the precise time that Moses led his people during the

Exodus from Egypt, or the actual script utilized by Moses to write the Torah. The discovery

of the Dead Sea scrolls found the entire Pentateuch written in the ancient Hebrew alphabet,

known as ketav Ivri or Paleo-Hebrew.

Phoenicia (now Lebanon) was a peaceful sea-faring nation expert in navigation and trade

that developed their alphabet around 1400 BC in an effort to communicate with their

diverse trading partners that encircled the Mediterranean Sea. It was the Phoenician

alphabet that was widely received throughout the Mediterranean world, as it was only 22

letters based on sound, as opposed to the myriad of symbols in cuneiform and hieroglyphics

prevalent at the time. The ancient Hebrew alphabet (ketav Ivri or Paleo-Hebrew) was nearly

identical to the Phoenician alphabet that follows:

Biblical Hebrew contains 22 letters, as noted in Psalm 119, all of which are consonants.

The alphabet and language remained pure until the Babylonian exile in 587 BC, when

spoken Hebrew came under the influence of other languages, particularly Aramaic. Aramaic

became the prevailing language, or "lingua franca" of the entire Middle East from about 700

BC to 700 AD. Because of the Dispersion of the people of Israel to Babylon and Egypt,

knowledge of pre-exilic texts was dependent on oral tradition. This occasionally gave rise to

an ambiguity of interpretation for a text written purely in consonants.

The Hebrew language adopted the square script alphabet of Imperial Aramaic, known as

ketav Ashuri.

Tradition holds that Ezra adopted the Aramaic square alphabet in place of the ancient

Hebrew alphabet during the post-exilic Restoration of Israel in the fifth century BC. As the

Aramaic alphabet became the Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew papyri and parchments were then

primarily written in Aramaic script. The ancient Hebrew alphabet has persisted to the

present day solely with the Samaritans. The Biblical Hebrew text available to us today is

thus written in the Hebrew language with the adopted Aramaic alphabet.

Jesus and his Apostles spoke Aramaic. However, the Aramaic language was largely

replaced by Arabic with the rise of Islam in the seventh century AD, and is barely spoken

today.

In the East, the Phoenician and Aramaic alphabets evolved into and survived as the alphabet

of Biblical Hebrew:

Please note that the letter ו in Biblical Hebrew was known as waw and pronounced as w, as יהוה Yahweh, and ויקרא

Wayiqra, the original Hebrew name for the Book of Leviticus, whereas in modern Hebrew ו is known as vav and pronounced as v.

Note that the guttural letters א and ע

are generally silent in contemporary pronunciation, and assume the sound of their related

vowel. In fact, the laryngeal א and the pharyngeal ע have been two of the most difficult

letters to pronounce.

Hebrew is written from right to left. There are no capital letters in Hebrew. Letters stand

alone in printing or writing. Observe that five letters, Kaf, Mem, Nun, Peh, and Tsade, have

a final form when the letter occurs at the end of a word. For example, Peh at the beginning

or middle of the word has the form of פ, but at the end of a word appears as ף.

Notice that in the pronunciation column, six letters (aleph, het, tet, ayin, tsade, and shin) do

not convert directly into our alphabet, and have been given symbols for transliteration,

which are sometimes employed in biblical or scholarly works. Please observe in the

following chart the distinctions in the pronunciation and transliteration of the three forms of

the letter shin: unpointed shin (as in original texts or modern unpointed contemporary

script), shin with a dot over the right-hand corner, and shin with a dot over the left-hand

corner.

In addition, three letters, Bet ב, Kaf כ, and Peh פ, vary in pronunciation depending on the

presence of a dot. The point or dot within a letter, as seen in the three letters Bet, Kaf, and

Peh, is known as a dagesh. The functions of a dagesh include: (a) to signal the doubling

effect of a consonant, as in the letter p in יום כפור, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement; or

(b) to emphasize pronunciation, as the letter Bet with the dot is hard b, as in ball, whereas

Bet without the dot is soft and becomes v, as in have . Note the pronunciations in the

following chart:

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Numbers one through ten have two forms - masculine and feminine, depending on the noun

to which they refer. Number one אחד may mean one or first, as in Genesis 1:5, the First

Day. Sometime during the Maccabean period (the second century BC), the letters of the

alphabet began to represent numbers, such as the first ten letters of the Hebrew alphabet

began to signify numbers one through ten, as seen in the presentation of the Ten

Commandments.

TIME OF MANUSCRIPT

Two characteristics of ancient Hebrew (before 1000 BC) were the pure use of consonants,

and the use of an epicene personal pronoun (a personal pronoun that does not distinguish for

male and female) - the same word is used for both "he" and "she." This use of an epicene

personal pronoun

הוא

first appears in Genesis 2:11, occurs in Genesis 3:15, and appears 120 times throughout the

Pentateuch of Moses in Hebrew Scripture, but not in the Prophets or Writings.

Beginning in the pre-Exilic period, from the ninth to the sixth centuries BC, the following

three consonants,

yod י ,waw ן ,hey ה

were used at the end of a word to indicate final vowels. Beginning in the post-Exilic period,

waw and yod were also used as vowel indicators within a word.

The recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls were written purely in consonants.

During the ninth and tenth centuries AD, the Masoretes, Jewish scholars in Tiberias,

Galilee, perfected a system of points or nikkud for vowel notation and added it to the

received consonantal text. The vowel points were added to ensure proper interpretation and

reading of Hebrew Scripture, and are known as the Masoretic or Tiberian vowel points. This

point system was added without altering the spacing of the text.

All of these considerations help biblical scholars to date a particular Hebrew text. For

instance, the presence of "pointed text" allows biblical scholars to date manuscripts to at

least the latter part of the first millennium AD.

VOWELS

Vowels in Masoretic Hebrew Scripture are a combination of the historically long vowels,

Hey, Waw, and Yod, and the Masoretic or Tiberian Vowel Points. Vowels are long or short

in quality and quantity. Hey ה, Waw ו, and Yod י became known as "matres lectiones," or

"mothers of reading," as they assisted in reading Scripture. The individual letter used as a

vowel was known as a mater. Waw served as a vowel and was pronounced as long o or u,

whereas Yod as a vowel was pronounced as long e or i. Hey served as a final long a. The

Masoretic vowel points in conjunction with the mater helped to clarify and preserve the

proper pronunciation, so that, for example, waw with a dot over it ו was pronounced long o,

and waw with a dot beside it ו was pronounced long u. The vowel points for Hey and Yod

occur underneath the prior letter.

The Shewa ◌ sign, a colon under the letter, is written in the absence of a distinct vowel

sound, and may be vocal or silent. Shewa under the first letter of a word or syllable, or

following a long vowel, is vocal, and becomes a semi-vowel, and is pronounced as a half of

a short e. Shewa under a letter that closes a syllable is silent. With the guttural letters aleph

,vocal shewa is combined with three vowel signs (Patah, Segol ,ע and ayin ,ח het ,ה hey ,א

and Qamets) to produce three hurried vowels known as the hateph vowels.

The following chart summarizes the Masoretic vowel points. Notice in the following chart

that the majority of vowel points appear under the letter, except for long o when it occurs

over and to the left of the letter.

We recommend the three reference textbooks below for an in-depth study of Biblical

Hebrew.

This multiple form of vowel notation accounts for much of the variation in word formation

in the Masoretic text. For example, Joshua, the son of Nun, in Judges 2:7, is spelled two

different ways in the same sentence! The mater Shureq ו is utilized for the vowel u in the

first spelling, while the short vowel point Qibbuts ◌

is incorporated for the second spelling.

VOCABULARY

Hebrew words with the same root often have related meanings. For example, ילד means to

give birth; ילד is boy; ילדה means girl; ילדים is children or boys; and ילדות means childhood

or youth. Syllables are of two types in Hebrew: open and closed. An open syllable ends in a

vowel, whereas a closed syllable ends in a consonant. Accent is primarily on the last

syllable. The following chart of 40 words is primarily from the Books of Genesis and

Exodus. Nouns in Hebrew are either masculine or feminine. Note the verbs: to create in the

perfect tense representing completed action; to write in the imperfect tense of discourse; and

to call in the waw-consecutive tense of narration. A careful study of the pronunciation of

the Hebrew words should give one an appreciation for the phonetics of Hebrew letters and

vowels. Note that Yeshua, the true name of Jesus, appears throughout the Old Testament,

for it means the Lord saves!

SCRIPTURE READING

The following passage is Genesis 3:15 presented in Masoretic "pointed text." We have

preserved the epicene personal pronoun הוא in consonantal text, as one cannot know

whether the pronoun in the original script referred to "woman" or "seed (offspring)." The

Masoretic text renders this pronoun as masculine חוא . Remember Hebrew is written from

right to left, so the English translation is best understood when read in similar fashion. The

links at the end offer more passages in Hebrew for your study.

References

1 Minto A. Genesis 1-11. Course Lectures and Texts, Franciscan University, Steubenville,

Ohio, 2004.

2 Mansoor M. Biblical Hebrew - Step by Step, Volumes I and ll. Volume One, Baker Book

House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1980, 24th Printing, 2007; Volume Two, Third Edition,

1984, 13th printing, 2002.

3 Ross A. Introducing Biblical Hebrew. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan,

2001.

4 Lambdin TO. Introduction to Biblical Hebrew. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, New

Jersey, 1971.

5 The Hebrew Bible. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody,

Massachusetts, 2007.

6 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 2000.

7 Pentateuch. Navarre RSV Bible. Four Courts Press, Dublin, Ireland, 1999.

8 Rendsburg GA. A New Look at Pentateuchal HW'. Biblica 63:351-369, 1982.

9 Kohlenberger JR. NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament. Zondervan, Grand

Rapids, Michigan, 1987.

10 Brown F. Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Hendrickson

Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts, 2000.

The Bible

Book of Genesis

Genesis 1:1-5

Creation

Genesis 3:15

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF GOD

I am the Lord thy God ,

who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt (Mizrahim), out of the house of bondage.

Thou shalt not have any other gods besides me

Thou shalt not make for thyself any graven image

(carved idol) or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth

beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them or serve

them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, punishing the iniquities of the fathers upon

the children to the third and fourth generations of those that hate me; but showing mercy to

thousands of generations of those that love me, and keep my commandments.

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain ;

for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain.

Remember to keep holy the sabbath day ;

six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a sabbath, that is, the

rest of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not do any work therein, thou, nor thy son, nor thy

daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy ox, nor thy ass, nor any of thy

beasts, nor the stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant

may rest, even as thyself. Remember that thou also didst serve in Egypt, and the Lord thy

God brought thee out from thence with a strong hand, and a stretched out arm. Therefore

hath he commanded thee that thou shouldst observe the sabbath day.

Honour thy father and mother that thy days be long in the land which the Lord gives thee.

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's (goods) house or fields, nor his male or female slaves, nor his ox or ass, or anything that belongs to

him.

Deuteronomy 5:6-21

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

JUDAISM* AUGUSTINE ORIGEN

1 I am the Lord thy God.

I am the Lord thy God and thou

shalt not have any strange gods

before me.

I am the Lord thy God and

thou shalt not have other

gods besides me.

2 Thou shalt have no other

gods besides me.

Thou shalt not take the name of

the Lord thy God in vain.

Thou shalt not make for

thyself any graven image.

3 Thou shalt not take the

name of the Lord thy God

in vain.

Remember to keep holy the

Lord's Day.

Thou shalt not take the

name of the Lord thy God

in vain.

4 Remember the Sabbath

Day to keep it holy. Honor thy Father and Mother.

Remember the Lord's Day

to keep it holy.

5 Honor thy Father and

Mother. Thou shalt not kill.

Honor thy Father and

Mother.

6 Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill.

7 Thou shalt not commit

adultery. Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not commit

adultery.

8 Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness

against thy neighbor. Thou shalt not steal.

9 Thou shalt not bear false

witness against thy

neighbor.

Thou shalt not covet thy

neighbor's wife.

Thou shalt not bear false

witness against thy

neighbor.

10 Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not covet thy

neighbor's goods. Thou shalt not covet.