Tag Archives: Hebrew

Now I Know My ABCs

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The Alphabet Song—it’s one of the first songs we learn as children.

We sing “A-B-C-D-E-F-G….”
before we know the sound each letter makes,
before we understand that letters can be combined to make words,
before we comprehend that words can be put together to make sentences,
before we grasp that sentences can create stories that can become books.
The letters of the alphabet are the building blocks of language.

The next time you go into a library or book store,
look at the plethera of books and think,
“Every word in every book on every shelf has used the same 26 letters.”

From Goodnight Moon to Paradise Lost—
from People magazine to Encyclopedia Britannica.
All we have is 26 letters.
And endless combinations to make millions of words. 

The ancient Hebrew alphabet had 22 letters.
Back in 2020, I did a series on each of the letters in the Hebrew Aleph-Bet.
Every day, those blog posts are still read.
Every single day.
Five years later.
I don’t know who you are, but thanks for reading!
To make it easier to access, I created a category called “Hebrew Alphabet.”
May God bless the letters in both of our alphabets.


For further reading:
ABCs
Aleph
Bet


Dayenu

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This year, the Jewish Passover runs from April 5-13, which also coincides with the Christian Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday. The timing is perfect to learn a new Hebrew word: Dayenu.

Dayenu is a song of gratitude that is sung during the Passover Seder meal. It rehearses all the things God did for the Israelites during their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Here are a few of the 14 verses.

If He had smitten their first-born, and had not given us their wealth,
Dayenu, it would have been enough!

If He had given us their wealth, and had not split the sea for us,
Dayenu, it would have been enough!

If He had split the sea for us, and had not taken us through it on dry land,
Dayenu, it would have been enough!

If He had taken us through the sea on dry land, and had not drowned our oppressors in it,
Dayenu, it would have been enough!

If He had drowned our oppressors in it, and had not supplied our needs in the desert for forty years,
Dayenu, it would have been enough!

If He had supplied our needs in the desert for forty years, and had not fed us the manna, 
Dayenu, it would have been enough!

You get the idea.
Dayenu means
“It would have been enough!”

During this Holy Week,
I’m singing my own version of Dayenu, with a twist.

If He had sweat drops of blood in the Garden, but had not taken the cup,
it wouldn’t have been enough.

If He had taken the cup, but had not allowed the soldiers to arrest Him,
it wouldn’t have been enough.

If He had allowed the soldiers to arrest Him, but had not worn the crown of thorns,
it wouldn’t have been enough.

If He had worn the crown of thorns, but had not endured the whipping,
it wouldn’t have been enough.

If He had endured the whipping, but had not been nailed to the tree,
it wouldn’t have been enough.

If He had been nailed to the tree, but had not bled and died,
it wouldn’t have been enough.

If He had bled and died, but had not risen on the third day,
it wouldn’t have been enough.


But,
He wore the crown,
He drank the cup,
Death took Him down,
God raised Him up.
And it is more than enough.
Dayenu!

A Million Words

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Do you know where were you on June 10, 2009, at 10:22 a.m.?
Something momentous happened at that moment.
It was a big day in the world of liguistics.
(Linguistics: the science of language.)

Give up?
The English language passed the million word threshold.
As of January 1, 2020, the official count was 1,057,379 words.
(www.languagemoniter.com)

3D animation

That’s a lot of words.

Unfortunately, the most current Oxford English Dictionary only contains 171,476 of them. And the average English speaking person only uses about one eighth of those. Just think of all the things we could say and write and sing about if we made use of all those lovely words.

In contrast, the Biblical Hebrew language had 8,000 words stemming from 2,100 root words. That’s 992,000 less words to work with than contemporary English.

Paradoxically, the richness of Hebrew comes from its poverty. Because this ancient language has so few words, each one is like an overstuffed suitcase, bulging with extra meanings that it must carry in order for the language to fully describe reality. (Lois Tverberg, Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewish Words of Jesus Can Change Your Life) 

Unpacking those suitcases full of extra meaning
is what makes studying the Bible so interesting.
Thank you for studying with me.

suitcase