When studying the Tenach/Old Tesament each word must be understood through its Hebraic understanding. To often we use Webster’s Dictionary or own understanding of a word to interpret the passage. What do the words create, covenant, choice and pure mean to you when you read them in your Bible? Did you know that all of these words are related to each other in the Hebrew, meaning they all come from the same root and have a common meaning?

We often think in abstracts, something that cannot be seen, heard, felt, smelled or tasted. A good example of an abstract thought is “purity”. Can you draw a picture of purity? Can you smell, taste or hear it? The ancient Hebrews were concrete thinkers and in order to understand a word from their perspective you must understand it in its Hebraic concrete understanding.

The Hebrew vocabulary is a root oriented system beginning with two letters combined to form a “parent” root. By adding other letters (in a specific fashion) new roots and words are formed out of the “parent”. In this series of the “word of the week” we will be looking at the parent root “BaR” and its offshoots.

This parent root was written as in the ancient pictographic Hebrew script. The first letter (reading from right to left) is the picture of a tent floorplan and means “house” or “family”. The second letter is the head of a man and means “head”. When combined these two letters mean “family of heads” and is the Hebrew word for “grain”. Grains consist of a head with a cluster of seeds and grains consist of a variety of species including barley, wheat, etc. – families of heads.

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If you are beginning to learn Hebrew an interlinear Hebrew Bible is an excellent tool. An interlinear such as this one will have the Hebrew text on one line with an English translation of each word underneath. The advantages to this interlinear is that it contains the entire Tenach/Old Testament in one volumne, is easy to read and includes a complete NIV translation in a column on the side. The drawback is that the NIV translation is used in the interlinear, as the NIV was meant to be a conceptual translation rather than a word for word translation it can make the interlinear English text difficult at times.

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The word "and" and its use in Hebrew poetry.

In the Western style of writing, an account is broken up into sentences. Each thought is written and closed with a period. The Eastern style of writing on the other hand continues a sentence dividing each thought with the word "and". Below is a translation of Genesis 1:3-8 retaining the "and" as found in the Hebrew.

and God said let there be light and there was light and God saw that the light was good and God separated between the light and the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness he called night and there was an evening and there was a morning a first day and God said let there be an expanse between the water and let there be a separation between the waters from the waters and God made the expanse and God separated between the waters under the expanse and the waters above the expanse and it was so and God called the expanse sky and it was evening and it was morning a second day.

In Genesis 12:1 we can see the poetry of God's command to Abraham to leave his hometown in three different ways.

Leave
a. from your land
b. and from your people
c. and from the house of your father
and go to the land I will show you.

In the above example of Abraham's departure, he is not leaving three different places, he is leaving one place but is stated in three different ways. If I said I have a plate and a saucer, you will correctly assume that I have two items. But, in Hebrew, the plate and the saucer would be one and the same object. This is Hebrew parellelism, mentioning one thing two different ways.