15 Hebrew and Aramaic, and How They Work, Peter J. Williams
15
Peter J. Williams
The main language of the Old Testament is Classical Hebrew, but some parts are in Aramaic (Ezra 4:7–6:18; 7:12–26; Jer. 10:11; Dan. 2:4–7:28). Two words of Aramaic also occur in the place name Jegar-sahadutha in Genesis 31:47.
The form of Hebrew found in the Bible was probably spoken from as early as 1500 BC to some time after 400 BC. Although Aramaic (the official international language of the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires) came increasingly into daily use among Jews, many Jews (at least in the Jerusalem area) continued to use a form of Hebrew (which later developed into “Mishnaic” Hebrew, the language of the Mishnah). Hebrew documents with varying degrees of similarity to Biblical Hebrew have been found at Qumran and in the desert of Judah, with dates from the second century BC to the second century AD. The synagogues in Palestine retained the use of Hebrew as a sacred language. Modern Hebrew, which was developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is based on the earlier forms of Hebrew and is one of the official languages of the modern state of Israel (founded in 1948).
Both Hebrew and Aramaic are part of the wider family of languages that since 1781 have been labeled “Semitic,” a name derived from that of Noah’s son Shem. However, languages from this group were also spoken by some peoples (such as the Amorites, Babylonians, and Canaanites) that Genesis does not record as being descended from Shem.
SEMITIC LANGUAGES
While there are many Semitic languages, they can generally be organized according to the three regions where they were spoken: (1) East Semitic (Mesopotamia), including Old Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian; (2) South-West Semitic (parts of northeastern Africa), including North Arabic (the language of the Qur’an) and Ethiopian; and (3) North-West Semitic (Syro-Palestine), including Amoritic and Ugaritic, along with Hebrew, Phoenician, Moabite (the Canaanite branch), and Aramaic and Syriac (the Aramaic branch). When considered together, the Semitic languages have a longer continuous history of being written than almost any other group.
Alphabet
Hebrew, Aramaic, and some neighboring Semitic languages share an alphabet of twenty-two consonant letters only (twenty-three if the sin and shin are counted separately) and are read from right to left. The shape and order of these Hebrew characters had been distilled by the second millennium BC, before the time of Moses (and the writing of the Old Testament). This alphabet was then passed by way of the Phoenicians to the Greeks, while the Hebrew and Aramaic forms of the script began to diverge. The form of Hebrew script generally used until at least the Babylonian exile, and still found in some Dead Sea Scrolls, is known as the Paleo-Hebrew script. Some of its letters still resemble their equivalents in the Greek alphabet. During the rule of the Persians (539–332 BC) the square Aramaic (or Assyrian) script was adopted for writing Hebrew, with the result that the forms of letters originally used for Aramaic are now almost universally associated in people’s minds with Hebrew (see fig.15.1).
The alphabet itself has had an effect on the form of certain texts in the Old Testament. A number of the Psalms (Psalms 9; 10; 25; 34; 37; 111; 112; 119; 145) are arranged as types of acrostic poems composed around the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, as are the first four chapters of Lamentations.
MATRES LECTIONIS
In order to give further precision to pronunciation of words, and to clarify ambiguities between words that shared the same consonants, three of the consonant letters came to be used to represent vowels. The letter h (
) represented a or e; w (
) represented o or u, and y (
) represented e or i. In inscriptions from biblical times, these matres lectionis (Latin for “mothers of reading,” i.e., “vowel letters”) were rare before the exile, and it is therefore often held that preexilic biblical writings that display extensive use of matres lectionis had these letters added after the time of composition to help readers understand the words properly. It is still the case, however, that earlier texts, such as the Pentateuch, are more sparing in the use of these than, for example, postexilic writings such as the books of Chronicles.
ROOTS
Semitic words are generally based on so-called roots consisting of three consonants. Vowels and a limited range of other consonants are arranged around these roots to produce words. Consider the following Hebrew words:
melek (“king”)
malkah (“queen”)
mamlakah (“kingdom”)
malak (“he reigned”)
malkut (“reign”)
The constant element in all of these words is the consonant sequence m-l-k, which is associated with royal rule. Sometimes a particular word may occur only once in the whole Old Testament, and the question naturally arises as to how its meaning is known. If, however, there are other words from the same root, its meaning can be identified in relation to them (with due consideration given also to its context).
MASORETIC POINTING
The Old Testament writings were produced using consonants only. Pronunciation was possible by adding vowel sounds to the consonantal words, and thus the particular vocalization and accentuation of Biblical Hebrew was understood aurally, and was therefore taught and memorized and passed down to each successive generation orally through the Jewish schools and synagogues.13 However, as Biblical Hebrew was no longer in use as a spoken language among the Jews, and in order to avoid ambiguities in the text by ensuring that the correct pronunciation was not lost, Jewish textual scholars between the fifth and eighth centuries AD devised and inserted into the Old Testament text a system of vowel points to guide readers in how the words should be correctly vocalized and accented.
These Jewish scribes, known as the Masoretes (from the Heb. masorah, “what was handed down,” i.e., “tradition”), applied this system of “pointing” by adding marks (dots and strokes) around the consonants without disturbing or changing any of them. The Masoretes thus “pointed” the Hebrew text of the Old Testament with symbols indicating vowel sounds so that the traditional way Scripture had been read and heard in the synagogues would be preserved even though Biblical Hebrew was ceasing to be spoken among the Jewish people. Here is an example of the word “king” in unpointed and pointed form:
In addition to providing guidance as to which vowels occur within a word, the Masoretic pointing also distinguishes between different pronunciations of the same letter. The so-called begadkephath letters—b, g, d, k, p, and t—also had the spirant (or fricative) pronunciations bh, gh, dh, kh, ph, and th. A single dot (called a daghesh) inside the letter (e.g., 
) would specify the “hard” pronunciation b rather than the “soft” pronunciation bh (
), etc. By the position of a point, Masoretic notation also distinguished two different sounds that lay behind the Hebrew letter
. Hebrew represented s (sin) and
represented sh (shin). Medieval Hebrew manuscripts also contain a further set of marks known as accents or cantillation signs, which indicate division and cohesion in the text and specify the way the text should be sung in the synagogue.
Masoretes actively worked in three areas—Babylon, Palestine, and Tiberias. Eventually it was the tradition from Tiberias (called Tiberian vocalization), particularly the work of the Ben Asher family in Tiberias (c. AD 900), that came to be preserved in the Hebrew Bible today (i.e., the Masoretic text [MT]; thus also the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia [BHS]). However, a further guide to the historical pronunciation of words is available in the tradition of pronunciation of the Pentateuch among the Samaritans. On the surface, the Samaritan pronunciation usually seems rather different from the Tiberian vocalization. Yet when historical sound changes are taken into account, it often shows regular correspondence to that of the Masoretes.
VERBAL SYSTEM
Almost all Hebrew verbs are built upon three root or stem consonants (alluded to above), though these will rarely appear in the text without an accompanying affix of some kind. There are seven main stem formations (or binyanim) of Hebrew verbs: Qal, Niphal, Piel, Pual, Hithpael, Hiphil, and Hophal. Each of these seven divisions convey something different about the relationship between the subject and the verbal action (active, passive, reflexive, causative, etc.), and these are apparent by the characteristic changes that the same three-consonant verbal stem undergoes within each division (though most verbs do not occur in all seven stem formations).
The many structural differences between Hebrew and English influence translation. Whereas English has a system of verbal tenses (i.e., time of action—past, present, future, etc.), many grammarians prefer to say that Hebrew has two verbal aspects (i.e., kind of action—complete, incomplete) known as the perfect and imperfect. In the simplest terms, these aspects consider actions as either complete or incomplete, respectively. Thus, the Hebrew imperfect is frequently used for referring both to events in the future and to repeated events in the past. A further complication is the relationship that the perfect and the imperfect verb have with the conjunction “and” (Hebrew letter waw). When waw () attaches as a prefix to a perfect or imperfect verb, it may at times appear to reverse the function of the perfect or imperfect aspect so that the perfect then communicates incomplete action and the imperfect communicates complete action, even if, from a historical perspective, this is not actually what is happening (it actually preserves an old tense form). Such differences between the Hebrew and English verbal systems can make translation difficult at times. However, in most prose texts, the temporal location of the narrative is immediately clear and, consequently, so is the way in which one should render a passage. Poetic texts are more complex, but there is still a surprising agreement between English translations as to which tense to use.
THE WAW PARTICLE
Closely connected with the verbal system is the ubiquity of waw (; “and”) in the Hebrew Bible. It is used to begin books with no previous connection with another narrative (e.g., Esther, Ezekiel, Jonah) and is the main particle connecting clauses in prose texts. Although Hebrew has some particles that carry senses such as “but,” “therefore,” and “because,” these words are less commonly used than waw, which in connection with various clauses can be rendered by a range of terms. The ESV, for example, renders waw by the neutral “and” where appropriate, but also uses words such as “now” (Judg. 2:1), “so” (Judg. 2:14), “then” (Judg. 2:16), and “but” (Judg. 2:19) when the context calls for it.
PREPOSITIONS
Hebrew also has fewer prepositions than English, with the result that the same Hebrew preposition can be rendered in a variety of ways. For instance, renderings of the preposition b () may include “in,” “on,” “by,” and “with.” Hebrew has no word for “of,” but the possessive and other relationships expressed by English “of” can be represented in Hebrew by using the “construct state.” In the construct state, a noun is placed immediately before another noun in an inseparable (attached) position. Sometimes this involves a change in the form of the first noun as it loses stress. Thus, the underlined word is in the construct state in the following examples: melek (“king”) + yisra’el (“Israel”) →
melek
yisra’el (“king of Israel”); malkah (“queen”) + yisra’el (“Israel”) →
malkat
yisra’el (“queen of Israel”).
ARTICLES
Hebrew has a definite article: h () precedes the noun, usually with a short a-vowel (
) and doubling of the initial consonant of the noun. There is no indefinite article in Biblical Hebrew. Thus melek means “king” or “a king,” but hammelek means “the king.” In poetic texts, however, the definite article is used more sparingly, and it is therefore sometimes legitimate to use a definite article in translating a Hebrew phrase that lacks one (as in the ESV rendering “in the scroll of the book,” in Ps. 40:7).
GENDER AND NUMBER
Hebrew has two genders (masculine and feminine) and three numbers (singular, dual, and plural). The dual is used only to refer to two items that occur in a pair (e.g., “eyes,” “knees,” “teeth,” “millstones”). Verbs and pronouns also distinguish between a masculine and a feminine form of the second person (“you”) in singular and plural forms, and between a masculine and a feminine form of the third-person plural (“they”). The distinction between the genders of the pronouns plays a significant part in the ESV identification of speakers in the Song of Solomon (see, e.g., ESV footnote on Song 1:11).
DIVERSITY
The Hebrew of the Old Testament is not uniform. Certain songs, such as the Song of Deborah (Judges 5) and the Song of Moses (Ex. 15:1–18), display archaic linguistic features. Though there is still a strong underlying linguistic unity to the Old Testament, the language found throughout the thirty-nine books shows that the Old Testament was composed over a considerable period of time. Moreover, the language of the Old Testament also reflects dialectal differences (see Judg. 12:6). Occasionally, features of certain Old Testament texts are identified by scholars as coming from the northern kingdom (Israel), as opposed to Judah, for example.
ARAMAIC
The term “Aramaic” comes from the people of Aram (an ancient region of upper Mesopotamia), the Arameans, whom Old Akkadian writings mention as early as the third millennium BC. During the eighth and seventh centuries BC, the Assyrian Empire controlled much of the ancient Near East, and Aramaic spread in usage as an international language (see 2 Kings 18:26; Isa. 36:11) until the Persian Empire of the sixth century BC established it as the official language. The few Aramaic sections of the Old Testament (Gen. 31:47; Ezra 4:8–6:18; 7:12–26; Jer. 10:11; Dan. 2:4–7:28) fit clearly within the category of Imperial Aramaic, the language of Persian administration. Much of the grammatical description of Biblical Hebrew given above could, with minor changes, also apply to Aramaic. Eventually, Aramaic came into daily use with many Jews, especially those in Galilee. Aramaic words appear in the New Testament on the lips of Jesus (e.g., Mark 5:41; 7:34), and the name Golgotha (Mark 15:22) is Aramaic in form. The term of respectful address, ’abba’, seems also to be Aramaic, but it became standard in later Hebrew as well. The expression ephphatha (“be opened!” Mark 7:34) may be Aramaic, though some think it is the equivalent form in Hebrew. Paul uses the Aramaic expression marana tha (“our Lord, come!”) in 1 Corinthians 16:22.
CONCLUSION
While Biblical Hebrew enjoyed over one thousand years of existence as a spoken language—from the middle of the second millennium BC until the close of the BC era—it has never truly “died” but continues to thrive today through the perpetual study and translation of the writings of the Old Testament Scriptures. Furthermore, it is still actively spoken and used in Jewish religious life and synagogues around the world. It is taught and passed down in both Christian seminaries and Jewish yeshivas. And because of its use by God as the language of the Old Testament, it will continue to enjoy a detailed preservation and rich textual tradition virtually unparalleled by any other ancient language.