Why Hebrew?

Twenty-two letters, all consonants

Hebrew is written from right to left, in an alphabet of twenty-two letters, and every one of them is a consonant. For most of the Old Testament's history the vowels were not written at all: readers knew them, and passed on how the text was read aloud. Between about the seventh and the tenth centuries AD, Jewish scribes called the Masoretes added small dots and dashes above and below the letters to fix the vowels and the chanting. The text you see on every verse here is theirs, the Masoretic Text. The Dead Sea Scrolls, copied centuries earlier, show how carefully the consonants were handed down.

Words grow from roots

Most Hebrew words are built on a root of three consonants, and words that share a root share a family likeness. From sh-l-m come shalom, wholeness and well-being, shalem, whole or complete, and shillem, to repay, to make whole again. A reader of Hebrew hears those echoes where an English reader sees unrelated words like peace, complete and repay.

A language of the body and the senses

Hebrew tends to say abstract things in concrete words. Glory is kavod, weight. The word often translated soul, nephesh, is first the throat and the breath, then the living creature that breathes: God breathes into the man and he becomes a living nephesh (Genesis 2:7). Spirit, breath and wind are one word, ruach, so the wind that moves over the waters at creation and the Spirit of God cannot be told apart (Genesis 1:2). Translators have to choose; Hebrew does not.

Poetry that rhymes in meaning

Hebrew poetry does not rhyme in sound. It rhymes in thought: one line says something, and the next says it again in other words, sharpens it, or answers it. "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands" (Psalm 19:1). Read that way, the Psalms and Proverbs explain themselves, and the second line often tells you what the first one meant.

The name of God

God's personal name is four letters, YHWH. Out of reverence, Jewish readers came to say Adonai, "my Lord", in its place, and most English Bibles follow them by printing LORD in small capitals wherever the name stands (Exodus 3:15). When you see LORD, the Hebrew has a name, not a title.

Words English struggles to carry

How Drift Bible shows it

Every Old Testament verse here shows its Hebrew at the top, right to left, with a transliteration and a word-by-word rendering underneath. Tap any word to open its page: what it means, and every verse that uses it. The word data, with each word's Strong's number, is from STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).