Into The Abyss

Last time we introduced Hebrew verbs and read the beginning of Genesis 1. I’d like to keep reading in Genesis, in chapters 1 and 2, while introducing some more vocabulary and grammar. Additionally I’d like to introduce Hebrew verb stems. 

Let’s talk about the verb stems first. When you look up a Hebrew verb in a dictionary you’ll often see subentries talking about the “Qal”, “Piel”, and “Hiphil”, and so forth of that verb. These are different verb stems. A Hebrew verb stem or verbal pattern is called a binyan (בִּנְיָן). The plural is binyanim (בִּנְיָנִים). This is a feature common to Semitic languages in which a verb root can appear in several recurring patterns. For example the three-letter root mem-lamed-kaph can take the form מֶלֶךְ, which means “king”, or the verb מָלַךְ, which means “he reigned”, or the form הִמְלִיךְ, which means “he caused to reign”. The root shin-bet-resh can take the form שָׁבַר, which means “he broke” or the form שִׁבַּר, which means “he shattered”. These different patterns are called the binyanim.

I mentioned that the plural of binyan is binyanim. Hebrew nouns are typically made plural in two ways. For masculine nouns you add the suffix -im. For feminine nouns you add the suffix -ot. For example, the plural of the masculine word for horse, סוּס, is סוּסִים. And the plural of the feminine word of law, תּוֹרָה, is תּוֺרוֺת. 

Going back to the binyanim, we’ll introduce 7 binyanim. There are a few additional rare patterns, but these seven account for the overwhelming majority of Biblical Hebrew verbs. These are:

Qal

Niphal

Piel

Pu’al

Hiphil

Hophal

Hitpa’el

Not every Hebrew root occurs in every binyan. Some roots appear in only one or two binyanim, while others occur in several. And the functions described below are general tendencies rather than rigid rules. Each binyan has a characteristic range of functions. They are distinguished by changes to the verbal root such as prefixes or vowel patterns. In what follows I’ll use the perfect (suffix conjugation) because its patterns are easier to recognize. The binyanim also occur in the imperfect form, but the patterns are more complicated there, so we’ll focus on the perfect.

The Qal is the basic binyan. When you look up a verb in the dictionary the Qal form is listed first. You can think of the Qal form as the basic form on which other binyanim build. Incidentally the word בִּנְיָן actually means “building”. The Qal is normally an active stem, although some Qal verbs have stative meanings (such as “to be old,” “to be great,” etc). The Qal is also sometimes called the Pa’al. I’ll give some examples of Qal verbs using the third-person, masculine, singular. Notice the verb patterns in these two syllable words. In the Qal they usually have a two “-ah” vowels in a row. Usually a qammatz and a pataḥ.

Some examples of the Qal are:

שָׁמַע – heard

שָׁבַר – broke

מָלַךְ – reigned (ruled)

חָבָה – hid

פָרָה – was fruitful

רָבָה – multiplied

נָפַל – fell

לָקַח – took

דָּבַק – clung

מָטַר – rained (precipitation)

זָכַר – remembered

קָדַשׁ – sanctified

חָזַק – was strong

בָּדל – separated

כָּתַב – wrote

קוּם – arise, established

צָוָה – commanded

Now let’s look at the other binyanim and see how they are different.

The Niphal binyan often has a passive or reflexive meaning, although it can also describe entering into some state (“becoming”) or reciprocal actions. In the perfect it is formed by adding a nun prefix, along with a hireq vowel, making a “ni-” prefix. So for example, the Qal form שָׁמַע means “he heard”. The Niphal form נִשְׁמַע  means “was heard”. The Qal כָּתַב means “wrote” and the Niphal נִכְתַּב means “was written”. Here are a few other examples of the Niphal in the perfect, third-person masculine singular. Look for the patterns.

נִשְׁמַע – was heard

נִכְתַּב – was written

נִשְׁבַּר – was broken

נִלְקַח – was taken

נִבְדַּל – was separated

The Piel binyan is an interesting one. It is traditionally described as “intensive,” although modern scholars recognize that its function varies considerably from verb to verb. You can see this in the example of the difference between the Qal form שָׁבַר meaning “he broke” and the Piel form שִׁבַּר meaning “he shattered”. The Piel binyan usually has a dagesh in the second root consonant, unless that consonant happens to be one that can’t take a dagesh. It also has different vowel patterns. Notice how the Qal שָׁבַר doesn’t have a dagesh in the bet while the Piel שִׁבַּר does. It’s worth mentioning that sometimes the Piel form is the most common form for some words. One very common example is the word דִּבֶּר, which means “to speak”. It is almost always in the Piel form in the Bible. Here are some examples of the Piel in the perfect, third-person masculine singular. Look for the patterns in the vowels:

שִׁבַּר – he shattered

דִּבֶּר – he spoke

בִּקֵּשׁ – he searched

מִהַר – he hurried

צִוָּה – he commanded

חִלֵּל – he defiled

כִּתֵּב – he inscribed

Notice that the first syllable has a ḥireq, “ee”, sound.

The Pu’al binyan is like the Piel but is passive. Like the Piel, the Pu’al has a dagesh in the second consonant. The Pu’al usually begins with an “u” vowel. This “oo” sound being associated with something passive is worth remembering as a useful mneumonic for when we look at participles eventually. So if the Piel שִׁבַּר means “he shattered” the Pu’al שֻׁבַּר means “he (it) was shattered”. If צָוָה means “commanded” צֻוָּה means “was commanded”. Here are some examples of Pu’al verbs:

שֻׁבַּר – was shattered

צֻוָּה – was commanded

לֻקַּח – was taken

כֻּתַּב – was inscribed

The Hiphil binyan has a causative function. It is formed by adding a he prefix with a hireq vowel, a “hi-” prefix. To use an example from earlier, the Qal מָלַךְ means “he reigned” and the Hiphil הִמְלִיךְ means “he caused to reign”. As we saw in the Piel there are some verbs for which the Hiphil is the most basic form. One example is בָּדל, “he separated”, which we see in its Hiphil form, הִבְדִּיל. Here are some examples of Hiphil verbs:

הִמְלִיךְ – caused to reign (rule)

הִזְכִּיר – caused to remember

הִמְטִיר – caused to rain (precipitation)

הִבְדִּיל – divided

הִכְתִּיב – dictated

הֵקִים – raised up

The Hophal binyan is like the Hiphil but is passive. Like the Hiphil, the Hophal has a hey prefix. Instead of the Hiphil’s hi- prefix, the Hophal usually begins with a hu- prefix (הֻ־), or ho- prefix (הָ־). As an example, if כָּתַב means “wrote”, הִכְתִּיב means “dictated”, הוּכְתַּב means “was dictated to”. If קוּם, means “established”, הֵקִים means “raised up”, הוּקַם means “was raised up”. The Qal מָלַךְ means “he reigned”, the Hiphil הִמְלִיךְ means “he caused to reign”, and the Hophal הָמְלַךְ means “he was caused to reign” or “he was made king”.

הוּכְתַּב – was dictated to

הוּקַם – was raised up

הָמְלַךְ – was made king

The Hitpa’el binyan is usually reflexive or reciprocal in function. It is formed by adding a two-letter prefix, hey and tav, with a hireq “ee” vowel: a “hit-” prefix. For example, the Qal כָּתַב means “wrote”, and the Hitpa’el הִתְכַּתֵּב means “wrote to each other”. Another example is קָדַשׁ, “sanctified” and הִתְקַדֵּשׁ, “sanctified himself”. Here are some more examples of Hitpa’el verbs:

הִתְחַבֵּא – hid himself

הִתְקַדֵּשׁ – sanctified himself

הִתְחַזֵּק – strengthened himself

הִתְכַּתֵּב – wrote to each other

Let’s go over those binyanim again, with a brief descriptor for each:

Qal – basic (active)

Niphal – passive, reflexive

Piel – intensive

Pu’al – passive intensive

Hiphil – causative

Hophal – passive causative

Hitpa’el – reflexive, reciprocal

Before moving on to the text itself, let’s introduce some vocabulary that we will see.

אָדָם – adam – Human, mankind

אִישׁ – ish – Man

אִשָּׁה – ishah – Woman

זָכָר – zachar – Male

נְקֵבָה – neqebah – Female

רָקִיעַ – raqia – Expanse

עָשָׂה – asah – To do, make

צֶלֶם – tzelem – Image

דְּמוּת – demut – Likeness

בָרַךְ – barak – To bless

פָרָה – parah – To be fruitful

רָבָה – rabah – To multiply

מָלֵא – male – To fill

יָצַר – yatsar – To form, fashion

עָפַר  – aphar – Dust

אֲדָמָה – adamah – Ground

נֶפֶשׁ – nephesh – Soul

לְבַד – lebad – Alone

עֵזֶר – ezer – Help

נֶגֶד – neged – In front of

נָפַל – nafal – To fall

לָקַח – laqach -To take

עֶצֶם – etzem – Bone, selfsame

בָּשָׂר – basar – Flesh

עָזַב – azav – Leave

אָב – av – Father

אֵם – em – Mother

דָּבַק – dabaq – To Cling

עָרוֹם – arum – Naked

בּוֺשׁ – bosh – To be ashamed

Now let’s get into the text. Last time we read the first 5 verses of Genesis 1. This time we’ll skip around over a few select verses instead of reading all of them. I’m picking verses that have interesting vocabulary, have examples of the different binyanim, and have important themes for the story. We’ll start with Genesis 1:14.

Genesis 1:14

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֗ים יְהִ֤י מְאֹרֹת֙ בִּרְקִ֣יעַ הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם לְהַבְדִּ֕יל בֵּ֥ין הַיּ֖וֹם וּבֵ֣ין הַלָּ֑יְלָה וְהָי֤וּ לְאֹתֹת֙ וּלְמ֣וֹעֲדִ֔ים וּלְיָמִ֖ים וְשָׁנִֽים׃

“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (KJV)

I mentioned in the previous episode how the concept of dividing things up features in the story of creation. For example, God divided, וַיַּבְדֵּל, the light from the darkness (Genesis 1:4). The verb בָּדל is one of those verbs that occurs in a binyan other than the Qal. בָּדל most often occurs in the Hiphil form, the causative form, הִבְדִּיל, with that he prefix. In this verse it’s in the Hiphil infinitive form, לְהַבְדִּ֕יל. Here it also has a lamed prefix. Biblical Hebrew usually forms the infinitive by attaching a ל (“to”) to the infinitive construct. So לְהַבְדִּיל means “to divide.”

In this verse God is calling for there to be lights, מְאֹרֹת, in the firmament or expanse, בִּרְקִ֣יעַ. The bet prefix meaning “in” the raqia. And these lights are to divide between, בֵּין, the day, הַיּ֖וֹם, and the night, הַלָּ֑יְלָה. Remember that the ha prefix there is the definite article, “the”. So the nouns day and night by themselves are יוֹם and לָ֑יְלָה.

Genesis 1:15

וְהָי֤וּ לִמְאוֹרֹת֙ בִּרְקִ֣יעַ הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם לְהָאִ֖יר עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ וַֽיְהִי־כֵֽן׃

“And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.”

Note here another use of the lamed prefix, “for”, where לִמְאוֹרֹת֙ means “for lights”. In the last episode I also talked about the construct form for nouns and how בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית in Genesis 1:1 might be in the construct form. Here רָקִיעַ is in the construct form so that בִּרְקִ֣יעַ הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם together means “in the firmament of heaven”. It’s not just the firmament but the firmament of something. So it’s in the construct form. Sometimes the construct form is the same as the absolute form, which is the case here. But we can tell by context that it’s in the construct form.

This verse has another Hiphil, causative binyan: לְהָאִ֖יר. That lamed prefix is a good indication that this might be an infinitive, and it is. The verb אוֹר in the Qal means “shine” and the Hiphil הָאִ֖יר means “to give light”.

Genesis 1:26

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים נַֽעֲשֶׂ֥ה אָדָ֛ם בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ וְיִרְדּוּ֩ בִדְגַ֨ת הַיָּ֜ם וּבְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם וּבַבְּהֵמָה֙ וּבְכׇל־הָאָ֔רֶץ וּבְכׇל־הָרֶ֖מֶשׂ הָֽרֹמֵ֥שׂ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

Something very interesting happens in this verse. I mentioned in the last episode that although the noun אֱלֹהִ֔ים is plural in form it’s almost always accompanied by verbs in the singular, indicating that אֱלֹהִ֔ים is not a group of beings but one being. That holds here as well with וַיֹּ֣אמֶר, “and he (singular) said”. But then he speaks in the first person plural for a bit. With the verb עָשָׂה, “to do” or “to make” God uses the first person plural imperfect form, נַֽעֲשֶׂ֥ה, “let us make”. Remember that the perfect form primarily has suffixes and the imperfect form primarily has prefixes (with a few suffixes). That nun prefix is a prefix for the first person plural: “we make”. Here it serves as what’s called a cohortative because God is not just saying “we make” but “let us make”. The cohortative is a special first-person form expressing intention or resolve. God then speaks of a צֶלֶם “image” and a דְּמוּת “likeness”. But each has a nu suffix, something called a pronominal suffix. The nu suffix is a possessive first person plural. So it’s צַלְמֵ֖נוּ, “our image” and דְמוּתֵ֑נוּ, “our likeness”. These also have prefixes; a bet prefix and a kaph prefix. The bet prefix is “in” and the kaph prefix is “as”. Translatable as “in our image”, בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ, and “after our likeness”, כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ. The question as to why plural language is used here is certainly one that generated a great deal of discussion throughout Jewish and Christian interpretation.

The word for “man”, “mankind”, or “human” here is אָדָ֛ם (adam), which should sound familiar. Adam is both a proper name as well as a word for human beings generally. Here especially it’s primarily, if not exclusively, the understanding of human beings that is meant. Though I suppose literarily the two meanings are not necessarily so separable anyway.

One other thing I like in this verse, הָרֶ֖מֶשׂ הָֽרֹמֵ֥שׂ, is a repetition of the root רמשׂ. The word רֶמֶשׂ is a noun for creeping things and רָמַשׂ is a verb for creeping. In this verse the verb רָמַשׂ is in a participle form, indicative ongoing or continuous action, as with an -ing ending in English. One common pattern for a Qal active participle is a holem, “oh” vowel, over the first root consonant.

Here רֹמֵ֥שׂ. The King James Version translates הָרֶ֖מֶשׂ הָֽרֹמֵ֥שׂ as “creeping thing that creepeth”, which I think is pretty good. Another translation might be “creepers creeping” or “creeping creepers”, which I kind of like. Incidentally consecutive repetition of a root in two different forms is very common in Biblical Hebrew. We’ll see another example in Genesis 2:17. 

Genesis 1:27

וַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים ׀ אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙ בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ זָכָ֥ר וּנְקֵבָ֖ה בָּרָ֥א אֹתָֽם׃

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

You may recall the the word בָּרָא from Genesis 1:1. Two instances here are third-person, singular, masculine, perfect בָּרָא. The first is third-person, singular, masculine, wayyiqtol, וַיִּבְרָא. God created, בָּרָא, man, אָדָם, in his image, בְּצַלְמוֹ. Image is צֶלֶם. With the prefix be- it is “in”. And with the pronominal suffix, -oh, it is “his image”. In his image, בְּצַלְמוֹ.

There are two more pronominal suffixes with the direct object marker אֵת. God created אָדָם. He created him, אֹתוֹ  and them, אֹתָם. Adam is created male, זָכָר, and female, נְקֵבָה. A couple of observations on זָכָר and נְקֵבָה. This continues the theme of ordered distinctions established throughout Genesis 1. For example: light and darkness, אוֹר and חשֶׁךְ, day and night, יוֹם and לַיְלָה, seas and earth, יַמִּים and אֶרֶץ. It’s also interesting that both זָכָר and נְקֵבָה are in the image of God, בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים. This dividing, בָּדל, between זָכָר and נְקֵבָה is arguably the most important in these chapters. As we’ll see in chapter 2 there is an important directive made regarding the union between man and woman, אִישׁ and אִשָּׁה.

Genesis 1:28

וַיְבָ֣רֶךְ אֹתָם֮ אֱלֹהִים֒ וַיֹּ֨אמֶר לָהֶ֜ם אֱלֹהִ֗ים פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ וּמִלְא֥וּ אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְכִבְשֻׁ֑הָ וּרְד֞וּ בִּדְגַ֤ת הַיָּם֙ וּבְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וּבְכׇל־חַיָּ֖ה הָֽרֹמֶ֥שֶׂת עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃

“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

וַיְבָרֶךְ is a wayiqqtol of בָרַךְ, bless. You’ve heard the Arabic name “Barack” as in Barack Obama. Maybe you’ve heard the Hebrew name “Baruch” as in Baruch Spinoza, the philosopher. These all come from the same semitic root. This is also another of our binyanim. וַיְבָרֶךְ is in the Piel form. It’s a little harder to spot. A Piel would normally have a dagesh in the second consonant. But the second letter in בָרַךְ is a resh and does not take a dagesh. So instead there is compensatory lengthening of the vowel preceding it.

God blessed the humans and said to them: פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ וּמִלְא֥וּ. This is a wonderfully lyrical phrase. These three verbs are in the imperative, masculine, plural form. So they all end with an -oo suffix, which gives it that nice rhyming. The verbs are פָרָה, to be fruitful, רָבָה, to become many, and מָלֵא, to fill. Another feature that contributes to the lyricism and rhyming is that the vav prefixes both take the -oo form with a shuruq vowel. That’s because the vav precedes consonants with vocal shewa. The mem in מָלֵא also has a shuruq before it because it is a labial consonant. These three words are extremely common and worth knowing. These are פָרָה, to be fruitful, רָבָה, to become many, and מָלֵא, to fill. And then in their imperative, masculine, plural forms, with the shuruq, -oo prefixes, this is: פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ וּמִלְא֥וּ, “be fruitful, and multiply, and fill” the Earth, אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ.

Genesis 2:1

וַיְכֻלּ֛וּ הַשָּׁמַ֥יִם וְהָאָ֖רֶץ וְכׇל־צְבָאָֽם׃

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.”

We’re skipping ahead into chapter 2. The first word,וַיְכֻלּ֛וּ, is of interest because it is in the Pu’al form. The verb here is כָּלָה, to be complete. Here it is in the wayyiqtol, third-person, masculine, plural. Note the -oo suffix. But also note the -oo, qubbutz under the kaph. That’s a big indicator that we’re seeing something passive here. Also note the dagesh in the lamed. The dagesh in the second consonant is typical of a Piel form. But the qubbutz under the first consonant gives this away, not as a Piel, but as a Pu’al. The third consonant, the hey, just drops off here, which happens under certain circumstances.

Genesis 2:7

וַיִּיצֶר֩ יְהוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֗ם עָפָר֙ מִן־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה וַיִּפַּ֥ח בְּאַפָּ֖יו נִשְׁמַ֣ת חַיִּ֑ים וַֽיְהִ֥י הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְנֶ֥פֶשׁ חַיָּֽה׃ 

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Starting with Genesis 2:4 there is an interesting shift where we start to see the name יהוה (Yahweh) used. The name אֱלֹהִים doesn’t go away. We see it in this verse as well. But we also start to see this name יהוה. It’s spelled yud-hey-vav-hey. English approximate consonants are often given as YHWH. It was probably pronounced “Yahweh”. (Pro-tip, be sensitive in using this name. In Judaism, out of reverence, it’s not pronounced). In the Hebrew text of the Bible the vowels under יהוה can be misleading because they are actually for a different word, the word for “Lord”: אֲדֹנָי (Adonai). So for example you see יְהוָֹה with a shewa, a holem, and a qammatz, which would be pronounced “yehovah”, which is where we get “Jehovah”. But bear in mind that this is just the way the vowels were written to indicate that one should say “Adonai”. And I will follow traditional practice by saying “Adonai” whenever I read this name. The sudden use of this name starting in Genesis 2:4 is one reason, among others, this is sometimes considered to be a second creation account.

The creation of a human being in this verse is quite literally earthy. Man, or Adam, is made of עָפָר֙ מִן־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה, dust (עָפָר֙) from (מִן) the earth (הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה). Notice the similarity here between the words אָדָם, man, and אֲדָמָ֔ה, dust. That’s a nice literary touch. The verb used for the creation of the human in this verse, יָצַר, to form or fashion, is also more earthy than בָּרָא as used in Genesis 1:27. This verb יָצַר carries more the sense of the potter of a clay vessel, appropriately so since Adam is here being fashioned from dirt (Brown-Driver-Briggs, יָצַר). A related word, יֵצֶר, is found in Genesis 6:5, in which the Lord sees of mankind that every inclination, יֵצֶר, of the thoughts of his heart are only evil, רַע, all the day. A related rabbinic concept is the יֵצֶר הַרַע, the inclination to evil. It has some similarity to the notion of a fallen nature. The יֵצֶר הַרַע implies that there is something רַע, evil, in us that goes deep, down to the very structure with which we are fashioned, יָצַר. Correspondingly we are said to have a יֵצֶר הַטּוֹב, an inclination for good. So these both relate back to this word יָצַר.

A couple more words of note here. First is נֶפֶשׁ, soul, which is a very common word. Adam became a living soul, נֶ֥פֶשׁ חַיָּֽה. The word חַיָּֽה here is a feminine adjective חַי, for living. This comes from the verb חָיָה, to be alive. Note that this is slightly different from the verb הָיָה, to be. The verb to be alive, חָיָה is spelled with a chet while the verb הָיָה, to be is spelled with a hey. You may also be familiar with the word חַיִּים, which is either living things plural or simply life, as in Fiddler on the Roof: “To life, to life, l’chaim”.

Skipping ahead again, God places trees in the Garden of Eden for Adam and one of these trees is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:

Genesis 2:17

וּמֵעֵ֗ץ הַדַּ֙עַת֙ טֹ֣וב וָרָ֔ע לֹ֥א תֹאכַ֖ל מִמֶּ֑נּוּ כִּ֗י בְּיֹ֛ום אֲכָלְךָ֥ מִמֶּ֖נּוּ מֹ֥ות תָּמֽוּת׃

“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

An interesting bit of grammar in this verse is the use of the verb מוּת, to die, two times in a row, מֹ֥ות תָּמֽוּת׃. The first instance, מֹ֥ות, is the infinitive form of מוּת. The second instance, תָּמֽוּת, is the imperfect, second masculine singular. We might read this literally as something like, “dying you will die”. But it has the function of intensifying the statement. So it’s not just “you will die” but “you will surely die” as it’s often translated. This kind of intensification by repeating the verb in this way is very common.

For example, the Lord tells Abraham “blessing, I will bless you”, בָרֵ֣ךְ אֲבָרֶכְךָ֗, and “multiplying, I will multiply”, הַרְבָּ֨ה אַרְבֶּ֤ה (Genesis 22:17). The first verb is בָרַךְ, the infinitive is בָרֵ֣ךְ and the imperfect is אֲבָרֵךְ. So בָרֵ֣ךְ אֲבָרֶכְךָ֗ is “blessing, I will bless you”. The second verb is רָבָה. The infinitive is הַרְבָּ֨ה, which is actually in the Hifil form, which is why it has the hey prefix. The imperfect is אַרְבֶּ֤ה, which is also in the Hifil form but the imperfect masculine singular Hifil doesn’t carry a hey. So הַרְבָּ֨ה אַרְבֶּ֤ה is “multiplying, I will multiply”. This is something to look for when reading the Hebrew Bible. Again it’s a very common feature.

Genesis 2:18

וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהִ֔ים לֹא־ט֛וֹב הֱי֥וֹת הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְבַדּ֑וֹ אֶֽעֱשֶׂה־לּ֥וֹ עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ׃

“And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”

God says that it is “not good”, לֹא־ט֛וֹב, for the man Adam to be alone, לְבַד. So God says he will make for him an עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ. 

The KJV translated עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ as “help meet for him”, which was a perfectly respectable way to render it I think. In more modernized English we might say “helper suitable for him”. In the KJV it wasn’t a compound word, “helpmeet”, but two words, “help meet”. Eventually a new word, “helpmeet” did arise in the English language, and it seems this can and has had some undertones of subordination. It is a real word in English now. But it’s not what’s actually in the KJV. In Hebrew it’s more or less a moot point because the phrase עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ itself is independent of any of the translation history into English. The word עֵזֶר, help or helper, carries no undertones of subordination. It’s actually often used to refer to God. For example, Psalm 124:8 says עֶ֭זְרֵנוּ בְּשֵׁ֣ם יְהֹוָ֑ה, “our help is the name of God”. An עֵזֶר is not a servant, עֶבֶד, but one who helps, often from a position of strength.

Most people have probably heard the word עֵזֶר before in the name Ebenezer, which comes from the Hebrew אֶבֶן הָעֵזֶר (Eben-Ezer), which means the stone (אֶבֶן) of help (עֵזֶר). This occurs in 1 Samuel 7:12, in which Samuel sets up a stone, אֶבֶן, and calls it אֶבֶן הָעֵזֶר, saying “God has helped us”, עֲזָרָ֥נוּ יְהֹוָֽה.

Another interesting bit of trivia is that in the song “Come Thou Fount” it should be pronounced “Eben-Ezer” as in Hebrew and not “Ebenezer” as in Ebenezer Scrooge. This also works with the rhyme scheme in the lyrics, in which “Ezer” is supposed to rhyme with “pleasure”, which the English name “Ebenezer” does not. So the verse is:

“Here I raise my [Eben-Ezer];

hither by thy help I’m come;

and I hope, by thy good pleasure,

safely to arrive at home.”

So now we can all sing it correctly!

That second word in עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ is נֶגֶד, which means in front of, in sight of, opposite to (Brown-Driver-Briggs, נֶגֶד). The “-oh” ending, נֶגְדּֽוֹ, is a pronominal suffix, meaning in front of him, or opposite to him. כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ is sometimes translated as “corresponding to him” (CSB).

Genesis 2:21

וַיַּפֵּל֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֧ים ׀ תַּרְדֵּמָ֛ה עַל־הָאָדָ֖ם וַיִּישָׁ֑ן וַיִּקַּ֗ח אַחַת֙ מִצַּלְעֹתָ֔יו וַיִּסְגֹּ֥ר בָּשָׂ֖ר תַּחְתֶּֽנָּה׃

“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof”

The first word of this verse, וַיַּפֵּל֩, is a Hifil form of the verb נָפַל, to fall. In its Hifil form this becomes causative, so “to fall” becomes “cause to fall”. We don’t see a hey prefix in the consecutive imperfect, third-person masculine singular. But in the imperfect and consecutive imperfect the Hifil does other, less obvious things that distinguish it. In the Qal form this would be וְיִפֹּל, “and he fell”. The yud prefix has a ḥireq “ee” vowel sound. In the Hifil form it’s  וַיַּפֵּל֩, “and he caused to fall”, in which the yud prefix has a pataḥ “ah” vowel sound. That’s one difference with the Hifil.

Another thing to note here is that the nun in נָפַל seems to disappear in both of these forms: וְיִפֹּל and וַיַּפֵּל֩. Rather than disappearing, the nun assimilates with the pey. Whereas in נָפַל the pey is in its soft form, like the letter ‘f’, when the nun assimilates you add a dagesh and it becomes a hard pey, like the letter ‘p’. It’s like the pey lengthens as it takes in the nun. So it’s better to think of it as the nun still being there, just in a different form. This is something that is actually very common for the nun to do so it’s something to keep an eye out for. This is one of those examples of what Michael Carasik calls “how Hebrew letters behave”.

Another vocabulary word in this verse is לָקַח, to take. The initial lamed just drops out in this form. So it reads God took, וַיִּקַּ֗ח a rib from Adam. 

Genesis 2:22

וַיִּ֩בֶן֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֧ים ׀ אֶֽת־הַצֵּלָ֛ע אֲשֶׁר־לָקַ֥ח מִן־הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְאִשָּׁ֑ה וַיְבִאֶ֖הָ אֶל־הָֽאָדָֽם׃

“And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”

There’s another Hiphil in this verse. God brought her, וַיְבִאֶ֖הָ, to Adam. The verb is בּוֹא, to go or to come. In the Hiphil this becomes הֵבִיא, he makes to come or he brought. In this verse it’s in the wayyiqtol form, וַיָּבֵא, where the Hiphil is a little harder to see. But I still wanted to point it out because I think it’s a nice illustration of the Hiphil.

A vocabulary word for this verse is אִשָּׁה, woman. This is very similar to the word for man, אִישׁ. This similarity is commented on in the next verse.

Genesis 2:23

וַיֹּ֘אמֶר֮ הָֽאָדָם֒ זֹ֣את הַפַּ֗עַם עֶ֚צֶם מֵֽעֲצָמַ֔י וּבָשָׂ֖ר מִבְּשָׂרִ֑י לְזֹאת֙ יִקָּרֵ֣א אִשָּׁ֔ה כִּ֥י מֵאִ֖ישׁ לֻֽקְחָה־זֹּֽאת׃

“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

The vocabulary words for this verse are עֶצֶם (bone) and בָּשָׂר (flesh). This verse also has some good examples of the possessive suffixes. So with bone, עֶצֶם, my bone is עֲצָמַ֔י and from my bone is מֵֽעֲצָמַ֔י. And with flesh, בָּשָׂר, my flesh is בְּשָׂרִ֑י and from my flesh is מִבְּשָׂרִ֑י.

There are two interesting binyan forms in this verse, a Niphal and a Qal passive. Adam said of Eve, “she shall be called”, יִקָּרֵ֣א. The verb here is קָרָא, to call. In the Niphal form this becomes passive. In the imperfect, masculine singular, “shall be called”. One feature of the Niphal in the imperfect is a dagesh in the first root letter. So there is a dagesh in the kof. That first root letter also has a qammatz, “ah” vowel sound, which is characteristic of the Niphal in the imperfect. Adam also explains that the woman is called אִשָּׁה because it was from man, אִישׁ, that she was taken, לֻֽקְחָה. This is the verb לָקַח, to take, that we saw before. This is another passive verb form, but instead of using the Niphal a passive form of the Qal is used. The passive form of the Qal has some similarity to another passive form, the Pu’al, in which there is a “oo” sound used with the passive. So where the active form, she took, would be לָקְחָה, the passive form, she was taken, is לֻֽקְחָה, with that characteristic “oo” sound, here indicated with a qubbutz under the first root letter.

Genesis 2:24

עַל־כֵּן֙ יַֽעֲזׇב־אִ֔ישׁ אֶת־אָבִ֖יו וְאֶת־אִמּ֑וֹ וְדָבַ֣ק בְּאִשְׁתּ֔וֹ וְהָי֖וּ לְבָשָׂ֥ר אֶחָֽד׃

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”

The first vocabulary word from this verse is עָזַב, to leave. This is another word you may have heard before, but in its Aramaic cognate. When Jesus was on the cross he cried out, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”, אֱלָהִי אֱלָהִי לְמָא שְׁבַקְתַּנִי (Mark 15:34). The Aramaic שבק is a cognate of the Hebrew עָזַב. The line is a quotation from Psalm 22:1, אֵלִ֣י אֵ֭לִי לָמָ֣ה עֲזַבְתָּ֑נִי. So where in Aramaic “you have forsaken me” is שְׁבַקְתַּנִי, in Hebrew it is עֲזַבְתָּ֑נִי from the verb עָזַב.

The next two vocabulary words are אָב (father) and אֵם (mother). In this verse these are both in the possessive form with possessive suffixes. So his father is אָבִיו and his mother is אִמּוֹ.

The last vocabulary word in this verse is דָּבַק, to cling. A man shall cling to his wife.

Genesis 2:25

וַיִּֽהְי֤וּ שְׁנֵיהֶם֙ עֲרוּמִּ֔ים הָֽאָדָ֖ם וְאִשְׁתּ֑וֹ וְלֹ֖א יִתְבֹּשָֽׁשׁוּ׃

“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”

The vocabulary word in this verse is עָרוֹם, naked. Here it’s both the man and woman, plural, who are naked so עָרוֹם becomes עֲרוּמִּים. Interestingly, an almost identical word occurs in the next verse (Genesis 3:1). The serpent is said to be “cunning”, עָר֔וּם. This seems to be a deliberate bit of wordplay.

Lastly we have one more binyan in this verse, a Hitpa’el. It says that they were not ashamed. The verb here is בּוֺשׁ. In the Hitpa’el this becomes reflexive, so we might say they were not ashamed of themselves. The verb בּוֺשׁ is what is called a hollow verb and sometimes gets an extra letter shin, as it does here. The Hitpa’el is pretty easy to recognize because it has either a hey and a tav as a prefix, or at least a tav. In the perfect third person plural the Hitpa’el of בּוֺשׁ is הִתְבּוֹשֵׁשׁ, in which we see that full “hit” prefix with both the hey and the tav. In the imperfect, יִתְבֹּשָֽׁשׁוּ, we lose the hey but that tav still helps us see that this is a Hitpa’el.

To review, let’s list the 7 binyanim again:

Qal – basic (active)

Niphal – passive, reflexive

Piel – intensive

Pu’al – passive intensive

Hiphil – causative

Hophal – passive causative

Hitpa’el – reflexive, reciprocal

And let’s review the vocabulary we saw in these verses. In the following I’ll just give the basic, dictionary form of each word, not necessarily the form in which it occurs in the verse. This is just to make reviewing the vocabulary easier. Refer to the verses again to see and understand the forms in which they occur.

אָדָם – adam – Human, mankind

עָשָׂה – asah – To do, make

צֶלֶם – tzelem – Image

דְּמוּת – demut – Likeness

Let us make, עָשָׂה (asah), man, אָדָם (adam), in our image, צֶלֶם (tzelem), after our likeness, דְּמוּת (demut).

זָכָר – zachar – Male

נְקֵבָה – neqebah – Female

Male, זָכָר (zachar) and female, נְקֵבָ (neqebah), created he them.

אִישׁ – ish – Man

אִשָּׁה – ishah – Woman

She shall be called Woman, אִשָּׁה (ishah), because she was taken out of Man, אִישׁ (ish).

רָקִיעַ – raqia – Expanse

And let them be for lights in the firmament, רָקִיעַ (raqia), of the heaven.

בָרַךְ – barak – To bless

פָרָה – parah – To be fruitful

רָבָה – rabah – To multiply

מָלֵא – male – To fill

And God blessed, בָרַךְ (barak), them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, פָרָה (parah), and multiply, רָבָה (rabah), and fill, מָלֵא (male), the earth.

יָצַר – yatsar – To form, fashion

עָפַר – aphar – Dust

אֲדָמָה – adamah – Ground

נֶפֶשׁ – nephesh – Soul

And the Lord God formed, יָצַר (yatsar), man, אָדָם (adam), of the dust, עָפַר (aphar), of the ground, אֲדָמָה (adamah), and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh).

לְבַד – lebad – Alone

עֵזֶר – ezer – Help

נֶגֶד – neged – In front of

It is not good that the man should be alone, לְבַד (lebad), I will make him an help, עֵזֶר (ezer), in front, נֶגֶד (neged), of him.

נָפַל – nafal – To fall

לָקַח – laqach -To take

And the Lord God caused to fall, נָפַל (nafal), a deep sleep upon Adam, and he slept: and he took, לָקַח (laqach), one of his ribs.

עֶצֶם – etzem – Bone, selfsame

בָּשָׂר – basar – Flesh

This is now bone, עֶצֶם (etzem), of my bones, and flesh, בָּשָׂר (basar), of my flesh.

עָזַב – azav – Leave

אָב – av – Father

אֵם – em – Mother

דָּבַק – dabaq – To Cling

Therefore shall a man leave, עָזַב (azav), his father, אָב (av), and his mother, אֵם (em), and shall cleave, דָּבַק (dabaq), unto his wife.

עָרוֹם – arum – Naked

בּוֺשׁ – bosh – To be ashamed

And they were both naked, עָרוֹם (arum) …and were not ashamed, בּוֺשׁ (bosh).

With language study repetition is key. These verses have some great vocabulary. I find that words also seem to stick better when you tie them to some specific text or situation. These verses are very memorable so I think they make great anchors for that kind of memorization.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

The plan for this post is to give a brief introduction to verbs in Biblical Hebrew, introduce some vocabulary, and then read the account of the first day of creation in Genesis 1:1-5.

Hebrew verbs can come in several forms that include perfect, imperfect, wayyiqtol, weqatal, infinitive, participle, imperative, jussive, and cohortative.1 In this post I’ll focus mostly on the perfect, imperfect, and wayyiqtol forms. A Hebrew verb can also be inflected according to a derived stem called a binyan, which is something characteristic of Semitic languages. I’ll save that for another time. For now I’ll focus on what is called the qal binyan, which is the most basic form. Hebrew verbs are built on roots. These are usually three consonantal letters. Then we build on these roots by adding certain vowels to the consonants, as well as certain endings or prefixes.

The perfect and imperfect forms indicate the extension or completeness of an action in time. In the perfect form the action is completed and done. In the imperfect form the action is uncompleted or has a repeated, ongoing character.2

Let’s look first at the perfect form. We’ll look at the verb שָׁמַר as an example, שָׁמַר, meaning “watch”, “guard”, or “keep”. The third-person, masculine, singular form is שָׁמַר with a qamatz on the first syllable and a pataḥ on the second syllable, with no ending added. All other person, gender, number combinations have endings added. Here are the perfect forms of the verb שָׁמַר, “to keep”:

שָׁמַרְתִּי – I kept

שָׁמַרְתָּ – You (m) kept

שָׁמַרְתְּ – You (f) kept

שָׁמַר – He kept

שָׁמְרָה – She kept

שָׁמַרְנוּ – We kept

שְׁמַרְתֶּם – You all (m) kept

שְׁמַרְתֶּן – You all (f) kept

שָׁמְרוּ – They kept

First-person, singular has a תִּי- ending, שָׁמַרְתִּי. Second-person, masculine, singular has a תָּ- ending, שָׁמַרְתָּ. Second-person, feminine, singular has a תְּ- ending, שָׁמַרְתְּ. Third-person, masculine, singular is unmarked, no endings added, שָׁמַר. Third-person, feminine, singular has a ה- ending with a hey, שָׁמְרָה. First-person, plural has a נוּ- ending, שָׁמַרְנוּ. Second-person, masculine, plural has a תֶּם- ending, שְׁמַרְתֶּם. Second-person, feminine, plural has a תֶּן- ending, שְׁמַרְתֶּן. And Third-person, plural has an וּ- ending, שָׁמְרוּ.

Now the imperfect form. The imperfect form is used for actions that are ongoing or repeated. In the imperfect form the root is modified with prefixes, as well as endings in some cases. Here is each person, gender, and number for the qal imperfect of שָׁמַר:

אֶשְׁמֹר  – I will keep

תִּשְׁמֹר – You (m) will keep

תִּשְׁמְרִי – You (f) will keep

יִשְׁמֹר  – He will keep

תִּשְׁמֹר  – She will keep

 נִשְׁמֹר  – We will keep

תִּשְׁמְרוּ – You all (m) will keep

תִּשְׁמֹרְנָה  – You all (f) will keep

יִשְׁמְרוּ  – They (m) will keep

תִּשְׁמֹרְנָה  – They (f) will keep

First-person, singular has an -אֶ prefix, אֶשְׁמֹר. Second-person, masculine, singular has a -תִּ prefix, תִּשְׁמֹר. Second-person, feminine, singular has a -תִּ prefix as well as a י- ending, תִּשְׁמְרִי. Third-person, masculine, singular has a -יִ prefix, יִשְׁמֹר. Third-person, feminine, singular has a -תִּ prefix, תִּשְׁמֹר. First-person, plural has a -נִ prefix, נִשְׁמֹר. Second-person, masculine, plural has a -תִּ prefix and an וּ- ending, תִּשְׁמְרוּ. Second-person, feminine, plural has a -תִּ prefix and a -נָה ending, תִּשְׁמֹרְנָה. Third-person, masculine, plural has a -יִ prefix an וּ- ending, יִשְׁמְרוּ. Third-person, feminine, plural has a -תִּ prefix and  a -נָה ending, תִּשְׁמֹרְנָה.

The wayyiqtol and weqatal forms are similar to the imperfect and perfect forms, respectively. They are formed by adding a vav in front of the imperfect and perfect forms, plus a few additional modifications.3 For example, in the wayyiqtol a dagesh is placed in the letter following the vav, in most cases. As an example using the verb שָׁמַר, the third-person, masculine, singular wayyiqtol form is וַיִּשְׁמֹר. The names wayyiqtol and weqatal are conventional grammatical labels based on forms of the model verb קָטַל, “to kill”, which is often used to show verb forms. The wayyiqtol form is also sometimes called the waw-consecutive, the consecutive imperfect, and the converted imperfect. Just other names that are used for it. The wayyiqtol is extremely common, as we will see in Genesis 1.

Shortly we’ll look at Genesis 1 so let’s look at these verb forms using vocabulary from that chapter. Some of the verbs we will see in Genesis 1 have slightly different forms than שָׁמַר. They have features like guttural letters, starting with nun, starting with yud, having only two letters, or having doubled (geminate) letters.

The first verb in the Bible is בָּרָא (bara), “to create”. This verb is what is called either a III-aleph or lamed-aleph verb, which has a few differences in its conjugation. But the general form is quite similar. In Genesis 1:1 this occurs in the perfect in the third-person, masculine, singular form. But we’ll look at the other forms for practice:

בָּרָאתִי – I created

בָּרָאתָ – You (m) created

בָּרָאתְ – You (f) created

בָּרָא – He created

בָּרְאָה – She created

בָּרָאנוּ – We created

בְּרָאתֶם – You all (m) created

בְּרָאתֶן – You all (f) created

בָּרְאוּ – They created

Another verb we’ll see in Genesis 1 is אָמַר (amar), “to say”. This kind of verb is called either a I-aleph or a pey-aleph verb, which also has a few differences in its conjugation. But we can see the same general pattern. In Genesis 1:3 this occurs in the wayyiqtol in the third-person, masculine, singular form. We’ll look at all the person, gender, and number forms of the wayyiqtol for practice:

וָאֹמַר – And I said

וַתֹּאמֶר – And you (m) said

וַתֹּאמְרִי – And you (f) said

וַיֹּאמֶר – And he said

וַתֹּאמֶר – And she said

וַנֹּאמֶר – And we said 

וַתֹּאמְרוּ – And you all (m) said

וַתֹּאמַרְנָה – And you all (f) said

וַיֹּאמְרוּ – And they (m) said 

וַתֹּאמַרְנָה – And they (f) said

One we will see a lot in Genesis 1 is וַיֹּאמֶר (vayomer), “and he said”.

Before moving on to Genesis 1 let’s introduce some vocabulary that we will see in the chapter:

אֱלֹהִים – God

שָּׁמַיִם – Heavens

אֶרֶץ – Earth

רֵאשִׁית – Beginning

אֵת – Direct object marker

בְּ – In, against

לְ – To, toward

וְ – And, or

הָיָה – To be

עַל – On, upon

פָנִים – Face

רוּחַ – Wind, Spirit

מַיִם – Water

אָמַר – To say

אוֹר – Light

חֹשֶׁךְ – Darkness

רָאָה – To see

בָּדַל – To separate

בֵּין – Between

טוֹב – Good

כִּי – That

קָרָא – To call

יוֹם – Day

לָיְלָה  – Night

עֶרֶב – Evening

בֹּקֶר – Morning

אֶחָד – One

With that vocabulary, let’s move on to Genesis chapter 1.

The first chapter of Genesis is one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring in all of scripture, and in all of world literature. There’s lots of fascinating stuff here. I’d like to look at the Hebrew text and point out some interesting features of the Hebrew language itself as well as consider some intriguing theological details that this chapter has inspired over the centuries. In the following we’ll see the perfect and wayyiqtol verb forms and our vocabulary words. We’ll also see some other interesting grammatical features that I’ll comment on as they come up.

The first verse, Genesis 1:1 reads:

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ 

This can be translated in different ways. Here are the King James Version and New Jewish Publication Society translations.

King James Version: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

New Jewish Publication Society: “When God began to create heaven and earth…”

The way the King James Version renders it is the more common way. This is also how it’s translated in the NRSV, NASB, ESV, NIV, and CSB. It describes a completed action. The NJPS translation treats the verse as a subordinate clause describing the circumstances under which creation began. The difference has to do with how to translate the first word, בְּרֵאשִׁית. And this is an opportunity to talk about an interesting feature of Hebrew nouns.

Hebrew nouns can have an absolute form or a construct form. For example, the plural of בֵּן, the word for “son” in its absolute form is בָּנִים. And that’s just “sons” by itself. But if you want to say “sons of” something you have to use the construct form, בְּנֵי. To say “sons of Israel” you don’t say בָּנִים יִשְׂרָאֵל, you say בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל. Not “sons Israel” but “sons of Israel”. What we translate in English as “of” is denoted by that construct form of the noun. The interesting thing about בְּרֵאשִׁית is that in other instances where this word is used in this form it is often as a construct form, as the beginning of something. For example, as the beginning of someone’s reign (Jeremiah 26:1, Jeremiah 27:1, Jeremiah 28:1, Jeremiah 49:1). Jeremiah 26:1 reads בְּרֵאשִׁ֗ית מַמְלְכוּת יְהֹויָקִים, “In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim”. You actually have two construct forms in a row there, both “beginning of” and “reign of”. So there’s an argument that a similar thing is happening in Genesis 1:1, that it’s not just “in the beginning” but “in the beginning of…” A kind of awkward literal translation would be something like “in the beginning of God created” or “in the beginning of God creating”. But a more natural rendering in English is “when God began to create”.4,5,6

So is that right? Well that’s the debate. And it’s not just something modern scholars have brought up recently. This is an ancient debate. The medieval French rabbi Rashi (1040-1105) proposed this reading.7 Theologically and literarily each reading puts things in a slightly different stance. It’s an interesting topic. There’s been a ton of back and forth. The debate goes on and it’s not settled. So I’ll just leave it at that and say that it’s a topic.

The second word is בָּרָא, “he created”. This is an example of the perfect form we looked at earlier. In this verse בָּרָא is in the third person, masculine, singular. “He created”.

The third word is אֱלֹהִים. “God” or sometimes ‘gods’, plural. אֱלֹהִים can be used explicitly to refer to plural gods, such as the gods of other nations. But here אֱלֹהִים is not talking about plural actors. Why do we say that? Because of the form of the previous word, בָּרָא. The form בָּרָא is singular, not plural. It’s בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים not בָּרְאוּ אֱלֹהִים. So אֱלֹהִים is a single actor even though it has a plural ending.

In the rest of the first verse, God created אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ. He created heaven and earth. Note there the use of אֵת, which is a direct object marker, heaven and earth here each being direct objects of God’s creation. Note also that שָׁמַיִם and אֶרֶץ are prefixed with a ה, which is similar to the definite article “the” in English. So a more literal translation like King James will say “the heaven and the earth”. Also note the ו before the second אֵת, which here means “and”. It can also mean “or” in other circumstances.

Verse 2:

וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְהֹ֑ום וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃ 

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (KJV)

In this verse we see an instance of the verb הָיָה, “to be”. In this verse it takes the form הָיְתָה, which is the perfect, third person, feminine, singular. It’s in the perfect form so it’s something completed, so we can say it “was”. The earth was תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, “tohu va-bohu”, a famous Hebrew phrase. There’s a quite lyrical sound to this pair of words. Robert Alter, in his recent translation of the Hebrew Bible, tried to capture this same lyrical sound in English with “welter and waste”. I quite like that!8

And darkness חֹשֶׁךְ was upon the face of the deep עַל־פְּנֵי תְהֹום. The preposition עַל is “on” or “over”. “Face”, פָנִים, is an interesting word. It’s one of those words in a language that gets used for more than just its literal meaning. A very common word. This is a plural-form noun, which in the absolute is פָנִים but also extremely common to see it in the construct form that I mentioned earlier. The construct form is פְּנֵי. The face of something. So it’s not עַל־פָנִים תְהֹום but עַל־פְּנֵי תְהֹום.

Then there’s this תְהֹום, the deep. תְהֹום has cognates in other Semitic languages. In Akkadian it’s tiāmtum. In the Babylonian creation story, the Enūma Eliš, we see this word in the name of the ocean goddess Tiamat. So תְהֹום was a word with a lot of meaning and association in the wider cultural sphere of the Semitic-speaking world.9

Then there’s a Spirit of God, רוּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים. Also translated, in the NRSV for example, as a “wind from God”. As in many languages, the same word can mean “wind”, “breath”, and “spirit”. Even the English word “spirit” is etymologically related to breathing. And so it is with רוּחַ, it’s both “spirit” and “breath”.10 And what was this wind or spirit from God doing? It moved over or swept over the face of the waters. Very interesting verb here, רָחַף. In this verse it’s in a participle form, מְרַחֶפֶת. Not a very common word. Just a few occurrences in the Bible. It’s often translated as “hovering” over the waters. It could even be thought of as “brooding” like a bird. One of the other occurrences of this word רָחַף is in Deuteronomy 32:11 that talks about an eagle that hovers over its young, עַל־גֹּוזָלָיו יְרַחֵף. Then again we see this use of the word for face in its construct form, over the face of the waters, עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם.

Verse 3:

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י אֹ֑ור וַֽיְהִי־אֹֽור׃ 

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (KJV)

In this verse the verb, אָמַר , “to say”, takes on the wayyiqtol form. “And God said”, וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, “Let there be light”, יְהִי אֹור. Here we see the verb הָיָה, “to be” again. This time it’s in what’s called the jussive form. Jussive indicates a desire for something to be the case. It’s not merely indicative, stating that something is, nor is it quite imperative, commanding that something be. But something in between: “Let there be”. “Let there be”, יְהִי, “light”, אֹור.

“And there was light”, וַיְהִי־אֹור. This is another wayyiqtol, וַיְהִי , of the verb הָיָה, “to be”. “And there was light”.

Verse 4:

וַיַּ֧רְא אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶת־הָאֹ֖ור כִּי־טֹ֑וב וַיַּבְדֵּ֣ל אֱלֹהִ֔ים בֵּ֥ין הָאֹ֖ור וּבֵ֥ין הַחֹֽשֶׁךְ׃ 

“And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.” (KJV)

And God אֱלֹהִים saw וַיַּרְא. This is a third-person, masculine, singular, wayyiqtol of the verb רָאָה, “to see”. He saw the light, אֶת־הָאֹור. Note the direct object marker, אֶת, and the ה prefix acting like a definite article, “the light”. He saw that, כִּי, it was good, טֹוב. In English we say “that it was good” but in Hebrew the “it is” isn’t necessary and you just say כִּי־טֹוב. You’ve probably heard the expression מזל טוב, “good fortune”. That’s an easy way to remember the word טֹוב for “good”.

And God אֱלֹהִים divided, or separated וַיַּבְדֵּל. Another wayyiqtol. Third-person, masculine, singular of the verb בָּדַל, “to divide” or “separate”. Note again the vav and the yud with a dagesh before the root of the verb. It’s worth noting that this act of dividing is characteristic of God’s creation in Genesis 1. We see this verb בָּדַל five times in the chapter. When God separates the waters above and below the firmament (verses 6 & 7) and when he creates the sun and moon to separate day and night (verses 14 & 18). But we see the concept with other words as well, as when God gathers all the waters together to make dry land (verses 9 & 10) and when he makes humans male and female (verse 27). To me this contrasts with the תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, tohu va-bohu at the beginning of the chapter. God is imposing order by separating things into coherent categories.

God makes a separation between בֵּין the light הָאֹור and between וּבֵין the darkness הַחֹשֶׁךְ. The word for “between” here is בֵּין. Note also the vav prefix before the second בֵּין, “and between”. The vav acts as a conjunction “and” as usual but here also takes the form of a shuruq, pronounced “oo”. This happens when the vav prefix comes before certain letters: bet, mem, and pey (labial letters). In this case the bet also loses its dagesh and changes pronunciation. So with בֵּין, “between”, “and between” becomes וּבֵין.

Verse 5:

וַיִּקְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים ׀ לָאֹור֙ יֹ֔ום וְלַחֹ֖שֶׁךְ קָ֣רָא לָ֑יְלָה וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר יֹ֥ום אֶחָֽד׃ 

“And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (KJV)

The first word, וַיִּקְרָא, is a wayyiqtol of קָרָא, “to call”. “And God called”, וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים. In this verse we see the preposition ל with lamed, “to”, “toward”. In this verse a lamed preposition is used with both אוֹר, “light” and חשֶׁךְ, “darkness”: לָאוֹר and לַחֹשֶׁךְ. And he called the light, לָאוֹר, day, יוֹם, and he called the darkness, לַחֹשֶׁךְ, night, לָיְלָה. Then we see the verb הָיָה, “to be” again as a wayyiqtol, וַיְהִי , “and it was”. And it was evening, עֶרֶב, and it was morning, בֹקֶר. We can use these two words along with טֹוב, “good”, for some common Hebrew greetings: ערב טוב, “good evening”, and בוקר טוב, “good morning”. And all of this was יֹום אֶחָד, “one day”. Here we see the Hebrew number one: אֶחָד.

Let’s do Genesis 1:1-5 in Hebrew again, all together. Listen for the words and forms that we’ve gone over and see how much you can understand now.

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ 

וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְהֹ֑ום וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃ 

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י אֹ֑ור וַֽיְהִי־אֹֽור׃ 

וַיַּ֧רְא אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶת־הָאֹ֖ור כִּי־טֹ֑וב וַיַּבְדֵּ֣ל אֱלֹהִ֔ים בֵּ֥ין הָאֹ֖ור וּבֵ֥ין הַחֹֽשֶׁךְ׃ 

וַיִּקְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים ׀ לָאֹור֙ יֹ֔ום וְלַחֹ֖שֶׁךְ קָ֣רָא לָ֑יְלָה וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר יֹ֥ום אֶחָֽד׃ 

So to review. We’ve seen the perfect, imperfect, and wayyiqtol verb forms. We’ve seen construct nouns and some prepositions. We’ve learned vocabulary for and read the first five verses of the Bible. I know that this was a firehouse of information. But hopefully it can serve as a launching point for further learning for folks who are interested. I plan to do some similar readings in Genesis while highlighting certain aspects of the language. As well as other parts of the Bible.

References:

A video of this content is available on YouTube.

In the last post I went through the Hebrew alphabet. This post is an overview of Hebrew vowels. The letters of the Hebrew alphabet function mostly as consonants. For most of the history of the language it was just these consonants that were ever written. That’s still mostly the case in modern Hebrew. The nature of the language is such that the consonants alone do most of the needed work. I said they function mostly as consonants. The letters he, yud, and vav can also be used to hint at general types of vowel sounds. But eventually systems were developed to explicitly indicate specific kinds of vowel sounds. A little over a thousand years ago the Tiberian vowel system was developed and this is the system that is still used today. Ancient manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible and modern Torah scrolls have only the consonants but printed Hebrew Bibles use the Tiberian vowel system so that it’s very clear, at least once you learn it, exactly how to pronounce each word. In this vowel system, instead of using letters, vowel sounds are indicated with additional symbols written around the letters. These additional symbols or diacritics are called niqqud. Since the symbols are always written around letters and not by themselves I’ll show these here with the letter aleph.

Qamatz – אָ.  The qamatz looks like a little upper-case T that goes under the letter. The qamatz makes an “ah” sound as in “father”. That’s the sound it makes in most words. In some words it can also make an “oh” sound as in “go”.

Pataḥ – אַ . The pataḥ is a horizontal line written under the letter. It also makes an “ah” sound as in father. Qamatz and pataḥ have historically had distinct sounds but they are pronounced the same in modern Hebrew.

Tsere – אֵ . Tsere is written with two horizontally aligned dots under the letter. This makes an ‘ey’ sound as in “they”.

Seghol – אֶ. The seghol is written with  three dots in the shape of a triangle, going under the letter. This makes an “eh” sound as in “bed”.

Ḥireq – אִ. The ḥireq is written as a single dot under the letter. It makes an“ee” sound as in “machine”. Letters with a ḥireq are sometimes followed by a yud as well, which is one of those helping letters.

Ḥolem – אֹ. The ḥolem is written as a single dot written to the upper left of the letter. It makes an “oh” sound as in “go”. It is also often written with a vav accompanying this single dot – אוֹֹ.

Shuruq – אוּ‎. The shuruq is written with a vav to the left of the letter with a single dot in the middle of the vav. It makes an ‘oo’ sound as in “food”.

Qubbutz – אֻ. The qubbutz is written with three dots arranged diagonally under the letter. It also makes an ‘oo’ sound.

Sheva – אְ. The sheva is written as two dots arranged vertically under the letter. It represents a very short vowel, pronounced like the first ‘a’ in “Maria” or the first ‘e’ in “Jerusalem”. Singers may be familiar with talking about a “schwa” sound, which comes from the Hebrew sheva. The sheva is also sometimes silent and is just there to mark the end of a syllable.

The sheva also combines with the qamatz, pataḥ, and seghol to form what are called “reduced” or “compound” versions of each of these.

Reduced Qamatz – אֳ. The reduced qamatz is written as a combination of a sheva and a qamatz, both written under the letter. It makes an “oh” sound as in “go”.

Reduced Pataḥ – אֲ. The reduced pataḥ is written as a combination of a sheva and a pataḥ, both written under the letter. It makes an “ah” sound as in “father”.

Reduced Seghol – אֱ. The reduced seghol is written as a combination of a sheva and a seghol, both written under the letter. It makes an “eh” sound as in “bed”.

Now let’s try spelling a few words using these vowels. With each of the following words I’ll just be giving a gloss, rather than a full definition. For a full definition consult something like the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon, which is freely available. 

The first word is אֱלֹהִים, meaning “God” or “gods”. In אֱלֹהִים we have three of the vowel sounds. The first syllable has a reduced seghol under an aleph, pronounced – “eh”. The second syllable has a ḥolem to the left of the lamed, pronounced – “lo”. In the third syllable there’s a ḥireq under a he – “hee”. In this word there’s also a yud accompanying the ḥireq, which is quite common. This third syllable ends with the mem in its final form, so this last syllable becomes – “heem”. Eh-lo-heem. אֱלֹהִים.

The next word is יִשְׂרָאֵל, meaning “Israel”. In this word there are four niqqud but just three syllables. I’ll explain why. In the first syllable there is a ḥireq under a yud, pronounced – “yee”. This is followed by a sheva under a sin. In this case this sheva just indicates that it’s the end of the syllable so that syllable is pronounced – “yees”. So there are two niqqud in this one syllable. In the second syllable there’s a qamatz under a resh – “rah”. And in the third syllable there’s a tsere under an aleph followed by a lamed – “eyl”. Yees-rah-eyl. יִשְׂרָאֵל.

The next word is בָּבֶל, meaning “Babylon”. This word is interesting because we have two bets, one with a dagesh and one without a dagesh. So as a bonus I’ll also talk here about the dagesh. I mentioned in the recording on Hebrew letters that some letters are pronounced differently with or without a symbol called a dagesh. The dagesh is a dot in the middle of the letter. It can have a grammatical function but can also simply indicate pronunciation for those letters that change with or without a dagesh. The letters that change with a dagesh are bet, gimmel, dalet, kaf, pey, and tav. An acronym to remember these is “beged-kefet” and we can call these the beged-kefet letters, which change pronunciation with the dagesh. Or at least did change pronunciation in classical Biblical Hebrew. Some of them don’t really change any more. But some definitely still do and this includes the letter bet. In the word בָּבֶל we have two bets. The first one has a dagesh and is pronounced as a ‘b’. The second one doesn’t have a dagesh and is pronounced as a ‘v’. There’s a qammatz under the first bet, with a dagesh, so this is pronounced – “bah”. Then there’s a seghol under the second bet, without a dagesh, so this is pronounced – “veh”. Then this syllable ends with a lamed so the full second syllable is – “vel”. Bah-vel. בָּבֶל.

The next word is אֶרֶץ, meaning “land”, “earth”, or “ground”. אֶרֶץ has two seghols in it, the first under an aleph – “eh”, the second under a resh “reh”. Then the word ends with a tsade in its terminal form – “retz”. Eh-retz. אֶרֶץ.

The next word is שֻׁלְחָן, meaning table. The first syllable has a qubbutz under a shin – “shu”. Then there’s a sheva under the lamed, which ends the syllable, making this first syllable – “shul”. Next there’s qammatz under a chet, followed by a nun in its terminal form, making this second syllable – “chan”. Shul-chan. שֻׁלְחָן.

The next word is רוּחַ, meaning “spirit”, “wind”, or “breath”. The first syllable is a resh followed by a shuruq – “ru”. The second syllable is interesting and is an example of what is called a “furtive pataḥ”. Usually with the Hebrew vowels you pronounce the consonant that is given by the letter first and then the vowel that is written around it second. But when a pataḥ is under a chet, at the end of a word like this, in the last syllable, you actually pronounce the pataḥ vowel first and then the chet. So instead of “chah” this second syllable is pronounced “ach”. Ru-ach. רוּחַ.

The last word is שָׁלוֹם. This one I’m sure you’ve heard. שָׁלוֹם means “peace”, “welfare”, or “wholeness”. The first syllable has a qammatz under a shin – “Sha”. The second syllable has lamed followed by a ḥolem, this one written with a vav, followed by a mem in its final form – “lohm”. Sha-lohm. שָׁלוֹם.

And that’s my introduction to Hebrew vowels. After doing letters and vowels it’s advisable to go on and study things like pronouns, prepositions, verb forms, and so on. There are tons of good resources out there for that. My favorite is Michael Carasik’s Biblical Hebrew: Learning a Sacred Language, produced by The Great Courses. For now I’m not going to do any more posts dedicated to those topics myself, so I’ll just refer you to those resources. Instead I’m going to start looking at the Biblical text itself. And I’ll talk about various grammatical and vocabulary topics as they come up in that way. So that’s what we’ll do next time.

This post is also a video available on YouTube.

In this post we will go through the Hebrew alphabet. The letters of the Hebrew alphabet function primarily as consonants. A few of them sometimes act as vowels as well. But for the most part vowel sounds are written in another way than with letters. We’ll cover the vowels in another video. The letters of the Hebrew alphabet are related to the letters of many other alphabets like English, Spanish, Latin, and Greek. Even the order of the letters is almost the same in each language. For example, the Greek letters alpha, beta, gamma, delta, have the same order as the Hebrew letters aleph, bet, gimmel, dalet.

With each of the letters I’ll say the sound that it makes. Two letters, aleph and ayin, are silent as consonants. Some of the letters have different ways that they can be pronounced. Some of the letters were pronounced differently in Biblical times. One notable example is vav or waw, which made a ‘w’ sound rather than a ‘v’ sound. I’ll use modern Hebrew pronunciation, which is a very common way to read even Biblical Hebrew.

Some of the letters also have different forms. Most importantly, some letters are written differently if they come at the end of a word. These include: kaph, mem, nun, pey, and tsade. In the video I’ll show the final form of such letters on the left and the other form on the right. There’s also something called a dagesh in Hebrew, which can be present or absent in some letters. Such letters are pronounced differently with a dagesh and without a dagesh. These letters are bet, gimmel, dalet, khaf, pey, and tau. But I’m not going to get into that in this video.

Here are the letters of the Hebrew alphabet:

א – aleph

Silent

ב – bet

b,v

ג – , gimmel

g

ד – dalet

d

ה – hey

h

ו – vav

v

ז – zayin

z

ח – chet

kh

ט – tet

t

י – yud

y

כ – kaf

k,kh

ל – lamed

l

מ – mem

m

נ – nun

n

ס – samekh

s

ע – ayin

silent

פ – pey

p,f

צ – tsade

tz

ק – kof

k

ר – resh

r

שׁ – shin

sh

שׂ – sin

s

ת – tav

t

Now let’s try a few simple words putting together the letters we just learned. Remember that in Hebrew words are written from right to left so look for that in the following words:

אב

Av, which means “father”. Aleph-bet. Av.

אם 

Em, which means “mother”. Notice the mem in its final form at the end of the word. Aleph-mem. Em. 

בן

Ben, which means “son”. Notice the nun in its final form at the end of the word. Bet-nun. Ben. 

בת

Bat, which means “daughter”. Bet-tav. Bat.

בית

Bayit, which means “house”. Bet-yud-tav. Bayit.

מים

Mayim, which means “water”. Notice the mem in its final form at the end of the word. Here we can see both forms in one word. Mem-yud-mem. Mayim.

יד

Yad, which means “hand”. Yud-dalet. Yad.

כן

Ken, which means “yes”. Or in the Bible this usually means “thus” or “therefore”. Notice the nun in its final form at the end of the word. Kaf-nun. Ken.

Thanks for reading. Next time we’ll take a look at the Hebrew vowel system.

It’s been some time since I’ve published any material. A big part of that was probably graduate school. But I’m done now. I got my Master’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering, which was very interesting education and stuff I’m continuing to work on and learn about. But I thought it would be fun, with getting back into publishing material, to do something in a completely different subject but one that I also find very interesting and that is the Hebrew Bible and the Hebrew language.

I love reading and talking about the Hebrew Bible and especially doing it in Hebrew. I’ve talked to a lot of people who are also interested in both the Hebrew Bible and the Hebrew language, though most I’ve talked to haven’t learned a lot of Hebrew. Yet. I thought I’d put together some preliminary material to introduce the basics of the language and provide some recommendations for resources for further study. I also want to teach my kids Hebrew so I want to make a few videos that are accessible enough for children. But after those preliminaries I’ll just dig into the text and let people do enough self-study of the language to learn as we go.

I’d like to say a word about my motivation and perspective on the Hebrew Bible and why I take the effort to study it in Hebrew. I have a very high view of scripture as the inspired word of God. That’s not to ignore the historically rooted and human element of it. But it is to say that scripture is a unique kind of text in that it is revelation. It comes from God. So it’s really important and it’s important to understand it correctly. If there’s any text that is worth all the effort of learning a language to read it it’s scripture. And this gives Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek special importance.

I want to focus mostly on reading scripture with language study being more supplementary to that. But I would like to recommend some excellent resources that I have found very useful and always recommend to people when this subject comes up. 

The first is a series of video lectures offered by The Great Courses. Biblical Hebrew: Learning a Sacred Language by Michael Carasik, who is a professor of Biblical Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania. This course is fantastic. It’s amazing how comprehensive it is and how much Carasik is able to cover in 36 lectures.

The second is an audiobook, Old Testament Hebrew Vocabulary by Jonathan T. Pennington. This is simply a vocabulary list in audiobook format. But that’s incredibly useful. It goes in order of word use frequency in the Bible. There’s no substitute to learning vocabulary, lots and lots of words! The full audiobook is two hours long. I recommend listening to it over and over again.

The third is the Biblehub Interlinear Bible. This is an online Hebrew Bible in both Hebrew and English. Each Hebrew word has an English gloss underneath it. A gloss, by the way, is not a comprehensive definition but just a short, inexact definition. Each word is also fully parsed out with its grammatical form. Each word also includes a hyperlink that includes the Brown–Driver–Briggs lexicon, which gives more than just a gloss, but a more comprehensive definition of each word. Brown–Driver–Briggs is an older but respectable lexicon. The best is probably the Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT) but that one is definitely not free like Brown–Driver–Briggs is. Biblehub also includes entries from Strong’s concordance but it’s not as good as Brown–Driver–Briggs so I’d definitely go with that.

Last is A Reader’s Hebrew Bible published by Zondervan. If you want to go all in and get a Hebrew Bible in print this is a great one. The Reader’s Hebrew Bible gives the Hebrew text with footnotes providing glosses for words that occur less than 30 times. Words that occur 30 times or more are given gloss in the glossary but the best way to read it is to memorize all the words that occur 30 times or more. Then you can just read and look in the footnotes for the less common words. It’s really well done.

In the next two episodes we’ll look at the Hebrew alphabet and Hebrew vowel system respectively. Then get to the good stuff in the Hebrew Bible itself. And hopefully get back into conversations about science, Star Trek, Star Wars, philosophy, literature, and all that stuff.

The question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” is typically used as a mocking retort to the sorts of philosophical and especially theological questions that are thought to be of little usefulness and a general waste of effort. It’s especially used in reference to philosopher theologians of the Middle Ages like Scholastics including Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. While the material conditions of people in the world were those of misery and squalor (so it is supposed) these folks were sitting in their ivory towers thinking about useless questions instead of doing science and inventing things. As you might guess, I don’t share this perspective and as a kind of subversion of the retort I’d like to appropriate it. The question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” is not a question anyone actually ever asked. It’s a straight up caricature. But Medieval Scholastic philosophy did have plenty of talk about angels. Why? And could angels have any modern intellectual relevance?

In what follows I propose that angels were used in Medieval Scholastic philosophy as subjects for thought experiments. In such thought experiments the properties of angels were not those primarily of angels as described in biblical texts but more of an idealized notion serviceable to philosophical exercises. I propose that these sorts of philosophical angels can still be used to explore questions we find interesting today in thought experiments pertaining to cognition and consciousness. With an understanding of thought experiments as idealizations which transcend particularity in order to achieve generality I’ll go through various stages of generalization of consciousness from its particular human form to its most general form. This process moves into the complete abstraction of consciousness from any of its particular physical instantiations in order to explore its most essential features, though with our present knowledge this can only be the outline of a conceptual scaffolding since we don’t currently know what the essential features of consciousness actually are, or what it even is. And this will lead back to speculation about the nature of angels and what their nature might be.

When Medieval philosophers like Aquinas and Scotus talked about angels they did not get into historical scholarship about the way angels were understood at the times that the biblical texts were written. Or the way angels were understood during the Second Temple period with the writing of pseudepigraphal texts like the Book of Enoch. This is a fascinating subject and on this subject I’d recommend the work of Michael S. Heiser in his books Angels and The Unseen Realm. In Biblical texts angels are messengers. That’s what the Greek angelos (ἄγγελος) means. Also the Hebrew malak (מֲלְאָךְ). There’s not much information given about their metaphysical nature. But it is their metaphysical nature that is most interesting to the Medieval philosophers.

The most important attribute of angels for philosophical purposes is that they are non-corporeal. Angels do not have physical bodies. So they are very unlike us humans. Yet they are also like us humans in a very significant aspect: they are conscious beings. They’re not only conscious but also self-conscious, intelligent, and rational, again like humans. In our regular experience we only know of one kind being that is self-conscious, intelligent, and rational: human beings. And we have good reason to believe that these attributes are essentially connected to our physical bodies and especially our brains. The idea that a being could be self-conscious, intelligent, and rational without a physical body or even just a physical brain conflicts with our regular experience. But that’s why it’s interesting.

An excellent resource on the use of angels in Medieval philosophy is Martin Lenz and Isabel Iribarren’s Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry: Their Function and Significance, which is a collection of essays on the subject. In particular I recommend the chapter by Dominik Perler titled Thought Experiments: The Methodological Function of Angels in Late Medieval Epistemology. In his essay Perler works with a definition of the thought experiment from The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, given by Timothy Gooding, whom he quotes: “A thought experiment is an idealization which transcends the particularity and the accidents of worldly human activities in order to achieve the generality and rigour of a demonstrative procedure.” I think this is an excellent definition for a thought experiment. If you want to get at the essence of a concept a thought experiment is a way of looking at it in the most generalized way possible. There are certain concepts like language, rationality, and possibly self-consciousness (of the most reflective sort) that we only find in human beings. How can we think about these concepts in their general form when we only have one kind of example from actual experience? We have to use our imaginations. And so we make thought experiments.

Perler notes that thought experiments take different forms in different ages. I would say that they make use of the images that are readily available in the culture. “Today, of course, philosophers hardly speak about angels. They prefer talking about brains in the vat, brains separated from the body and sent to another planet, zombies, or people living in a black-and-whiteworld.” We take our ideas from the culture: from religion, myth, literature, and film. But are these necessarily fictional? Perler makes an interesting distinction: “Of course, one needs to make a crucial distinction when talking about thought experiments. They can be understood either as scenarios involving purely fictitious entities (e.g., brains in the vat), or as scenarios appealing to entities that have real existence or could in principle have real existence, but are considered under ideal conditions (e.g., the scientist Mary who has all knowledge about colours). Since medieval authors took angels to be real entities, endowed with real causal power and interacting with other real entities, they were certainly not interested in thought experiments in the first sense [fictitious entities]. They were rather focusing on thought experiments in the second sense, analyzing angels as real creatures that transcend the material world and therefore enable us to examine cognitive activities in its purest and most ideal form, which is not subject to material constraints.”

I mentioned before that no Medieval person really asked “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”. But we can find examples of something kind of close. In the Summa Theologiae Thomas Aquinas asked the question: “Whether several angels can be at the same time in the same place?” (Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 52, Article 3) This he answered in the negative: “I answer that, There are not two angels in the same place.” I’d actually answer the question differently I think. But what’s important is that the question makes sense to ask. We assume here that angels are immaterial. So there are questions that arise regarding the relation of immaterial things to space. Does something immaterial take up space? Could it take up space under certain circumstances? If the specific question about angels seems too remote, think about other immaterial things. First, consider mathematical sentences like 1+1=2. Does that take up space? It would seem not to. It’s just not a spatial kind of thing. Second, consider a field as understood in physics? A field is “a physical quantity, represented by a scalar, vector, or tensor, that has a value for each point in space and time.” Some fields probably have actual physical existence. In quantum field theory certain fields are understood to be the most basic building block of physical reality that give rise to everything else. But other fields are more abstract, especially since we can invent all kinds of fields to suit our purposes. For example, we can imagine a temperature field where every point in a given volume has a certain scalar temperature value. This kind of field would obviously be spatial in nature since it is defined over a given region of space. But it’s not exactly a physical thing either. It’s just a set of numbers. These two kinds of immaterial things have very different relations to space. For any kind of immaterial thing, including angels, it’s reasonable to ask which kind of relation to space it has. How many mathematical sentences, such as 1+1=2, can fit on the head of a pin? In the asking of that question we can see that mathematical sentences just aren’t the kinds of things that take up space or subsist in space at all. That’s an interesting feature of mathematical sentences.

Let’s look at another Medieval example. In his article Dominik Perler looks at the work of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham on the subject of perception. They framed the issue as one of how angels could have cognition of things in the world. Physical beings perceive the world through their physical senses. But nonphysical beings wouldn’t have sense organs of this sort. They would need other sorts of cognitive devices “to make things cognitively present to them.” Both Scotus and Ockham held that “every cognition requires a cognitive act and a cognitive object.” But they had different views about what that cognitive object would be. For Scotus, “the appropriate object for an intellectual act is the essence of a thing.” For Ockham, “the appropriate object for an intellectual act is the individual thing with its individual qualities.” Both Scotus and Ockham then think about how cognitive objects become cognitively accessible. And they use angels in their thought experiments to make this as general as possible. They don’t even refer to sense perception. Rather, there’s simply something that makes the cognitive object cognitively accessible. That something could be sense perception but it doesn’t have to be. So it’s thoroughly general. For me, as a physical being with physical senses, before I cognize something like a chair I perceive it with my senses. But after I perceive it with my senses there’s an intellectual act by which I cognize it. For Scotus the object of this intellectual act is the essence of a chair. For Ockham the object of this intellectual act is the individual object, which happens to be a chair. These are two very different ways of understanding cognition. And by using angels, nonphysical beings, in their thought experiments they bracket everything that comes before the intellectual act because it’s that intellectual act specifically that interests them. It doesn’t matter if what makes the cognitive object cognitively accessible is sight, smell, echolocation, electroreceptors, or what have you. This can apply to humans, bats, sharks, computers, or angels. That’s why it’s fully generalized. They are just interested in what happens in the intellect.

So how does the cognitive object become cognitively accessible to the intellect? For Scotus, the cognitive object is the essence of a thing and “to make the essence of a thing cognitively accessible, the intellect needs a cognitive device: the intelligible species.” For Ockham, the cognitive object is the individual thing and “to make an individual thing cognitively accessible, the intellect simply needs a causal relationship with that thing.” For Scotus, “the intelligible species determines the content of an intellectual act”. For Ockham, “the individual thing itself determines the content of an intellectual act.” What does this look like in practice? I expect that Ockham’s view will seem most plausible up front. Going back to the chair example, the essence of a chair sounds kind of fictional. Isn’t it just the thing itself we’re dealing with that we then understand to be a chair? Nevertheless, I’d say that in the history of philosophy these two views are pretty evenly represented. Just to comment on it briefly, it’s arguably that our cognition always has some intentionality to it. It’s always directed towards something. We don’t just cognize the thing but also what we can do with it. A chair, for example, is not just an elevated platform with four legs and a backing. A chair is something to sit on. And it’s arguable that that usefulness is the first thing we cognize.

Perler comments that for both Scotus and Ockham, “their detailed analysis was motivated by an interest in the general structure of cognition… They both wanted to know how cognition works in principle, i.e. what kinds of entities and relations are required in any cognitive process.” The philosophy of mind understandably tends to be very human-focused. But that leaves out many other ways of cognizing, both real and imagined, from bats to sharks to computers. By using angels in their thought experiments Scotus and Ockham were able to think about these issues in a way that transcended the particularity of all these cases and think about cognition as such. I think that Medieval people had an easier time thinking about human attributes in this more general way because more of them believed in a universe populated by beings of an unseen realm that had many human-like attributes. Part of the “discarded image” as C.S. Lewis called it. The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins called these kinds of beings “metapersons”, something he proposed recovering and studying in a “new science of the enchanted universe” (see The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity). This worldview of a heavily populated unseen realm led Medievals to come up with useful concepts that they otherwise might not have. This is something Joseph Koterski has argued, with the case of Boethius in particular (see Natural Law and Human Nature). In his writings about these various kinds of human-like beings Boethius had to come up with a technical term and stipulate an appropriate definition to refer to all of them, both human and non-human. He used the term “person”, which he defined as an individual substance of a rational nature. A wonderfully general definition that preserves the essential core.

Could we make similar use of angels in modern thought experiments? I think they could be used in a similar way as used by the Medievals, i.e. to transcend the particularity and accidents of human beings and explore concepts in their most general form. One topic that interests me and where I can see application of this is to consciousness, or more especially self-consciousness. This is a distinction that Roger Scruton has made (see The Soul of the World, p. 40). Consciousness is the state of being aware of and able to perceive one’s environment, thoughts, and feelings. This is something that many animals would seem to have.  Self-consciousness is a higher level of awareness where an individual is not only conscious but also aware of themselves as a distinct entity with their own thoughts, feelings, and identity. It involves reflection on one’s own mental states and actions. Humans are certainly self-conscious. As humans we know this because we have direct, first-person access to this higher level of awareness and reflection. And we assume, rightly and non-solipsistically, that this is common to other humans as well. We can also talk to each other and infer from our conversations that we share this self-conscious nature. Other animals might be self-conscious in this way as well. Or they might not be. We don’t really know because we are not of the same species and we can’t talk with them. No other animals have language. It’s possible we Homo sapiens are unique in our self-consciousness.

Let’s consider a progression of abstraction from human consciousness to hypothetical consciousness in other physical beings, to general consciousness as such, abstracted from all particular instances.

We start with human beings. We know a lot about human physiology, psychology, and neurology. All these contribute to the human experience, including our experience of self-consciousness. We know our mental operations are highly if not entirely dependent on our brains. At a very basic level our brains are composed of neurons and the synaptic relations between neurons. Our brains are also further organized into structures whose activity we can observe under various scenarios and activities. We’ve amassed a good deal of knowledge about our brains but there is still a great deal we don’t know. And ultimately we don’t have an answer to what David Chalmers has called the “easy problem of consciousness”: how all our mental experiences like perception, memory, and attention correlate to specific brain mechanisms and processes. We don’t have a complete “map” of the brain. We can’t read people’s minds by looking at their brains. So we still have to speak in rather general terms.

I think the next step removed from human beings would be other species that are closely related to us in the genus Homo. Unfortunately all other species of our genus are extinct so we can’t observe them or talk with them. It’s reasonable that it may have been possible to talk to some of them. Neanderthals seem to have been very similar to humans. They may have had very similar brains, similar enough to have similar capabilities but different enough to be interesting and to make some generalizations about our common features. That’s no longer possible, but that was a very close step removed from human beings that would have been useful for generalization.

To move another step from humans we may have to look beyond our planet and our evolutionary relatives. This would be an organic alien lifeform. We may never encounter such a being but I put it before an artificial lifeform, which we may encounter much sooner, simply because we can imagine such beings being, for lack of a better word, organic: organisms composed of organic molecules with water-based biochemistry, probably composed of cells, with genetic information encoded in molecules, and evolutionary history. Basically, not computers or machines. We can only speculate what such beings might be like. And I suspect we’ll have more insight into the nature of their consciousness after we develop artificial consciousness, for reasons I’ll explain. What might their brains be like? Would they have the basic cellular unit (like neurons) with a complex structure built up on the relations between them?

The next level removed would be beyond any organic physical entity, human or alien, to artificial entities: artificial intelligence or artificial consciousness. The consciousness of artificial consciousness would be considered artificial because it would not be naturally occurring but instead be a product of human engineering and design. What I’m talking about here is not just artificial intelligence of the sort that started showing up everywhere in 2023, when it seemed like almost everything was getting AI capability of some kind. These are large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. A large language model’s artificial intelligence processes and generates human-like text based on patterns learned from large sets of text data. But LLMs lack actual awareness and subjective experience. Artificial consciousness, on the other hand, would entail a system having self-awareness, subjective experiences, and a sense of understanding its existence and environment.

We may well encounter artificial consciousness before we encounter alien life. So even though alien life might be more similar to us, being organic, if we don’t encounter it we won’t be able to learn much from it or make comparisons to the particular physical features that give rise to their consciousness. Nevertheless we may be able to infer certain features that a self-conscious alien species would have to have from features held in common between human consciousness and artificial consciousness.

What might be analogous to the brain in artificial consciousness? We can imagine that an artificial consciousness would have physical similarities to modern computers. They would probably have processing units and memory systems. Although existing artificial intelligence in the form of large language models may not be conscious, artificial consciousness may end up having similar features like a neural network structure consisting of layers of interconnected nodes (like neurons) that process data through weighted connections.

What kinds of features would be held in common between all sorts of conscious entities: humans, Neanderthals, aliens, and artificial consciousness? Right now we can’t know. But we can speculate. I suspect that there will be some kind of structure common to all. This might not be the case, which would be very confusing indeed. But let’s suppose there would be some kind of common structure. I would further speculate that it would have the form composed of basic objects plus the relations between objects. For example, in human brains the basic object is the neuron. And the brain is organized as a system of relations between neurons, the synapses. What constitutes the object and the relations might be rather different from one entity to the next. But I suspect that basic structure will apply to all conscious beings. The definition of the structure will be very complex. It’s not just that there are objects and relations between objects. Many structures would meet that description without being conscious. For example, a three-dimensional matrix of neurons in which every neuron was simply connected synaptically to its nearest neighbor wouldn’t be much of a structure. Consciousness-producing structures are much more complex. In all these cases so far each entity is physical and has some consciousness-imparting structure. In Aristotelian terms these entities are composites of matter and form, a notion called hylemorphism. In each case there is a material substratum for the consciousness-producing form or structure.

This brings me to the final level of abstraction where we pull away the material substratum leaving only the consciousness-producing structure itself; the form without the matter. This moves beyond all physical conscious entities to the completely abstract and nonphysical. The features that I’ve speculated are held in common between conscious entities have the features of a mathematical structure: a set of objects having some additional features such as relations between objects. Fully abstracted, the actual objects themselves don’t matter. These instead become open slots. This is how Verity Harte describes structures generally. Structures are the sorts of things that make available open slots that can be filled by particular objects. When the slot is filled by a physical entity, like a neuron, the structure has a particular physical instantiation. But when the slot is empty the structure is abstracted from physical instantiation. Here the structure is at its most generalized state.

The highest levels of abstraction bring up some interesting philosophical issues. Let’s start with artificial consciousness. Here the question of the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin, or the matter of space, comes up again. The volume of an adult human brain is around 1300 cubic centimeters. That’s not even counting the rest of the body that’s needed for the brain to survive and operate. Our consciousness requires space to operate. Artificial consciousness would also take up space. Maybe a single artificial conscious entity would require even more space than a human body or human brain. But let’s hope that it could be less. Could there be a kind of corollary to Moore’s Law for consciousness. Moore’s Law is the trend in the semiconductor industry for the number of transistors in integrated circuits to double every two years. Since individual transistors are being made to be progressively smaller, more can fit in a given area. Could an artificial consciousness fit in the volume of a modern smartphone? Or maybe even smaller? Could multiple artificial consciousnesses fit on the head of the pin? That might give renewed relevance to the never-actually-asked question of angels dancing on the head of a pin. How many artificial consciousnesses could operate in a space the size of the head of a pin?

Artificial consciousness also brings up questions about embodiment. In humans this is a question of the way our minds relate not just to our brains but to our whole bodies and even to our environments. Hubert Dreyfus was an important contributor to philosophical work on this question, notably in his book What Computers Can’t Do. Dreyfus was drawing on the thought of Martin Heidegger. Maurice Merlau-Ponty would also be relevant to the subject. Dreyfus referred to Heideggerian concepts such as being-in-the-world, ready-to-hand, present-to-hand, and mood to explain the necessarily embodied nature of consciousness. Dreyfus argued that human understanding is fundamentally embodied and situated in a social and physical context, that much of human expertise is tacit and non-reflective. We tend to be very brain-centered in our thinking about human beings. But we are much more than just our brains. If a human brain could be separated from the rest of the body and survive it’s hard to speak for that quality of life, if it could even qualify as a life. Notably, even Dreyfus wasn’t arguing that artificial intelligence or artificial consciousness weren’t possible. Just that they would have to have those sets of features he identified. Would an artificial consciousness then require not only processing and memory but also motility and some form of embodied existence in the world?

Then there’s the highest, nonphysical level of abstraction. An abstract, nonphysical entity that has all the essential structures of consciousness. What is the nature of such an abstraction? Could such an abstract entity actually be conscious? Or would it have mere hypothetical consciousness, in the event that the open slots happen to be filled by physical objects? Does it even make sense to think of such nonphysical, abstract entities as existing at all? This last question is the basic question of platonism? Do abstract objects in general have any existence when we’re not thinking about them or using them in some way?

We can imagine the case where this nonphysical abstraction only becomes conscious when it is physically instantiated. It’s embodied in some way, whether that body by organic or computer. This would be like the relationship of the concept of a machine to the machine itself. We might have the concept of a machine like an engine but this concept doesn’t actually perform work. For that we actually need to build the physical machine. But even with the abstract concept of a machine we could say true and false things about it. Any concept for a steam engine, for example, has to have features for heat addition, expansion, heat rejection, and compression. Any concept lacking these features could be said to be nonfunctional, even in the abstract. In the abstract neither the concept for the functional design nor the nonfunctional design produce any work. But if we were to build them, one would work and the other would not. A philosophical angel might be the same way. It’s not actually conscious in the abstract but the abstract structure would be conscious if it were physically instantiated. So we can still refer to it, like Scotus and Ockham, and talk about cognition and consciousness, and how they would work in any kind of physical instantiation, be it human, Neanderthal, alien, or computer.

Or we can imagine the more extravagant case where this nonphysical abstraction actually is conscious, even when unembodied. That’s difficult to imagine. And there are a number of objections we can make. Maybe not the most obvious of these objections but one I think is important is the matter of temporality. Consciousness seems to be essentially temporal in nature. It’s a process. Our brains aren’t static but change from moment to moment. And our brain states are constantly changing. So how would a nonphysical abstraction do the things that conscious entities do across time? We think of abstractions as being atemporal. They don’t ever change. That’s true in a sense. They don’t change with respect to actual time. But some abstract objects could have multiple elements that are organized in a way like a process. For example, an algorithm with multiple steps is a kind of process. The steps in an algorithm aren’t moments in time but they have an ordering and sequence similar to temporal processes. To take another example, a piece of music, when played, is played in time. But we can also look at a whole page of music at once. In the abstract the piece of music is no longer temporal, but it still has order and sequence.

Another objection is that it seems like a nonphysical abstraction just isn’t enough. It needs something more. Stephen Hawking put this thought quite poetically in A Brief History of Time: “Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?” Of philosophical angels we might ask, what breathes fire into them? Do they need physical instantiation to be conscious?

In the foregoing I’ve also operated under an assumption that consciousness is a structure of some kind. And that we find these kinds of structures instantiated in multiple ways that constitute individual conscious beings. This is reasonable. We always find them together. We don’t observe human consciousness without human brains. But what if that assumption is not correct? Maybe consciousness is not the structure but the structure is a condition for consciousness. And consciousness itself is something more basic. Maybe consciousness itself is a kind of monad, a fundamental, indivisible unit that possesses perception and self-awareness. A theory of such monads was developed in the thought of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. There are some modern theories based on the idea that consciousness might be a basic component of the universe, rather than something reducible to anything else. Not a structure but a unit. See David Chalmers as one prominent philosopher in this area. That’s a very different picture.

In the monad view the complex structures associated with brains and computer systems would not have some structural essence identical to consciousness. Instead they might produce conditions under which it can appear. As an analogy, a generator built to create an electric current has a complex structure. But this structure is not the electric current. The electric current is something else, and something much simpler. The generator produces the conditions under which an electric current can appear. But neither the generator nor its structure are the electric current itself.

In all of this my thoughts about angels have been instrumental. Not so much a question about what actual angels might be like, but about the utility of a certain concept of angels for philosophical exercises. But what of actual angels? Could any of these ideas about angels be correct about actual angels? Granted, that question will only be interesting if you think angels might actually exist. Well, I do. So it is an interesting question for me. I like to think these kinds of metaphysical speculations are on the right track. But I definitely won’t make any strong claims to that effect. As in scripture, the angels will just have to tell us themselves what they are like, if they feel so inclined.

But to be honest what got me onto this whole subject and thinking about it was just that derisive line about angels dancing on the head of a pin. I enjoy reading Medieval philosophy and I just don’t find the characterization of their thought as endless circling around useless questions to be at all accurate. Their thinking was deep and touched on the most foundational issues of knowledge and existence. And when they did talk about angels they were talking about timeless issues on the subjects of cognition, individuation, and language. So one response to the derisive line could be that it’s not really the “own” you think it is. Medieval philosophers didn’t actually ask how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. But even if they had, I’m sure it would have been interesting.