A number of years ago, I became increasingly fascinated by the Hebrew language. In many circles, people have come to place greater emphasis on the Hebrew language out of a love for Israel, and that was true for me as well. Virtually the entire Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, and by delving deeper into the richness of the Hebrew language, it seems possible to penetrate to deeper layers—hidden meanings in the text that a superficial reader would miss. How might this work?
Every word in the Hebrew language is based on a root word, usually consisting of two or three letters. Each of the twenty-two letters is said to have a distinct meaning, and when combined, they are said to convey a deeper and more accurate meaning of the word.
To give an example, let’s look at the same word we encountered in the previous blog post, namely “in the beginning” in Hebrew: בראשי (Bereshith), the first word in the Bible. This word is composed of five letters, namely: ב (Beth), which stands for “house” and is also used as the preposition “in,” and that applies here as well. The next letter is ר (Resh), which represents “a man’s head.” The third letter is א (Aleph), which depicts an “ox’s head” and represents strength. The fourth letter is שׁ (Shin), which means “sharp” or “piercing.” The last is the letter י (Yod), which represents an “arm” or “hand.” By combining the various meanings of the words represented by the letters, much more can be gleaned from the text than what appears on the surface. I’ll leave it at that and won’t go into further detail here.
For a long time, I was fascinated by this and searched for this deeper meaning, because I believed it would give me a deeper understanding of the original text and its significance. However, deep down, this nagged at me, as if I realized that by searching for the higher meaning, I was beginning to overlook the simple text. The turning point for me came when I once heard my granddaughter reading; she had just started learning to read, and she was reading aloud the way it’s taught in school. As an example, I’ll use the word “pen”: “p,” “e,” “n”: “pen.” Each letter represents a specific sound, and by combining these sounds, she was able to read and understand the word, even at such a young age. At that moment, the question arose for me whether this might also apply to ancient Hebrew, and whether seeking more would not constitute an enrichment, but rather an impoverishment—searching for something that was never intended, a sort of house of cards, so to speak. I realized that in the Bible we are called to write:
4Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 5and thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 6And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. 8And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. 9And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
(Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
Apparently, every Israelite was able to write; otherwise, the command to write on the doorposts would have been nonsensical. What I began to realize more and more later on was that each letter in Hebrew has no meaning other than the sound it represents. There are indications that the oldest Hebrew inscriptions found in the mines of the Sinai Desert, written by miners, date back to the time of Joseph in Egypt. This could imply that this so-called phonetic alphabet was given to the world to enable everyone, from a young age, to read and write, so that the Bible, the word of God, would be accessible to everyone in Israel. The letters of our alphabet can be traced back to the original so-called Paleo-Hebrew and found their way into our language via Greek. An example is the ancient Hebrew letter א (Aleph), represented in Paleo-Hebrew as ’𐤀’; it doesn’t take much imagination to recognize our letter ‘A’ in it, and this applies to all letters and numbers.It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the ancient Hebrew phonetic alphabet was given by God to the Israelites in the time of Joseph, that Moses and the people of Israel were able to read and write, and that we may also benefit from this God-given grace, which enables us to read the Bible from a very young age. Incidentally, in the early days, when the Bible became available to everyone through the art of printing, it was used in schools to teach children to read and write.
Personally, I have therefore come to the conclusion that the simplest, most obvious meaning is usually the correct one. If we go back to the beginning, my conclusion is that the word בראשׁי (Bereshith) simply has the meaning that our translations give it, namely “in the beginning” or “at the start,” and that the pursuit of all those things that Jewish culture boasts about with their “Pardes” and ‘Gematria’—and which is also highly valued in so-called Messianic circles—can be understood as a form of idolatry rooted in Jewish thought, namely that they, unlike the other nations of the world, are the chosen people and that their language is the only one capable of accurately conveying the word of God.
I’d like to conclude by noting that this is by no means the end of the discussion on how the Bible should be interpreted; I’ll explore this further in a future blog post. I’d like to close with a concise passage from the Bible that highlights just how important the Bible truly is for understanding what matters and the path we must take:
105Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,
And a light unto my path.
(Psalm 119:105)
