I want to give you something on this page that took me years to understand, and that nobody told me when I was young.
You already speak Hebrew. Not a little. Quite a lot.
Every time you say amen, you are speaking Hebrew. Hallelujah, Hebrew. Hosanna, Sabbath, Messiah, jubilee, cherub, manna, Satan, Eden, leviathan, behemoth, myrrh, cinnamon, rabbi, Abba, alphabet, camel. All Hebrew, carried into English inside the Bible, most of them unchanged for three thousand years.
So this is not a lesson where you start from nothing. This is a lesson where you find out what you have been carrying.
And I am not going to try to make you fluent. That takes years and a teacher and a lot of embarrassment in supermarkets, and I have had all three. What I am going to do is give you six things, in an order that makes them stick: the words you already own, the letters as pictures, the trick of the three-letter root, twenty words that open the Bible, the place names on the map that are actually sentences, and six things you can say out loud on your first morning in this country.
One honest word about pronunciation before we start. Every sound-alike below is a memory hook, not a recording. Hebrew has two sounds English does not: the ch in Bach, made in the back of the throat and never like the ch in church, and a resh rolled further back than an English r. Where you see kh or ch below, clear your throat gently and you will be closer than most tourists.
Start here, because confidence matters more than vocabulary on the first day. Every one of these came into English through the Bible, and most are almost unchanged.
So be it, it is firm. From the root aman, to be steady, to be trustworthy. The same root gives emunah, faith. Every amen you have ever said was the word faith, spoken as a signature.
Two words, not one. Hallelu, praise, spoken as a command to other people, plus Yah, the short form of God's name. You are not describing your feelings. You are telling the room what to do.
Save, please. It is a cry for rescue, not a cheer. The crowd on Palm Sunday was quoting a psalm and begging.
From shavat, to cease. Not a reward for finishing your work, a command to stop before it is finished.
Anointed one, from mashach, to smear with oil. Christ is the same word in Greek. Kings and priests were made by having oil poured on their heads.
A ram's horn, and then the year the horn announced, when debts were cancelled and land went home to its family.
It is a question, not a name. The people looked at the bread on the ground and said man hu, what is it? So the food of forty years is called What Is It.
The adversary, the one who stands in the road against you. It is a job description before it is a name.
Not a chubby baby. A guardian creature with a sword of fire at the gate of Eden, and a face carved over the ark.
Delight, pleasure. The garden is named for what it felt like.
My great one, my teacher, from rav, great or many. When they called Him Rabbi they were saying my teacher.
Papa, and here is the beautiful detail: this one is Aramaic, not Hebrew, the everyday street language Yeshua spoke at home. He prayed in the word a child uses.
Alef and bet, the first two letters, borrowed by the Greeks as alpha and beta and handed to us as alphabet. The word for the whole system is just its opening two notes.
Gamal. The animal kept its Hebrew name all the way into English, and the letter gimel is named after it.
Hebrew letters began as pictures, and the pictures are still the easiest way to remember them. An ox, a house, a camel, a door. Twenty two letters, read right to left, and five of them change shape when they come at the end of a word. Do not try to learn them all today. Learn six, and the rest will start looking familiar.
Turn it on its side and the two horns appear. Strength, first, leader.
A floor plan with one opening. The Bible's very first letter, because the first thing God does is build a home.
The tall neck and the walking foot. Gamal, camel.
A door on its hinge. Delet is still the word for door today.
Say it and you feel breath leave you. It appears twice in God's own name. The letter of breathing.
A hook that joins two things. On its own it means and, so vav is the letter that holds the Bible's sentences together.
A sword with its handle on top.
Two posts and a bar. It fences a space in.
Something curled inward, holding.
The smallest letter in the alphabet, and the one Yeshua meant by not one jot shall pass away. Jot is yod.
A cupped hand. Kaf is still the word for palm.
The tallest letter, reaching above the line. Lamad means to learn and to teach: the staff that guides.
Waves. Mayim is water, and the letter is the picture of it.
Life that continues.
A closed circle that holds something up.
Ayin means both eye and spring of water, which is why so many places here are called Ein something.
Pe is the word for mouth. The letter has an open mouth with a tooth inside.
Bent, caught. Tzadik, a righteous person, comes from this letter's family.
Something with a long tail behind it.
Rosh is head, and the letter is a head and neck in profile. Rosh Hashanah is the head of the year.
Three teeth. It is the letter for Shaddai, and it is the shape a priest's hands make when he gives the blessing.
The last letter, and in the oldest script it was drawn as a cross. In Ezekiel God tells an angel to put a tav on the foreheads of those who grieve.
Here is the key to the whole language. Almost every Hebrew word grows out of a root of three letters, and all the words from one root are cousins. Learn one root and you have not learned one word, you have walked into a family. And the family resemblance will preach to you.
Look at what this family means together. Peace in Hebrew is not the absence of trouble, it is everything present and paid for. So when a Hebrew speaker wishes you shalom, he is not wishing you quiet. He is wishing you a life with nothing missing and nothing owed. And when Yeshua said at Golgotha that it is finished, the Greek word on His lips was a market word for paid in full. He was speaking shalom in another language.
Knee and blessing are the same three letters. In this language you cannot separate blessing from kneeling. The word carries a posture. And the same Semitic root travelled into Arabic as mubarak and into names you know today, which is why a Hebrew speaker hears the word blessed in places an English speaker never would.
Every time the New Testament says as it is written, the Hebrew behind it is katuv, this family. And notice the marriage contract sitting in the same family as scripture. In Hebrew, a written thing is a committed thing. Words on a page are a promise with a signature, not information.
This is the family I most want you to remember, because one famous verse only works inside it. The angel says, you shall call his name Yeshua, for he will yoshia his people from their sins. In English that sentence is a nice statement. In Hebrew it is the same word twice, a name and its own reason. And the crowd shouting hosanna on Palm Sunday was shouting His name back at Him without knowing it.
Not the most common words in modern Hebrew. The most loaded words in the Book, the ones where the English translation has to choose and always loses something.
God's first recorded command is two words: yehi or, let there be light. You can say the whole sentence after one minute of Hebrew.
One word for all three, which is why Genesis 1:2 can be the Spirit of God or a wind from God, and both are the same Hebrew. Say it out loud and you will notice the word itself is a breath.
Always plural in Hebrew, as though water were a crowd. The letter mem is a picture of it.
In Hebrew the heart is not the feelings, it is the whole inner person, mind and will together. When Scripture says love God with all your lev, it means with your thinking too.
Jews often say HaShem, The Name, rather than pronounce God's name. Yad Vashem means a hand and a name, a memorial and a name.
One word for both, because in this language a word from God is not a sound, it is an event. Ten Commandments in Hebrew are the Ten Devarim, the Ten Words.
The Bible's biggest small word. Love that acts first and keeps its promise afterwards. Usually translated mercy or steadfast love, and never quite captured.
Made of the first, middle and last letters of the alphabet, which the old teachers loved: truth runs from beginning to end.
The angels in Isaiah say it three times. Not holy meaning nice. Holy meaning belonging to another category entirely.
The last word of the Shema, and the word Yeshua quoted when asked for the greatest commandment.
One word for hearing and obeying, because in Hebrew you have not heard until you have done something about it.
One word, and it is the answer Abraham, Moses, Samuel and Isaiah all gave. Not I am here in a room. Here I am, send me.
Not sorrow. Turning around and walking back. The word is a direction, not a feeling.
The same word for both. In Hebrew, giving to someone in need is not generosity added to righteousness. It is righteousness.
You do not sign a covenant in Hebrew, you cut it, because covenants cost blood. This cup is the new brit in my blood.
Many teachers connect it to yarah, to shoot an arrow, so Torah is aiming. Not a rule book, a direction of travel.
Am echad means one people. Am Yisrael chai, the people of Israel lives, is what you will hear sung here.
Ha'aretz, The Land. When Israelis say it with no other word attached, they mean this one.
Some hear the word davar, word, hiding inside it, and preach that the wilderness is where God speaks. That is a sermon, not etymology, but it is a good sermon and the desert agrees with it.
From adamah, ground, soil. Human out of humus, exactly as in Latin. The first man's name is a reminder of where he came from, said every time you say it.
This is my favourite part, and it is the one that changes how you travel. The names of the holy places are not labels, they are descriptions, and once you can hear them the map starts talking.
| בֵּית לֶחֶם | Beit Lechem | Bethlehem | house of bread | and the Bread of Life was laid there in a feeding trough |
| בֵּית אֵל | Beit El | Bethel | house of God | named by Jacob before there was a house on it, only a stone and a dream |
| כְּפַר נַחוּם | Kfar Nachum | Capernaum | village of comfort | the town's own name was a promise before He healed anyone in it |
| גַּת שֶׁמֶן | Gat Shemen | Gethsemane | the oil press | the garden named for crushing, where the Anointed was pressed |
| גֻּלְגֹּלֶת | Gulgolet | Golgotha | a skull | John translated the Hebrew for his readers, and the name stuck |
| מִגְדָּל | Migdal | Magdala | a tower | Mary of Magdala is Mary the Tower |
| בְּאֵר שֶׁבַע | Be'er Sheva | Beersheba | well of the oath, and of seven | seven lambs and a promise, at the southern edge of the land |
| עֵין גֶּדִי | Ein Gedi | Ein Gedi | spring of the wild goat | where David held the knife and put it down |
| הַר מְגִדּוֹ | Har Megiddo | Armageddon | the mountain of Megiddo | say it fast and you hear the word the whole world knows |
| יַרְדֵּן | Yarden | Jordan | the descender | everyone who enters it goes down |
| נֵצֶר | Netzer | Nazareth | a branch, a shoot | Isaiah's green shoot out of a cut-down stump, hiding in a village name |
| כִּנּוֹר | Kinnor | Kinneret, Sea of Galilee | a harp | the lake is named for its shape |
| מְצוּדָה | Metzuda | Masada | a fortress | a word straight out of David's psalms |
| בֵּית עַנְיָה | Beit Anya | Bethany | house of the afflicted | and He made His home there |
| בֵּית חֶסֶד | Beit Chesda | Bethesda | house of mercy | named for chesed centuries before mercy walked in on two feet |
| שִׁלוֹחַ | Shiloach | Siloam | sent | a sent man washed in a pool called Sent, healed by the One who was Sent |
| יְרוּשָׁלַיִם | Yerushalayim | Jerusalem | city of wholeness, in the dual form | two of her, the one below and the one above, and the name ends in the form Hebrew keeps for pairs |
Israelis will not mind your accent. They will mind that you tried, in the best way. Use these badly and often.
Hello, goodbye, and peace. One word for arriving, leaving and being whole. Use it for everything.
Thank you very much. Toda alone is fine. Say it to every driver, every waiter, every soldier.
Please, and also you're welcome, and also here you are. A very useful word.
Good morning. Evening is erev tov, night is layla tov.
How's it going? Literally what is heard. The normal street greeting.
Okay, fine, all right. Literally in order. You will hear it forty times a day.
Yes and no. Ken like the name Ken, lo like the English low.
The people of Israel lives. Say it here and watch what happens to the face of the person you say it to.
Priests have spoken these three lines over this people for three and a half thousand years, and the oldest silver amulets ever found with Bible text on them carry these very words. Learn them slowly. One line a day is enough.
Notice how it ends. Not with success, not with comfort. With shalom, the word for a thing that has all its pieces.
One more thing, and I want to say it carefully, because it is the most sensitive word in the language.
God's own name is written with four letters: יְהוָה. Yod, hey, vav, hey. You will see it in every Hebrew Bible thousands of times. Nobody living knows for certain how it was pronounced, because for more than two thousand years Jews have honoured it by not saying it. When a reader reaches those four letters, he says Adonai, my Lord, instead. In conversation people often say simply HaShem, The Name.
You will hear Christians say it aloud in two or three different ways, and I am not going to police anybody's prayers. But if you are standing in this land, among this people, it is worth knowing that the silence is not superstition. It is the way a people who were given a name decided to handle it: carefully, and with their shoes off.
And notice what the letters are made of. Yod, hey, vav, hey are among the softest sounds in Hebrew, mostly breath. The most powerful name in the universe is built almost entirely out of breathing. Which means that every living thing, in every language, is saying something close to it with every breath it takes, from the first one to the last.
Read the land, and the land will start reading you.