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Word of the Month
Faith
Behold, he whose soul is not upright in him shall fail, but the righteous shall live by his faith. (Habakkuk 2:4 - ASV)
What does it mean to have "faith" from an Hebraic perspective? In our western minds faith is a mental exercise in knowing that someone or something exists or will act. For instance, if we say "I have faith in God" we are saying "I know that God exists and do what he says he will do".
The Hebrew word for faith is אמונה (emunah - Strong's #530) and is an action oriented word meaning "support". This is important because the Western concept of faith places the action on the one you have faith in, such as "faith in God". But, the Hebrew word אמונה places the action on the one who "supports God". It is not knowing that God will act, but rather I will do what I can to
support God. This idea of support for the word emunah can be seen in Exodus 17:12.
But Moses' hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat upon it, and Aaron and
Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady (emunah)until the going down of the sun.
It is the support/emunah of Aaron and Hur that held of Moses' arms, not the support/emunah of Moses. When we say "I have faith in God", we should be thinking "I will do what I can to support God".
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Book of the Month
Stone's Edition Tenach
The word Tenach is written with three letters in Hebrew - Tav, Nun and Kaph (TNK) and is an abbrevation of the three parts of the Hebrew Bible - Torah (law), Neviyim (prophets) and Ketuviym (writings). This Bible has the Hebrew text on one page with a Jewish translation on the other. For those who are learning Hebrew and are looking for a Hebrew Bible this is a good one. This Bible is great for Jews and Christians. Christians who compare different translations do themselves a diservice by comparing only Christian translations. A Jewish translation will sometimes translate verses differently from a different perspective on the bible.
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Verse of the Month
Genesis 1:27
ויברא
אלוהים
את
האדם
בצלמו
The Revised Standard Version translation for this passage is "So God created man in his own image". As we shall see, this translation is very Western and is missing the Eastern flavour of the original text. Below is a translation, word for word, followed by a translation reflecting the Eastern meaning.
ויברא
(vay-yeev-rah)
The word ברא (bara) is a verb, literally meaning "to fatten" as well as "to fill". It is often translated as "create" as in this verse as well as in Genesis 1:1 but the concept of "creating" is a western abstract and not the true meaning of ברא. When the י (Y) is prefixed to the verb it identifies the subject of the verb as masculine and singular (he) and the verb tense as imperfect (will fill). The first letter prefixed to the word is the ו (V) meaning "and". When this letter is prefixed to a verb it switches the tense of the verb. In this case the perfect tense verb becomes imperfect. The word ויברא would literally be translated as "and he filled".
אלהים
(eh-lo-hiym)
The root of this word is אלוה literally meaning "strength" and "power" and is usually translated as God or god (a powerful one). The ים is the masculine plural suffix. The word אלהים can be translated as "gods" (quantitative plural) or as "God" (qualitative plural) in the sense of being a very powerful god. As this noun follows the verb we know that it is the subject of the verb, the "he" in the word ויברא.
את
(et)
This word preceeds a direct object of a verb telling us that the next word is "what was filled". This word is a grammatical tool used in Biblical Hebrew and has no equivelant in English and is therefore never translated.
האדם
(ha-ah-dahm)
The first letter, ה (H), is a prefix meaning "the". The word אדם (adam) means "man" and is also the name of the first man - Adam. Because it is prefixed by the article ה, we know that this word should be translated as "man" rather than Adam.
בצלמו
(beh-tsahl-mo)
The word צלם (tselem, the mem is written as ם when at the end of a word, and as מ otherwise) is an outline or form of an original and comes from the parent root צל (tsal) meaning "shadow". A shadow is a also representation of an original. The prefix ב (B) means "in" or "with". The suffix ו (O) means "of him" or "his".
And the Great Powerful One filled the man with a representation of himself
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Question of the Month
Q: Why are some Hebrew words plural but translated in the singular?
A: Hebrew plurals can be either quantitative (more than one) or qualitative (great, large, prominent). For example the singular word "elo'ah" means God (or more literally mighty one). The plural form is "elohiym". This plural form can be more than one god or one great god. In fact, in Genesis 1:1 it says "in the beginning elohiym (plural) created...". In Hebrew the verb matches the verb in number and gender and the Hebrew word behind "created" is "bara" literally meaning "he created" (singular masculine). Therefore, the context of the verse will often indicate whether the noun should be translated as a plural or a singular.
Some Hebrew words are always written in the plural form such as paniym (the plural form of paneh) which means "face" (probably through the idea of the prominent part of the body). The word shamayim (heaven) is another example of a word that is always written in the plural.
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