A Is for Abandon: An English to Biblical Hebrew Alphabet Book

By Bob MacDonald

How can we discover the differing senses of Hebrew words in translation?

The English to Hebrew section of this document shows in English alphabetical order which English word or words are associated with each Hebrew stem and the count of how many times this gloss is used. In the translator’s introduction, compromises, conundrums, and concord are discussed by example.

Seven major domains have been chosen to help analyse the words of the text. The Names domain is assigned to all proper names. Grammar is the domain assigned to those particles in language that ‘connect the dots’, prepositions, conjunctions, questions, pronouns, negatives, pointers, and some modifiers. The remaining five major domains are Creation, Culture, Engagement, Promise, and Trouble. Seven domains governing over 300,000 words made up of some 4,000 stems allow a certain limited ability to think about the contents of the Scripture in a slightly different way.

This work was done in response to the faithfulness evident in the lives of the patriarchs and prophets, the lives portrayed in the New Testament, and the love of the text exhibited by the Masoretes and the copyists up to the present day. These received texts were carefully preserved and recognized for their power to teach. We may enter into the process through the transparency exhibited in volumes 8, 9, and 10 of the Hebrew Bible and Its Music.

A is for Abandon is volume 9 of the series, The Hebrew Bible and Its Music.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Energion Publications
• Release date: Jun 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781631996375

Bob MacDonald

Bob MacDonald is a retired West Australian Police officer of thirty years experience. Bob's last day at school was his 14th birthday - commencing work, the very next day, in a timber mill in his home town of Pemberton, West Australia.He later self-educated and enlisted in the West Australian police force, retiring as a superintendent in the Internal Investigations Branch of the Professional Standards portfolio.Since retirement Bob has been working at remote aboriginal communities in Central Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. He also did a tour of duty on the island nation of Cyprus with the United Nations Blue Beret Peacekeepers.Bob, a keen sportsman continues with various sporting activities; which also includes fishing and camping trips. Writing articles for various magazines and now venturing into anecdotal short story compilations and fictional manuscripts ensures Bob leads a busy life.

Book preview

A is for Abandon

An English to Biblical Hebrew Alphabet Book

by

Bob MacDonald

The Hebrew Bible and its Music, Volume 9

Energion Publications

Gonzalez, Florida, U.S.A.

2019

A is for Abandon

Copyright © D. Robert MacDonald 2019, 2021 – all rights reserved.

Cover Design: The author

ISBN: 978-1-63199-637-5

Energion Publications

P. O. Box 841

Gonzalez, Florida, 32560

850-525-3916

www.energionpubs.com

16 October 2021 23:13

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

The Cover

A fractal enclosing a treble clef suggests both the intricate organization of the Biblical language and the music embedded in the manuscripts.

Other books by the author

Seeing the Psalter, Patterns of Recurrence in the Poetry of the Psalms, Energion 2013

The Song in the Night, According to the melody in the accents of the Hebrew text, Energion 2016

(With Jonathan Orr-Stav) The SimHebrew Bible, The Hebrew Bible in Simulated Hebrew – with English Guide, Qualum Publishing 2021

Books in this series

1 The Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy

2 The Former Prophets, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings

3 The Major Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel

4 The Twelve, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi

5 The Books of Truth, Psalms, Proverbs, Job

6 The Five Scrolls, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Qohelet, Esther

7 The Remaining Writings, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles

8 A Biblical Hebrew to English Concordance

9 A is for Abandon, An English to Biblical Hebrew Alphabet Book

10 The Progression of the Music, The Accents of the Hebrew Bible

List of Illustrations

Figure 1 Psalm 145:13 mem and nun for the acrostic

Figure 2 An overview of subject areas in the Bible

Figure 3 Distribution of stems by domain and length

Figure 4 Subdivisions of Creation

Figure 5 Subdivisions of Culture

Figure 6 Subdivisions of Engagement

Figure 7 Subdivisions of Grammar

Figure 8 Subdivisions of Names

Figure 9 Subdivisions of Promise

Figure 10 Subdivisions of Trouble

Translator’s Introduction

The title of this volume might remind us of Abandon hope, all ye who enter here, from an English translation of Dante. How will we fathom the massive yet limited vocabulary of the Hebrew Bible?

The lists in this volume allow you to find the Hebrew stem for each reduced English gloss used in the close translations of the Hebrew Scriptures for the music of the Hebrew Bible. To see where the gloss is used, please refer to the full Hebrew-English Concordance (Volume 8 of this series) which shows all glosses and locations by word form used for that stem.

The English to Hebrew section of this document shows in English alphabetical order which English word or words are associated with which Hebrew stem and the count of how many times this gloss is used. You can also observe English homonyms. For example, look at nail (construction material or a generic term for finger and toenails) or slip (to be moved or a slip of a plant).

Some stems are mapped to multiple English glosses. This is clearer in volume 8, but can also be observed in this volume. For example, search for נפשׁ. You can also see the rare occasion where I have allowed the same gloss for multiple Hebrew stems. Look at come or go for an example. This section excludes grammar and names.

The next section on semantic analysis includes grammar and names. Semantic analysis is subjective and is always a work in process. I chose 7 major domains for convenience of memory. Names is the domain assigned to all proper names. Grammar is the domain assigned to those particles in language that ‘connect the dots’, prepositions, conjunctions, questions, pronouns, negatives, pointers, and some modifiers. The remaining five major domains are Creation, Culture, Engagement, Promise, and Trouble. They are clearly neither mutually exclusive nor hierarchic. Seven domains governing over 300,000 words made up of some 4,000 stems allow a certain limited ability to think about the contents of the Scripture in a slightly different way.

For example, the first great commandment use the categories as follows:

ואהבת and you will love אהב Engagement - Love, // את -- Grammar - Particle, // יהוה Yahweh Names - God, // אלהיך your God אלוה Names - God, // בכל with all כל Grammar - Modifier, // לבבך your heart לבב Creation - Bodypart, // ובכל and with all כל Grammar - Modifier, // נפשׁך your being נפשׁ Creation - Life, // ובכל and with all כל Grammar - Modifier, // מאדך your capacity מאד Grammar - Modifier.

Every word in the text has been assigned a domain and sub-domain. The sub-domains are also distinct in themselves across all the domains. It is a simple one-level hierarchy.

Methods and purpose

The music records the shape and the tone of voice for the Hebrew text. The rhythm and cadences of the music are perfect for the Hebrew. The choices of cadence are often unexpected but always apt. They cannot be perfect for any translation. I followed several rules to make it possible to see the relative importance of any gloss within a sentence:

Observe the connectors. The word vav signifies a hook in Hebrew. It is the only stem in the language that begins with the letter vav. The word is used for the hooks that connect the parts of the sanctuary to make the dwelling-place. For that reason alone, I almost always translate the vav that hooks phrases together. These are often on an upbeat (the note prior to the barline) in the music.

Preserve Hebrew word order where possible. This allows the Hebrew words that are ornamented or that cause a change in reciting note to correspond in phrase position to their English equivalents. (This is not always possible and not always done even when it might be possible.)

Where multiple glosses exist for the same Hebrew stem, show this recurrence in the English. This rule is closely followed in the three poetry books, less so in the prose. It is never absolute.

Hebrew word-play is evident throughout. Allow, therefore English word-play also.

The Hebrew is concise. Preserve this where feasible.

The Hebrew is concrete and particular. Avoid abstraction and generality.

The Hebrew is a foreign tongue and a foreign writing system for those raised in English. So do not let the English become commonplace. Remind the reader that we are treading on unfamiliar territory.

So Abandon in the title could also suggest, Abandon assumptions when reading this text.

Examples

The use of אדם, alef-dalet-mem in the first several chapters of Genesis.

Adam is many things from genus to individual in a story. Yes, in the story, there is a single man named Adam. Equally there is a generic being addressed as ‘the Adam’ in the lead-up to the distinguished individual so named. I have been free with synonyms for this stem and its related stems, humanity (229), ground (210), human (198), earthling (127), ruddy (21), Adam (9), humus (8), adam (6), dyed red (6), debris ground (4), sard (3), ruddy stuff (2), Adamah (1), Ruddies (1), agriculture (1), dust-bowl (1). Adam is ruddy, from the ground, humus, and human. You might notice that for this stem I never used man. I use man for a different stem. Earthling is not the best gloss. Groundling might have been preferable since earthling sounds more related to earth, itself a different stem.

Earth and land, ארץ

Where earth occurs, land might also have been chosen and vice versa. It is one or the other: land (1,720), earth (740), earthward (62), earthbound (1). All of them are the same Hebrew stem. Since choosing one or the other English gloss is somewhat arbitrary, we should be careful what we read into it in any given context.

Male-female, man-woman, husband-wife

In English, we pair words, sometimes exclusively. Other languages may not have such well-defined pairs.

With respect to male-female, what is male or female in Hebrew may be signaled simply by the presence or absence of a suffix. So when I look at my English glossary I find where a distinction is required:

male(88) זכר, male barren(1) עקר, male consternation(1) להה, male foal(3) בן, male juvenile(1) ילד, male kid(11) גדי, male newborn(2) ילד, male peer(6) ילד, male servant(3) עבד, male singer(3) שיר, male slave(8) עבד.

I have been forced to use male as an adjective. Similarly for female: female(22) נקב, female barren(1) עקר, female juvenile(1) ילד, female servant(3) שפחה, female singer(3) שיר, female slave(9) שפחה.

But there is in these glosses a male-female pair, זכר (zkr) and נקב (nqb). When these appear together, it is with deliberate intent in the Hebrew language to differentiate the two genders. But if I look in the Hebrew-English glossary I see that each of these stems has other glosses as well. These other glosses are not what I might have expected. It seems to me that the male is one who remembers זכר and the female is associated with piercing or drilling נקב and certain forms of tool like pick-ax and hammer.

With husband-wife, I avoided husband for the very common stem אישׁ, but I allowed wife for the equally common stem אשׁה.

אישׁ man (524) person (396) men (363) each (318) anyone (82) soldier (61) everyone (56) -- (54) -one (31) such (10) adult (8) representative (6) another (4) other (3) personal (3) cohort (1) every (1) every person (1) hero (1) real (1) ride (1) someone (1) spouse (1) there (1)

אשׁה wife (408) woman (238) women (121) each (10) mate (2)

These clearly sound like a pairing ish, ishah. One might think these were the stems for man-woman. And indeed they can be. But אישׁ is both generic and more multi-faceted than אשׁה. At least it seems I (and others) have treated it so. Note that I also have some artificial hapaxes here, uniquely used glosses created by the process of translation.

And either of these stems might just be rendered as each. This gloss breaks one of my rules, (see the section on exceptions below) but I don't enforce them for some pronouns, and most prepositions, conjunctions and other grammatical particles.

I allowed husband for the stem בעל Baal. This stem also covers a lot of ground: Baal (107) owner (41) superior (26) husband (22) Baalim (18) marry (12) Husband (2) own (2) owed (1) owns (1) senior (1).

[Aside, owed stands out here as out of place. It occurs only in Nehemiah 6:18. It being less than 5 characters, it might have escaped my net, but I never used owing or owe or owes anywhere else.]

Now it appears that husband-wife do not behave like their English equivalents. So the question is, should I avoid using the word wife at all? Imagine reading woman/women for every occurrence of wife/wives. It is awkward for me, though common in some English language enclaves. But if I use wife, I must not read modern cultural monogamy into the word. Nor should I read a 16th century ownership paradigm into it. [There is of course a sense of mutual ownership as in the Song, My beloved is mine and I am his.] Nonetheless, it appears that wife is defined as a woman with whom the man has had coitus. Perhaps this is a legitimate assumption and an acceptable rationale for using one gloss over another for the same stem. All translators make such decisions, sometimes consciously, sometimes not.

Traditional translations are nowhere near as strict as I have been. Here's a quick glance at man, husband, women, wife in the King James Version: man is used for אדם, אישׁ, זכר and בעל just for starters. It also appears frequently as a modifier (indicated by a suffix). Husband is used for אישׁ and בעל. Wife is more consistent as אשׁה. But woman is used for both אשׁה and נקב. I have avoided these overlaps.

[Aside, I have allowed marry to overlap two stems (though they are easy to distinguish). First it is used for בעל, as in this double usage: וְהִ֖וא בְּעֻ֥לַת בָּֽעַל, for she is married to a husband. And I used intermarry for the stem חתן, which my algorithm did not break down to marry. This stem is a generic 'in-law' stem: father-in-law (20) son-in-law (12) bridegroom (11) in-law (4) intermarry (4) alliance (2) brother-in-law (1).]

Mingle (41), mangle (2), fodder(3), בלל.

These are all the same stem. So many language games are missed in translation, it seemed good to let a few stand in English, even if they are not in the immediately corresponding Hebrew, on behalf of the character of the text. See the Babel story in Genesis 11.

Bless, curse and slight.

Bless ברך can be used to indicate its exact opposite, but I did not write it as such. Curse ארר is also a separate stem. So Job’s wife does not say, Curse God and die, but Bless God and die. The reader must decide what is meant. This is one of many examples where concordance requires the reader to do more work than an interpretive translation would require. Slight קלל is yet a third stem in this domain, and also is a homonym in Hebrew indicating one who is fleet. I have used a variety of other glosses for קלל, including light in the sense of weight. I also used quick when I needed a ‘q’ for an acrostic, even when it overlaps another stem. This sort of exception is clear in this alphabet book where you can quickly see such overlaps. Below, the entries beside quick show four uses in acrostics (X).

quick(1)      קלל

quick(X)(1)      קלל

quick(X)(1)      קרב

quicken(X)(1)      קום

quickly arise(X)(1)      קום

Heavy, glorious, כבד

The word for liver is also כבד, k-b-d. It is not the word for rich (עשׁר), even if it might mean rich in some contexts. I think the reader should decide based on what is written, not the translator, based on a subjective decision.  Certainly the translator can distinguish liver from rich in the context because it is a different semantic domain. Between glorious and heavy is a little more difficult. Eventually the reader will get to know that these are a pair of linked glosses.

Selfsame עצם

One of the things I look at when reading is the idea of making ‘the day’ present rather than thinking of it as being in the past only. I must not allow myself, however, to impose that onto the text. Nonetheless it is curious that עצם has glosses related to numerous as well as bone, and its use idiomatically as that very day or that selfsame day, בעצם היום הזה.

I stayed with the archaic selfsame for the 18 times it occurs with day. But each one might be considered as numerous, one of many instances, in that these significant days occur for us all, each one and together.

Literal or not

It might be thought that my translations are 'literal'. I don’t think of literal as a helpful adjective. One cannot put one’s trust in it. I hope my work will be surprising. My renderings are ruled by a sense that the final language of the received text is close enough to itself, each section in its own time, that it can be interpreted through pattern recognition. That is what I have done, through programming algorithms, to the Hebrew Scripture: I have recognized the verbal patterns and I have read accordingly. It may be impossible to do what I have done with a committee or a multi-person translation. Divergence is almost inevitable without algorithmic pattern recognition.

Here are some unique words from Isaiah 5:1

I will sing, if you will, for my beloved, a song of my beloved for his vineyard.

A vineyard there is for my beloved against an intensely bright destiny of density.

Where did that wordplay come from? It comes from a unique phrase in the Hebrew,

כֶּ֛רֶם הָיָ֥ה לִֽידִידִ֖י בְּקֶ֥רֶן בֶּן־שָֽׁמֶן

קרן followed by בן followed by שׁמן is unique, as are the two sub-sequences of each pair of these stems. Other translations render it as 'on a fruitful hill'. I have no idea why. Literally it is 'a horn of the son of oil'. Or 'an intensely bright child of an octave'. You could combine any of my available glosses for these three stems, but the results might be comical.

בן children (2,535) child (1,694) son (367) sons (189) he- (50) Ben- (31) squab (10) little one (6) -- (5) ben- (3) male foal (3) -kin (2) Ben (2) calf (2) cubs (2) grandson (2) kids (2) Son (1) destiny (1) eaglet (1) 

קרן horn (84) intensely bright (4) two horn (4) intense brightness (2) Intense Brightness (1) Karen- (1) 

שׁמן oil (183) eight (106) eighty (37) eighteen (21) stout (16) eighteenth (9) dense (7) stout thing (4) octave (3) oils (3) compared oil (1) density (1) eigh- (1) eightieth (1) oily (1) ointment (1)

These stems individually are both frequent and flexible, but the combination in Isaiah 5:1 is unique. What will one do with it? The Hebrew is also alliterative, beqeren ben-shemen. The verse asks us to listen to Yahweh's determined hope for his people. In this case I have willfully disobeyed some of my rules. If you sing it, just extend the reciting note in the music.

Purpose

I have done this work from 2006 to 2019 in response to the faithfulness evident to me in the lives of the patriarchs and prophets, the lives portrayed in the New Testament, and the love of the text exhibited by the Masoretes and the copyists up to the present day. These received texts were carefully preserved and recognized for their power to teach. I have worked from a place of respect within a Christian tradition of faithfulness to the examples in the text. I have worked also within a tradition that was not afraid to question whether an example is good or otherwise, and not afraid to consider the genre of the writing. Let it be asked therefore, What is it that we should learn from this?

One aspect of such faithfulness is to consider the character of Jesus, his recorded self-recognition as ‘son’ of his father, as well as the decision of the New Testament authors to emphasize that aspect of this particular Hebrew son. How does this relate to Israel’s recognition of God as ‘father’, and the responsibility we all have to each other?

These considerations of course relate unavoidably to questions of theology. If a word could be put to this, it is that God is faithful to Israel and to the promises made to Israel and to and about others (Ishmael, Egypt, Moab, to name just three). And if a second word may be ventured, that Jesus exhibited confidence in this received and recorded faithfulness.

Words not used

It turned out there are several words in common use by translators of the Bible that were never required in my work. Some of these are loving-kindness, punish, atonement, repent, dominion, heathen and Gentile.

Each of these may need an essay. Soul in particular was raised in discussion at the translation lecture in 2010 by Nancy deClaissé-Walford in Oxford.

To be brief, the result is that some theologically laden words are missing from this reading as we tease out what God does, according to the Bible, against what the human does.

Does God lay down the law, (or else)? In this reading, God gives instruction that we must hear with God’s voice.

Does God separate us into body and soul? Is our commonplace use of soul without grounds? This reading uses a variety of words for nephesh,נפשׁ: being, integrity, veryself and variations on self, group (sometimes the word is collective), throat, cadaver (sometimes the word is specific to a body-part), and others.

What is the nature of the multi-syllabic word loving-kindness? For the sake of the music, this reading uses variations on either mercy or kindness.

Does God punish or do humans punish? There is correction and chastising in this reading but not punishment. There is no Hebrew stem that has ‘punish’ as its dominant gloss.

What thought process produced the coinage of atonement? This reading uses cover-price, though the stem כפר (kefar, almost sounds like cover) is a complex of possibilities: cover-price, cover, ark-cover, young lion, cub, cover-offering, crock, frost, henna.

Does God repent? Do humans? What is such repentance? In this reading the actions are distinguished in the text as they are in Hebrew. Humans turn, God sighs.

How should humans rule? Dominion from dominus is probably apt as a gloss. It did not come up in the reading and so did not get used.

Does the word for nation require the synonyms Gentile and heathen? I was pleased not to include these since there seemed no call for them.

The text

The text for this translation follows the Leningrad codex with very few exceptions. On occasion, e.g. Psalm 100, I follow what is written rather than what is read. In Psalm 145, I have restored the missing nun verse from the DSS, confirming the additional verse from the Septuagint. Detailed textual criticism is beyond the scope of my project.

PSALMS_145_013-1

Figure 1 Psalm 145:13 mem and nun for the acrostic

I receive this text with its variants and write its English without commentary or explanation except as the occasion allows briefly through the musical examples, chosen somewhat randomly. I hope that musicians will hear new possibilities for interpretation and arrangement given the availability of all the musical scores on the resources page https://energiondirect.com/remembering-and-reflecting/.

English to Hebrew

Glosses followed by (A) are in the Aramaic verses. Glosses which are used in the acrostic verses are marked by (X). Some of these will be stretches of the imagination to correspond with the Hebrew letter sequence they imitate as a game.

This section excludes proper names and grammatical words. The number in parentheses is the number of times that the English phrase used to translate a Hebrew word reduces to this English lemma using a parsing algorithm. (Note the algorithm is not applied to phrases of less than 5 characters in length.)

A is for abandon