The Ancient Hebrew Language and Alephbet
Chapter Three



Chapter 3 - The Root System


The Hebrew root word system (fig. 6)

    The Hebrew language uses a root system vocabulary. The root system is like a tree where the leaves (words) come from the branches (child and combination root words). The Branches come from the trunk (parent root word) and the trunk comes out of the roots (Hebrew letters).

    Understanding how the root system works, helps us to better define what words mean. All of the words from the original root are related in meaning helping to clarify the meaning of the words. For example, the root /d.l means "poor" or "weak". A related root is /d.l.l which means "hang down". We now understand that the root /d.l more literally means "one who dangles down" such as a poor man who dangles his head out of poverty and starvation or one who is weak whose body dangles from lack of strenght. When we also look at the root /d.l.h which means to draw water from a well with a bucket dangling down from a rope, we also understand that just as we pull up the bucket from the well, we should also pull up a poor or weak person out of their pit. Further examples of these word relationships will be seen later.

The Letters

   There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alephbet. Each letter has a name (aleph, beyt, gimel, etc.) and a phonetic value (a, b, g, etc.), just as English. Figure 7 shows the Hebrew letters as they appear today.


The Modern Hebrew Alephbet (fig. 7)

    The Hebrew alephbet has basically remained the same over the last 2300 years, but 4000 years ago it was much different. Figure 3 shows this same alephbet as it appeared 4000 years ago27.


The Ancient Alephbet (fig. 8)

    Some of the pictures above are recognizable, such as the first letter being the head of an ox and the 16th letter being an eye. Over thousands of years, these pictures evolved into the Hebrew alephbet known today. Figure 9 is an example of the evolution of the Hebrew aleph from its ancient pictographic form to its modern form.

The Ancient Alephbet (fig. 9)

    Each letter also had a meaning related to the picture of the letter. The best way to demonstrate how these letters were used based on their pictures is by looking at the Hebrew prefixes28 for "in", "the", "and", "to", and "from".

    The Beyt is a picture of a tent, but it more represents what is inside the tent - the family. When this letter is placed in front a word such as /a.h.l/owhel which means "a tent", we have /b.a.h.l/be'owhel meaning "inside a tent".


    The Vav is a picture of a peg or nail which is used to secure or add things together. When this letter is prefixed to a word it means "and", in the sense of adding things together such as in /v.a.h.l/ve'owhel meaning "and a tent".


    The Hey is a picture of a mans arms raised or extended toward someone or something as if saying "behold, look at this. When this letter is prefixed to a word it means "the" as in identifying someone or something in particular such as in /h.a.h.l/ha'owhel meaning "the tent".


    The Lamed is a picture of a shepherd's staff which was used to direct the sheep toward a particular direction, such as that of water or pasture. When this letter is prefixed to a word it means "to" or "toward" as in /l.a.h.l/le'owhel meaning "toward a tent".


    The Mem is a picture of water and can also mean the flowing water (blood) in man and animals. Blood is seen as the passing down a line from one generation to another. When this letter is prefixed to a word it means "from" in the sense of coming out of someone or something else such as in /m.a.h.l/me'owhel meaning "from a tent".


Parent Roots

    When two letters/pictographs are put together, the two pictures form a phrase with the meaning based on the pictures29. These two letter roots are the parent root word containing both sound and meaning. Let us look at the Hebrew word /b.n/ben, as an example. In the pictographic script this word would appear as " ", the sound of the beyt ( ) is a "b" and the nun ( ) is an "n". These two letters form the word "ben"30 meaning "son". Each of the two letters of the parent root also have a meaning. The beyt is a house and the nun is a seed. This combination of letters defines the parent root as "a house of seeds" or "the seeds (sons) that grow in the house generation after generation". Let us look at a few other parent roots and their relationship to the letters.

    In our "Hebrew Root System" chart, the parent root /l.k/lak would be written as " " in the ancient letters. The is a shepherds staff and the is the palm of the hand. The letters define the parent root as "a staff in the palm" and has the meaning of "walking" since the nomadic traveler always walked with a staff for support and protection.

    Let us now look at the word /r.a/re. The is a picture of the head of a man and means “man”. The is an eye and means “to see” and “to know”. Together these two letters form the parent root " (re)" which means “a man that is known”. This word is usually translated as "a friend".

    Another good example is the word /sh.p/shaph. The is a picture of teeth and has the meaning of "sharp". The is a mouth. These letters form the parent root " " meaning "a sharp mouth" and is translated as "a serpent" whose sharp fangs are in the mouth. Another Hebrew word which comes from this parent root means "a quiver" which is a bag where arrows (as sharp teeth) are put in the mouth of the bag.

    Because each letter has several meanings, determining the meaning of the parent root can be difficult such as in the parent root " (ger, the foot of a man and the head of a man)". There are several possibilities of the meaning of these letters such as; "foot of a man", "lift up the head", "a burden on top", "lift up a man", or "gather the beginning". As we put the pieces of the puzzle together we begin to see a picture, the more the pieces the clearer the picture. Let us put the pieces of the " " puzzle together. First, we look at the various words which come from this parent root which all have the meaning of "a stranger". Secondly, we look at the culture of the Hebrews and we find that they would treat a stranger who enters his home, no matter who is, even better then a member of his family31. These two pieces of the puzzle help us to recognize " " to be "lift up a man" as in "hospitality to a stranger".

Child Roots

    The 22 letters of the modern Hebrew Alephbet are all consonants. The vowels are inserted above and below the consonant in the form of dots and dashes32 such as we see in the first two words of the Tenack, (b'reshiyt bara - in the beginning).

    Prior to the invention of the dots and dashes, vowels were provided in two ways. First by memorizing the vowels. The root word /m.l.k forms verbs and nouns, the difference being the vowel sounds. The verb form of the root is spelled , and is pronounced "malak" meaning "to reign" while the noun form, also spelled , is pronounced "melek" and means "a king". The context of the passage will help determine which word is used.

    The second way was the use of consonant/vowels which existed in the ancient Hebrew but not in the modern Hebrew language. Of the 22 Hebrew letters, 4 of the consonants doubled as vowels33 such as our English "Y" which can be a consonant as in the word "Yellow" or a vowel as in the word "fly". The 4 consonant vowels are the , , and (y, h, v, and a) The actual sound of these vowels cannot be certain, but there are many pieces of this puzzle available. Almost every time a "" is found in a word, as in , it is preceded by the vowel "i" which is a single dot under the consonant before the "". This is a clue that originally the "" was pronounced as an "i" (as in machine).

Hebrew consonant/vowels (Fig. 10)

    Another piece to the puzzle is how the Greek alphabet used these 4 letters when they adopted the Hebrew alephbet around 800 BCE for their own language. The Hebrew aleph () became the Greek alpha which is pronounced "ah", indicating that the vowel sound of the Hebrew aleph may have been "ah". Figure 10 is a chart with the sounds for these consonant/vowels in the ancient Hebrew language (as best as can be reconstructed) with the Greek and modern Hebrew sounds shown for comparison.

    A child root is formed by adding one of the consonant/vowels as a prefix, suffix or infix34 to the parent root. All of the child roots which are formed from the parent root are directly related in meaning to the parent root. The child roots /h.l.k, /y.l.k and /l.a.k, as seen in Figure 1 "the Hebrew Root System Chart", are all related to the parent root Kl/l.k which has the generic meaning of walk. The child roots and also have the meaning of "walk" while has the related meaning of "a messenger" as one who walks for another.

    There is one other type of child root which is formed by duplicating the second consonant in the parent root. For example the child root /m.r.r is from the parent root /m.r. Again, this child root is always related in meaning to other child roots of the same parent root and in most cases has the exact same meaning as the parent root.

    The parent root /m.r. and it's child roots /m.r.r, /m.r.h and /m.a.r all have the meaning of bitter. Another good example of the parent and child root relationship is /b.l;

/y.b.l   - flow
/b.v.l   - flood: a heavy flowing of water
/b.h.l   - panic: a flowing of the insides
/b.l.h   - aged: a flowing away of youth
/h.b.l   - empty: flowing away of the contents
/a.b.l   - wilt: a flowing away of life
/b.l.l   - mixture: a flowing together

    Many times a group of child roots will not appear to be related in any way. This is because the parent/child root system is based on the ancient Hebrew culture. The Hebrews did not look at objects the same as we do in our culture. For example, the child roots /r.v.c (wind), /y.r.c (moon), /r.c.h (handmill) and /a.r.c (travel) do not appear to have a common meaning to us but did to the ancient Hebrews. Each of these child roots are related in the meaning of "what follows a prescribed path". The winds follow a prescribed path each season, the moon follows a prescribed path in the night sky, a handmill is turned in a prescribed path and a traveler follows a prescribed path to the destination.

Combination Roots

    Languages are always evolving, new words are needed for new products, ideas or events. The same is true for Hebrew. It is my belief that the parent and child roots were the original vocabulary of Hebrew35 and over the millenniums new words were developed. The combination roots36 consist of a parent root and another consonant added before or after it and on rare occasion in between them. A good example of a combination root is the word /g.sh.m/geshem which means rain. Hebrew had no need for this word originally since prior to the flood there was no such thing as rain according to B'reshiyt 2.5. The word was formed by taking a parent root (either or ) and adding another consonant (either a or a ).

    The various combination roots formed from one parent root, are related like those formed from the parent root /p.r. which meant "break" in its original meaning.

/p.r.r   - break through
/p.r.c   - break forth
/p.r.k   - break apart
/p.r.s   - break in pieces
/p.r.q   - break off
/p.r.ts   - break open

    Combination roots were formed out of the parent roots to give a more specific meaning37.

Words

    The child roots and combination roots are the building blocks for Hebrew words. These words may contain the same letters as the child or combination root or may have letters added as prefixes, suffixes and/or infixes. Below are the common words derived from the root. (xxx will represent a root word).

xxx xxx xxx
xxx xxx xxx
xxx xxx xxx

    All the words which are derived from a child or combination root, are related in meaning to the root38. The original Hebraic definition of the child or combination root can be determined by comparing all of the words which are derived from it. The more words available from a root, the clearer the definition of the root will be.

    The parent root was originally a generic word with many meanings39. The child and combination roots provide a more specific meaning then the parent root, and the words from the child and combination roots are even more specific in meaning.

Chapter Two
Chapter Four


[Front Page]   [Home Page]

Copyright © 1999-2002
Ancient Hebrew Research Center

Please feel free to use, copy or distribute any material on this site for non-profit educational purposes only.

1