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Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea. The term 'Hebrew' was not used for the language in the Hebrew Bible, which was referred to as שְֹפַת כְּנַעַן 'language of Canaan' or יְהוּדִית '', but it was used in Koine Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts.
Paleo-Hebrew is attested in inscriptions from about the 10th century BCE, when it was almost identical to Phoenician and other Canaanite languages, and spoken Hebrew persisted as a first language through and beyond the Second Temple period, which ended in 70 CE with the siege of Jerusalem. It eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew, which was employed as a second language until the 5th century.
The language of the Hebrew Bible reflects various stages of the Hebrew language in its Semitic root, as well as the Tiberian vocalization system added in the Middle Ages by the Masoretes. There is evidence of regional variation, including differences between the northern Kingdom of Israel and in the southern Kingdom of Judah. The consonantal text, called the Masoretic Text ("𝕸"), was transmitted in manuscript form and underwent redaction in the Second Temple period, but its earliest portions (parts of Amos, Isaiah, Hosea and Micah) can be dated to the late 8th to early 7th centuries BCE.
Biblical Hebrew has several different . From around the 12th century BCE until the 6th century BCE, writers employed the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. This system was retained by the Samaritans, who use a descendant, the Samaritan script, to this day. However, the Imperial Aramaic alphabet gradually displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet after the Babylonian captivity, and it became the source for the current Hebrew alphabet. These scripts lack letters to represent all of the sounds of Biblical Hebrew, although these sounds are reflected in Greek and Latin transcriptions/translations of the time. They initially indicated only consonants, but certain letters, known by the Latin term matres lectionis, became increasingly used to mark vowels. In the Middle Ages, various systems of were developed to mark the vowels in Hebrew manuscripts; of these, only the Tiberian vocalization is still widely used.
Biblical Hebrew possessed a series of emphatic consonants whose precise articulation (pronunciation) is disputed, likely ejective or possibly pharyngealized. Earlier Biblical Hebrew had three consonants that were not distinguished in the writing system and later merged with other consonants. The plosive developed fricative under the influence of Aramaic, and these sounds (the "begadkefat consonants") eventually became marginally phonemic. The pharyngeal and glottal consonants underwent weakening in some regional dialects, as reflected, for example, in the modern Samaritan Hebrew reading tradition. The vowel system of Hebrew underwent changes over time and is reflected differently in Koine Greek and Latin transcriptions, medieval vocalization systems, and modern reading traditions.
Premodern Hebrew had a typically Semitic nonconcatenative morphology, arranging Semitic root into patterns to form words. Biblical Hebrew distinguished two grammatical genders (masculine and feminine), and three numbers (singular, plural, and the uncommon dual). Verbs were marked for voice and grammatical mood, and had two conjugations that may have indicated aspect or tense. The tense or aspect of verbs was also influenced by the conjunction rtl=yes, the "waw-consecutive" construction. The default word order for Biblical Hebrew was verb–subject–object (unlike Modern Hebrew), and verbs were inflected for the number, gender, and person of their subject. Pronominal suffixes could be appended to verbs to indicate object or nouns to indicate possession, and nouns had special for use in possessive constructions.
The term "Classical Hebrew" may encompass all pre-medieval dialects of Hebrew, including Mishnaic Hebrew, or it may be limited to Hebrew contemporary with the Hebrew Bible. The term Biblical Hebrew refers to pre-Mishnaic dialects (sometimes excluding the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls); it may or may not include extra-biblical texts, such as inscriptions like the Siloam inscription, and generally also includes later vocalization traditions for the Hebrew Bible's consonantal text, most commonly the early medieval Tiberian vocalization.
Hebrew developed during the latter half of the second millennium BCE between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, an area known as Canaan. The Deuteronomic history says the Israelites established a unified kingdom in Canaan at the beginning of the first millennium BCE, which later split into the kingdom of Israel in the north and the kingdom of Judah in the south after a disputed succession.
In 722 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel and some Israelite elites (עם הארץ) escaped to the Kingdom of Judah, which was made a client state of the Empire. In 586 BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Empire destroyed Judah. The Judahites were exiled, and Solomon's Temple was destroyed.
Later, the Achaemenid Empire made former Judah a province, Yehud Medinata, and permitted the Judahite exiles to return and repopulate the land and aided the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. According to the Gemara, Hebrew of this Second Temple period was similar to Imperial Aramaic; Hanina bar Hama said that God sent the exiled Jews to Babylon because "their language, Imperial Aramaic, is similar to the language of the Torah." (מִפְּנֵי שֶׁקָּרוֹב לְשׁוֹנָם לִלְשׁוֹן תּוֹרָה. ).
Aramaic became the common language in the north, in Galilee and Samaria. Hebrew remained in use in Judah, but the returning exiles brought back Aramaic influence, and Aramaic was used for communicating with other ethnic groups during the Persian period. Alexander the Great conquered Judah in 332 BCE. During the subsequent Hellenistic period, Judea became independent under the Hasmonean dynasty and conquered nearby regions: Perea, Samaria, Idumea, Galilee, and Iturea. Later, the Roman Republic ended their independence, making Herod the Great their ruler, and it was made the province of Judaea in 6 CE.
A revolt against the Romans led to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the second Bar Kokhba revolt in 132–135 led to the purge and expulsion of the Jewish population of Judea, the establishment of a new province of Syria Palaestina, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem as the Roman colonia of Aelia Capitolina.
Roman-era Hebrew, called Tannaim Hebrew, ceased being spoken about 200 CE and developed into the literary language of the later Mishnaic Hebrew of the Amoraim. Hebrew continued to be used as a literary and liturgical language in the form of Medieval Hebrew. The revival of the Hebrew language as a vernacular began in the 19th century, culminating in Modern Hebrew becoming the official language of Israel. Currently, Classical Hebrew is generally taught in public schools in Israel, and Biblical Hebrew forms are sometimes used in Modern Hebrew literature, much as archaic and biblical constructions are used in English literature. Since Modern Hebrew contains many biblical elements, Biblical Hebrew is fairly intelligible to Modern Hebrew speakers.
The primary source of Biblical Hebrew material is the Hebrew Bible. Epigraphy materials from the area of Israelite territory are written in a form of Hebrew called Inscriptional Hebrew, although this is meagerly attested.: "The extrabiblical linguistic material from the Iron Age is primarily epigraphic, that is, texts written on hard materials (pottery, stones, walls, etc.). The epigraphic texts from Israelite territory are written in Hebrew in a form of the language which may be called Inscriptional Hebrew; this "dialect" is not strikingly different from the Hebrew preserved in the Masoretic text. Unfortunately, it is meagerly attested." According to Waltke & O'Connor, Inscriptional Hebrew "is not strikingly different from the Hebrew preserved in the Masoretic text." The damp climate of Israel caused the rapid deterioration of papyrus and parchment documents, in contrast to the dry environment of Egypt, and the survival of the Hebrew Bible may be attributed to scribal determination in preserving the text through copying. No manuscript of the Hebrew Bible dates to before 400 BCE, although two silver rolls (the Ketef Hinnom scrolls) from the seventh or sixth century BCE show a version of the Priestly Blessing. Vowel and cantillation marks were added to the older consonantal layer of the Bible between 600 CE and the beginning of the 10th century.This is known because the final redaction of the Talmud, which does not mention these additions, was , while dated manuscripts with vocalization are found in the beginning of the tenth century. See The scholars who preserved the pronunciation of the Bibles were known as the Masoretes. The most well-preserved system that was developed, and the only one still in religious use, is the Tiberian vocalization, but both Babylonian and Palestinian vocalizations are also attested. The Palestinian system was preserved mainly in , which contain biblical quotations.
| +Development of the various fricatives in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic ! rowspan="2" | Proto-Semitic ! rowspan="2" | Hebrew ! rowspan="2" | Aramaic ! rowspan="2" | Arabic ! colspan="4" | Examples |
Biblical Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language from the Canaanite subgroup.
As Biblical Hebrew evolved from the Proto-Semitic language it underwent a number of consonantal mergers parallel with those in other Canaanite languages.However it is noteworthy that Akkadian shares many of these sound shifts but is less closely related to Hebrew than Aramaic. See There is no evidence that these mergers occurred after the adaptation of the Hebrew alphabet.However, for example, when Old Aramaic borrowed the Canaanite alphabet it still had interdentals, but marked them with what they merged with in Canaanite. For instance 'ox' was written rtl=yes but pronounced with an initial . The same phenomenon also occurred when the Arabs adopted the Nabatean alphabet. See .
As a Northwest Semitic language, Hebrew shows the shift of initial to , a similar independent pronoun system to the other Northwest Semitic languages (with third person pronouns never containing ), some archaic forms, such as 'we', first person singular pronominal suffix -i or -ya, and commonly preceding pronominal suffixes. Case endings are found in Northwest Semitic languages in the second millennium BCE, but disappear almost totally afterwards. Mimation is absent in singular nouns, but is often retained in the plural, as in Hebrew.
The Northwest Semitic languages formed a dialect continuum in the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE), with Phoenician and Aramaic on each extreme. Hebrew is classed with Phoenician in the Canaanite subgroup, which also includes Ammonite, Edomite language, and Moabite. Moabite might be considered a Hebrew dialect, though it possessed distinctive Aramaic features. Although Ugaritic shows a large degree of affinity to Hebrew in poetic structure, vocabulary, and some grammar, it lacks some Canaanite features (like the Canaanite shift and the shift > ), and its similarities are more likely a result of either contact or preserved archaism.
Hebrew underwent the Canaanite shift, where Proto-Semitic tended to shift to , perhaps when stressed. Hebrew also shares with the Canaanite languages the shifts > , and > , widespread reduction of diphthongs, and full assimilation of non-final to the following consonant if word final, i.e. rtl=yes from *bant. There is also evidence of a rule of assimilation of to the following coronal consonant in pre-tonic position, shared by Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic: cf בַּיִת báyiṯ, but plural בָּתִּים battím.
Typical Canaanite words in Hebrew include: rtl=yes "roof" rtl=yes "table" rtl=yes "window" rtl=yes "old (thing)" rtl=yes "old (person)" and rtl=yes "expel". Morphological Canaanite features in Hebrew include the masculine plural marker -ם, first person singular pronoun rtl=yes, interrogative pronoun rtl=yes, definite article הַ- (appearing in the first millennium BCE), and third person plural feminine verbal marker rtl=yes.
The oldest form of Biblical Hebrew, Archaic Hebrew, is found in poetic sections of the Bible and inscriptions dating to around 1000 BCE, the early Monarchic Period. This stage is also known as Old Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew, and is the oldest stratum of Biblical Hebrew. The oldest known artifacts of Archaic Biblical Hebrew are various sections of the Tanakh, including the Song of Moses (Exodus 15) and the Song of Deborah (Judges 5). Biblical poetry uses a number of distinct lexical items, for example rtl=yes for prose rtl=yes 'see', rtl=yes for rtl=yes 'great'. Some have cognates in other Northwest Semitic languages, for example rtl=yes 'do' and rtl=yes 'gold' which are common in Canaanite and Ugaritic. Grammatical differences include the use of rtl=yes, rtl=yes, and rtl=yes as relative particles, negative rtl=yes, and various differences in verbal and pronominal morphology and syntax.
Later pre-exilic Biblical Hebrew (such as is found in prose sections of the Pentateuch, Nevi'im, and some Ketuvim) is known as 'Biblical Hebrew proper' or 'Standard Biblical Hebrew'. This is dated to the period from the 8th to the 6th century BCE. In contrast to Archaic Hebrew, Standard Biblical Hebrew is more consistent in using the definite article ה-, the accusative marker rtl=yes, distinguishing between simple and waw-consecutive verb forms, and in using particles like rtl=yes and rtl=yes rather than asyndeton.
Biblical Hebrew from after the Babylonian exile in 587 BCE is known as 'Late Biblical Hebrew'. Late Biblical Hebrew shows Aramaic influence in phonology, morphology, and lexicon, and this trend is also evident in the later-developed Tiberian vocalization system.Recent archaeological research suggests that Aramaic may have started to incluence Biblical Hebrew already during the pre-exilic era. See
Qumran Hebrew, attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls from ca. 200 BCE to 70 CE, is a continuation of Late Biblical Hebrew. Qumran Hebrew may be considered an intermediate stage between Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew, though Qumran Hebrew shows its own idiosyncratic dialectal features.
Hebrew, as spoken in the northern Kingdom of Israel, known as Israelian Hebrew, shows phonological, lexical, and grammatical differences from southern dialects. The northern dialect spoken around Samaria shows a more frequent simplification of into as attested by the Samaria ostraca (8th century BCE), e.g. rtl=yes (= < 'wine'), while the southern or Judean dialect instead adds in an epenthetic vowel , added halfway through the first millennium BCE (rtl=yes = ).Such contraction is also found in Ugaritic, the El-Amarna letters, and in Phoenician, while the anaptyctic vowel is found in Old Aramaic and Deir Alla. The paranomasia in Amos 8:1–2 כְּלוּב קַ֫יִץ... בָּא הַקֵּץ may reflect this: given that Amos was addressing the population of the Northern Kingdom, the vocalization *קֵיץ would be more forceful. Other possible Northern features include use of שֶ- 'who, that', forms like rtl=yes 'to know' rather than rtl=yes and infinitives of certain verbs of the form rtl=yes 'to do' rather than עֲשוֹת. The Samaria ostraca also show rtl=yes for standard rtl=yes 'year', as in Aramaic.
The guttural phonemes merged over time in some dialects. This was found in Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew, but Jerome (d. 420) attested to the existence of contemporaneous Hebrew speakers who still distinguished pharyngeals. Samaritan Hebrew also shows a general attrition of these phonemes, though are occasionally preserved as .
The earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, found at Khirbet Qeiyafa, dates to the 10th century BCE. The trapezoid pottery sherd (ostracon) has five lines of text written in ink in the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (the old form which predates both the Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets). The tablet is written from left to right, suggesting that Hebrew writing was still in the formative stage.
The Israelite tribes who settled in the land of Israel used a late form of the Proto-Sinaitic Alphabet (known as Proto-Canaanite when found in Israel) around the 12th century BCE, which developed into Early Phoenician and Early Paleo-Hebrew as found in the Gezer calendar (). This script developed into the Paleo-Hebrew script in the 10th or 9th centuries BCE. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet's main differences from the Phoenician script were "a curving to the left of the downstrokes in the "long-legged" letter-signs... the consistent use of a Waw with a concave top, and x-shaped Taw."At times the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, and Philistines would also use the Paleo-Hebrew script. See The oldest inscriptions in Paleo-Hebrew script are dated to around the middle of the 9th century BCE, the most famous being the Mesha Stele in the Moabite language (which might be considered a dialect of Hebrew). The ancient Hebrew script was in continuous use until the early 6th century BCE, the end of the First Temple period. In the Second Temple Period the Paleo-Hebrew script gradually fell into disuse, and was completely abandoned among the Jews after the failed Bar Kochba revolt. The Samaritans retained the ancient Hebrew alphabet, which evolved into the modern Samaritan alphabet.
By the end of the First Temple period the Aramaic alphabet, a separate descendant of the Phoenician script, became widespread throughout the region, gradually displacing Paleo-Hebrew. The oldest documents that have been found in the Aramaic Script are fragments of the scrolls of Exodus, Samuel, and Jeremiah found among the Dead Sea scrolls, dating from the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BCE. It seems that the earlier biblical books were originally written in the Paleo-Hebrew script, while the later books were written directly in the later Assyrian script. Some Qumran texts written in the Assyrian script write the tetragrammaton and some other divine names in Paleo-Hebrew, and this practice is also found in several Jewish-Greek biblical translations.Though some of these translations wrote the tetragrammaton in the square script See While spoken Hebrew continued to evolve into Mishnaic Hebrew, A number of regional "book-hand" styles were put into use for the purpose of Torah manuscripts and occasionally other literary works, distinct from the calligraphic styles used mainly for private purposes. The Mizrahi Jews and Ashkenazi book-hand styles were later adapted to printed fonts after the invention of the printing press. The modern Hebrew alphabet, also known as the Assyrian or Square script, appears a descendant of the Aramaic alphabet.
The Phoenician script had dropped five characters by the 12th century BCE, reflecting the language's twenty-two consonantal phonemes. The 22 letters of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet numbered less than the consonant phonemes of ancient Biblical Hebrew; in particular, the letters could each mark two different phonemes. After a sound shift the letters rtl=yes, rtl=yes could only mark one phoneme, but (except in Samaritan Hebrew) rtl=yes still marked two. The old Babylonian vocalization system wrote a superscript rtl=yes above the rtl=yes to indicate it took the value , while the Masoretes added the shin dot to distinguish between the two varieties of the letter.
The original Hebrew alphabet consisted only of consonants, but the letters rtl=yes, rtl=yes, rtl=yes, rtl=yes, also were used to indicate vowels, known as matres lectionis when used in this function. It is thought that this was a product of phonetic development: for instance, *bayt ('house') shifted to rtl=yes in construct state but retained its spelling. While no examples of early Hebrew orthography have been found, older Phoenician and Moabite language texts show how First Temple period Hebrew would have been written. Phoenician inscriptions from the 10th century BCE do not indicate matres lectiones in the middle or the end of a word, for example rtl=yes and rtl=yes for later rtl=yes and rtl=yes, similarly to the Hebrew Gezer Calendar, which has for instance rtl=yes for rtl=yes and possibly rtl=yes for ירחו. Matres lectionis were later added word-finally, for instance the Mesha inscription has בללה, בנתי for later בלילה, בניתי; however at this stage they were not yet used word-medially, compare Siloam inscription rtl=yes versus rtl=yes (for later איש). The relative terms defective and full/ plene are used to refer to alternative spellings of a word with less or more matres lectionis, respectively.Ktiv male, the Hebrew term for full spelling, has become de rigueur in Modern Hebrew.
The Hebrew Bible was presumably originally written in a more defective orthography than found in any of the texts known today. Of the extant textual witnesses of the Hebrew Bible, the Masoretic text is generally the most conservative in its use of matres lectionis, with the Samaritan Pentateuch and its forebearers being more full and the Qumran tradition showing the most liberal use of vowel letters. The Masoretic text mostly uses vowel letters for long vowels, showing the tendency to mark all long vowels except for word-internal .There are rare-cases of being used medially as a true vowel letter, e.g. rtl=yes for the usual rtl=yes 'fish'. Most cases, however, of being used as a vowel letter are theorized to stem from conservative spelling of words which contained , e.g. rtl=yes ('head') from original . See . There are also a number of exceptions to the rule of marking other long vowels, e.g. when the following syllable contains a vowel letters (like in rtl=yes 'voices' rather than rtl=yes) or when a vowel letter already marks a consonant (so rtl=yes 'nations' rather than *rtl=yes). See In the Qumran tradition, are usually represented by whether short or long. is generally used for both long and (rtl=yes, rtl=yes), and final is often written as ־יא in analogy to words like rtl=yes, rtl=yes, e.g. rtl=yes, sometimes מיא. is found finally in forms like חוטה (Tiberian חוטא), קורה (Tiberian קורא) while may be used for an a-quality vowel in final position (e.g. עליהא) and in medial position (e.g. יאתום). Pre-Samaritan and Samaritan texts show full spellings in many categories (e.g. כוחי vs. Masoretic כחי in Genesis 49:3) but only rarely show full spelling of the Qumran type.
Presumably, the vowels of Biblical Hebrew were not indicated in the original text, but various sources attest to them at various stages of development. Greek and Latin transcriptions of words from the biblical text provide early evidence of the nature of Biblical Hebrew vowels. In particular, there is evidence from the rendering of proper nouns in the Koine Greek Septuagint (3rd–2nd centuries BCE) and the Greek alphabet transcription of the Hebrew biblical text contained in the Secunda (3rd century CE, likely a copy of a preexisting text from before 100 BCEThe Secunda is a transliteration of the Hebrew biblical text contained in the Hexapla, a recension of the Old Testament compiled by Origen in the 3rd century CE. There is evidence that the text of the Secunda was written before 100 BCE, despite the later date of the Hexapla. For example, by the time of Origen were pronounced , a merger which had already begun around 100 BCE, while in the Secunda they are used to represent Hebrew . See ). In the 7th and 8th centuries CE various systems of vocalic notation were developed to indicate vowels in the biblical text. The most prominent, best preserved, and the only system still in use, is the Tiberian vocalization system, created by scholars known as Masoretes around 850 CE. There are also various extant manuscripts making use of less common vocalization systems (Babylonian and Palestinian), known as superlinear vocalizations because their vocalization marks are placed above the letters.The Palestinian system has two main subtypes and shows great variation. The Babylonian vocalization occurred in two main types (simple / einfach and complex / kompliziert), with various subgroups differing as to their affinity with the Tiberian tradition. In the Babylonian and Palestinian systems only the most important vowels were written. See In addition, the Samaritan Hebrew reading tradition is independent of these systems and was occasionally notated with a separate vocalization system.Almost all vocalized manuscripts use the Masoretic Text. However, there are some vocalized Samaritan manuscripts from the Middle Ages. See These systems often record vowels at different stages of historical development; for example, the name of the Judge Samson is recorded in Greek as Σαμψών Sampsōn with the first vowel as , while Tiberian rtl=yes with shows the effect of the law of attenuation whereby in closed unstressed syllables became . All of these systems together are used to reconstruct the original vocalization of Biblical Hebrew.
At an early stage, in documents written in the paleo-Hebrew script, words were divided by short vertical lines and later by dots, as reflected by the Mesha Stone, the Siloam inscription, the Ophel inscription, and paleo-Hebrew script documents from Qumran. Word division was not used in Phoenician inscriptions; however, there is no direct evidence for biblical texts being written without word division, as suggested by Nahmanides in his introduction to the Torah. Word division using spaces was commonly used from the beginning of the 7th century BCE for documents in the Aramaic script. In addition to marking vowels, the Tiberian system also uses cantillation marks, which serve to mark word stress, semantic structure, and the musical motifs used in formal recitation of the text.
While the Babylonian and Palestinian reading traditions are extinct, various other systems of pronunciation have evolved over time, notably the Yemenite, Sephardi, Ashkenazi Hebrew, and Samaritan traditions. Modern Hebrew pronunciation is also used by some to read biblical texts. The modern reading traditions do not stem solely from the Tiberian system; for instance, the Sephardic tradition's distinction between qamatz gadol and qatan is likely pre-Tiberian. However, the only orthographic system used to mark vowels is the Tiberian vocalization.
| + Biblical Hebrew consonants |
The phonetic nature of some Biblical Hebrew consonants is disputed. The so-called "emphatics" were likely pharyngealized, but possibly velarized. The pharyngealization of emphatic consonants is viewed as a Central Semitic innovation.
Some argue that were affricated (), but Egyptian starts using s in place of earlier ṯ to represent Canaanite s around 1000 BC. It is likely that Canaanite was already dialectally split by that time, and the northern Early Phoenician dialect that the Greeks were in contact with could have preserved the affricate pronunciation until at least, unlike the more southern Canaanite dialects (like Hebrew) that the Egyptians were in contact with, so that there is no contradiction within this argument.
Originally, the Hebrew letters and each represented two possible phonemes, uvular and pharyngeal, with the distinction unmarked in Hebrew orthography. However, the uvular phonemes rtl=yes and rtl=yes merged with their pharyngeal counterparts rtl=yes and rtl=yes respectively c. 200 BCE. This is observed by noting the preservation of the double phonemes of each letter in one Sephardic reading tradition, and by noting that these phonemes are distinguished consistently in the Septuagint of the Pentateuch (e.g. Isaac rtl=yes Yīṣ ḥāq = Ἰσαάκ versus Rachel rtl=yes Rā ḫēl = Ῥαχήλ), but this becomes more sporadic in later books and is generally absent in translations of Ezra and Nehemiah.
The phoneme , is also not directly indicated by Hebrew orthography but is clearly attested by later developments: It is written with (also used for ) but later merged with (normally indicated with ). As a result, three etymologically distinct phonemes can be distinguished through a combination of spelling and pronunciation: written , written , and (pronounced but written ). The specific pronunciation of as is based on comparative evidence ( is the corresponding Proto-Semitic phoneme and still attested in Modern South Arabian languages as well as early borrowings (e.g. balsam < Greek balsamon < Hebrew baśam). began merging with in Late Biblical Hebrew, as indicated by interchange of orthographic and , possibly under the influence of Aramaic, and this became the rule in Mishnaic Hebrew. In all Jewish reading traditions and have merged completely; however in Samaritan Hebrew has instead merged with .
Allophonic spirantization of to (known as begadkefat spirantization) developed sometime during the lifetime of Biblical Hebrew under the influence of Aramaic.Or perhaps Hurrian language, but this is unlikely See . This probably happened after the original Old Aramaic phonemes disappeared in the 7th century BCE, and most likely occurred after the loss of Hebrew c. 200 BCE.According to the generally accepted view, it is unlikely begadkefat spirantization occurred before the merger of and , or else and would have to be contrastive, which is cross-linguistically rare. However Blau argues that it is possible that lenited and could coexist even if pronounced identically, since one would be recognized as an alternating allophone (as apparently is the case in Nestorian Syriac). See . It is known to have occurred in Hebrew by the 2nd century CE. After a certain point this alternation became contrastive in word-medial and final position (though bearing low functional load), but in word-initial position they remained allophonic. This is evidenced both by the Tiberian vocalization's consistent use of word-initial spirants after a vowel in sandhi, as well as Saadia Gaon's attestation to the use of this alternation in Tiberian Aramaic at the beginning of the 10th century CE.
The Dead Sea scrolls show evidence of confusion of the phonemes , e.g. rtl=yes ħmr for Masoretic rtl=yes 'he said'. However the testimony of Jerome indicates that this was a regionalism and not universal. Confusion of gutturals was also attested in later Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic (see Eruvin 53b). In Samaritan Hebrew, have generally all merged, either into , a glide or , or by vanishing completely (often creating a long vowel), except that original sometimes have reflex before .
Geminate consonants are phonemically contrastive in Biblical Hebrew. In the Secunda are never geminate. In the Tiberian tradition cannot be geminate; historically first degeminated, followed by , , and finally , as evidenced by changes in the quality of the preceding vowel.The vowel before originally geminate usually shows compensatory lengthening, e.g. rtl=yes 'the father' < ; with preceding tends to remain short; with original also remains short, and generally does not cause compensatory lengthening, e.g. rtl=yes ('he will have compassion'). See
| +Hebrew consonant correspondences ! rowspan="3" | Proto-Semitic ! colspan="4" | Language |
| {class="wikitable" ! ! Front vowel ! Back vowel |
Various changes, mostly in morphology, took place between Proto-Semitic and Proto-Central-Semitic, the language at the root of the Central Semitic languages. The phonemic system was inherited essentially unchanged, but the emphatic consonants may have changed their realization in Central Semitic from to pharyngealized consonants.
The morphology of Proto-Central-Semitic shows significant changes compared with Proto-Semitic, especially in its verbs, and is much like in Classical Arabic. Nouns in the singular were usually declined in three cases: (nominative), (accusative) or (genitive). In some circumstances (but never in the construct state), nouns also took a final nasal after the case ending: nunation (final ) occurred in some languages, mimation (final ) in others. The original meaning of this marker is uncertain. In Classical Arabic, final on nouns indicates indefiniteness and disappears when the noun is preceded by a definite article or otherwise becomes definite in meaning. In other languages, final may be present whenever a noun is not in the construct state. Old Canaanite had mimation, of uncertain meaning, in an occurrence of the word urušalemim (Jerusalem) as given in an Egyptian transcription.
Broken plural forms in Arabic are declined like singulars, and often take singular agreement as well. Dual and "strong plural" forms use endings with a long vowel or diphthong, declined in only two cases: nominative and objective (combination accusative/genitive), with the objective form often becoming the default one after the loss of case endings. Both Hebrew and Arabic had a special form of nunation/mimation that co-occurred with the dual and masculine sound plural endings whenever the noun was not in the construct state. The endings were felt as an inherent part of the ending and, as a result, are still used. Examples are Arabic strong masculine plural -ūna (nominative), -īna (objective), and dual endings -āni (nominative), -ayni (objective); corresponding construct-state endings are -ū, -ī (strong masculine plural), -ā, -ay (dual). (The strong feminine endings in Classical Arabic are -ātu nominative, -āti objective, marked with a singular-style -n nunation in the indefinite state only.)
If Hebrew had at some point had the broken plural, any vestigial forms that may remain have been extended with the strong plural endings. The dual and strong plural endings were likely much like the Arabic forms given above at one point, with only the objective-case forms ultimately surviving. For example, dual -ayim is probably from *-aymi with an extended mimation ending (cf. Arabic -ayni above), while dual construct -ē is from *-ay without mimation. Similarly, -īm < *-īma, -ōt < *-āti. (Expected plural construct state *-ī was replaced by dual -ē.)
Feminine nouns at this point ended in a suffix or in case endings. When the ending is final due to the loss or absence of the case ending, it is replaced with and then in both Hebrew and Arabic. The final consonant therefore is silent in the absolute state, but becomes again in the construct state and when these words take suffixes, e.g. תֹורָה "law" becomes תֹורַת "law of", and תֹורָתְךָ "your law", etc. (This is equivalent to the Arabic letter tāʼ marbūṭah ة, a modified final form of the letter hāʾ ه, which indicates this same phoneme shifting. Only its pronunciation varies between construct and absolute state.)
The dropping of final short vowels in verb forms tended to erase mood distinctions, but also some gender distinctions; however, unexpected vowel lengthening occurred in many situations to preserve the distinctions. For example, in the suffix conjugation, first-singular * -tu appears to have been remade into * -tī already by Proto-Hebrew on the basis of possessive -ī (likewise first singular personal pronoun *ʔana became *ʔanī).
Similarly, in the second-singular, inherited *-ta -ti competed with lengthened *-tā -tī for masculine and feminine forms. The expected result would be -t or -tā for masculine, -t or -tī for feminine, and in fact both variants of both forms are found in the Bible (with -h marking the long -ā and -y marking the long -ī). The situation appears to have been quite fluid for several centuries, with -t and -tā/tī forms found in competition both in writing and in speech (cf. the Secunda (Hexapla) of Origen, which records both pronunciations, although quite often in disagreement with the written form as passed down to us). Ultimately, writing stabilized on the shorter -t for both genders, while speech chose feminine -t but masculine -tā. This is the reason for the unexpected qamatz vowel written under the final letter of such words.
The exact same process affected possessive *-ka ('your' masc. sing.) and *-ki ('your' fem. sing.), and personal pronouns *ʔanta, *ʔanti, with the same split into shorter and longer forms and the same ultimate resolution.
The previous three changes occurred in a complex, interlocking fashion:
Examples:
| + Possible derivation of some nominal/verbal forms ! ! 'killing/killer (masc. sg.)' ! 'he killed' ! 'she killed' ! 'they killed' ! 'they killed' (pausa) ! 'you (masc. sg.) kill' ! 'you (fem. sg.) kill' |
Many, perhaps most, Hebrew words with a schwa directly before a final stress are due to this stress shift.
This sound change shifted many more originally penultimate-stressed words to have final stress. The above changes can be seen to divide words into a number of main classes based on stress and syllable properties:
were reduced to in the second syllable before the stress, and occasionally reduced rather than lengthened in pretonic position, especially when initial (e.g. σεμω = rtl=yes 'his name').The Secunda also has a few cases of pretonic gemination. See . Thus the vowel system of the Secunda was .
The Babylonian and Palestinian systems have only one reduced vowel phoneme like the Secunda, though in Palestinian Hebrew it developed the pronunciation . However the Tiberian tradition possesses three reduced vowels of which has questionable phonemicity.See rtl=yes ('ships') rtl=yes ('I'), rtl=yes ('sickness') rtl=yes ('ornament'), rtl=yes ('ascend!') (Num 21:17) and rtl=yes ('with pestle'; Prov 27:22). alternates with frequently and rarely contrasts with it, e.g. rtl=yes ('Edom') versus rtl=yes ('Edomite'). is clearly phonemic but bears minimal functional load. is written both with mobile šwa and hataf patah . under a non-guttural letter was pronounced as an ultrashort copy of the following vowel before a guttural, e.g. rtl=yes , and as preceding , e.g. rtl=yes , but was always pronounced as under gutturals, e.g. שָחֲחו, חֲיִי. When reduced, etymological become under gutturals (e.g. rtl=yes 'you mp. said' cf. rtl=yes 'he said'), and generally under non-gutturals, but > (and rarely > ) may still occur, especially after stops (or their spirantized counterparts) and (e.g. rtl=yes ). Samaritan and Qumran Hebrew have full vowels in place of the reduced vowels of Tiberian Hebrew.
Samaritan Hebrew also does not reflect etymological vowel length; however the elision of guttural consonants has created new phonemic vowel length, e.g. rtl=yes ('great') vs. rtl=yes ('wide'). (while Ben-Hayyim notates four degrees of vowel length, he concedes that only his "fourth degree" has phonemic value) Samaritan Hebrew vowels are allophonically lengthened (to a lesser degree) in open syllables, e.g. rtl=yes , rtl=yes , though this is less strong in post-tonic vowels. Pretonic gemination is also found in Samaritan Hebrew, but not always in the same locations as in Tiberian Hebrew, e.g. rtl=yes TH SH ; rtl=yes TH SH . While Proto-Hebrew long vowels usually retain their vowel quality in the later traditions of Hebrew, in Samaritan Hebrew may have reflex in closed stressed syllables, e.g. rtl=yes , may become either or , and > . The reduced vowels of the other traditions appear as full vowels, though there may be evidence that Samaritan Hebrew once had similar vowel reduction. Samaritan results from the neutralization of the distinction between and in closed post-tonic syllables, e.g. rtl=yes ('house') rtl=yes ('the house') rtl=yes הגר.
Various more specific conditioned shifts of vowel quality have also occurred. Diphthongs were frequently monophthongized, but the scope and results of this shift varied among dialects. In particular, the Samaria ostraca show < < For > , see above. The Semitic form was borrowed into Proto-Indo-European as , eventually yielding Latin vīnum and English wine. for Southern ('wine'), and Samaritan Hebrew shows instead the shift > . Original tended to shift to (e.g. rtl=yes and rtl=yes 'word'; rtl=yes 'outside' and rtl=yes 'outer') beginning in the second half of the second millennium BCE. This was carried through completely in Samaritan Hebrew but met more resistance in other traditions such as the Babylonian and Qumran traditions. Philippi's law is the process by which original in closed stressed syllables shifts to (e.g. > rtl=yes 'daughter'), or sometimes in the Tiberian tradition (e.g. > rtl=yes 'truth').This does not become in pause, thus rtl=yes has a patah vowel in pause as well as in context. (1987). 9780931464348, Eisenbrauns. ISBN 9780931464348 This is absent in the transcriptions of the Secunda, but there is evidence that the law's onset predates the Secunda. In the Samaritan tradition Philippi's law is applied consistently, e.g. > ('heart').The only known case where Philippi's Law does not apply is in the word rtl=yes < ('nest'). The shift > has been extended by analogy to similar forms, e.g. > ('name'; but > 'reputation'!). In some traditions the short vowel tended to shift to in unstressed closed syllables: this is known as the law of attenuation. It is common in the Tiberian tradition, e.g. > Tiberian rtl=yes ('seven'), but exceptions are frequent. It is less common in the Babylonian vocalization, e.g. ('seven'), and differences in Greek and Latin transcriptions demonstrate that it began quite late. Attenuation generally did not occur before , e.g. Tiberian rtl=yes ('key') versus rtl=yes ('opening construct'), and often was blocked before a geminate, e.g. rtl=yes ('gift'). Attenuation is rarely present in Samaritan Hebrew, e.g. rtl=yes .Verbal forms such as rtl=yes = Samaritan < may be examples of Barth's law rather than attenuation. In the Tiberian tradition take offglide before .This is known as pataḥ furtivum, literally 'stolen pataḥ' and perhaps a mistranslation of Hebrew rtl=yes ('pataḥ of the stolen letter'), as if rtl=yes were being inserted. See This is absent in the Secunda and in Samaritan Hebrew but present in the transcriptions of Jerome. In the Tiberian tradition an ultrashort echo vowel is sometimes added to clusters where the first element is a guttural, e.g. rtl=yes ('he will listen') rtl=yes ('his work') but rtl=yes ('he will make glorious') rtl=yes 'its breadth'.It is evident that this epenthesis must have been a late phenomenon, since a short vowel preceding a guttural is preserved even though it becomes in an open syllable, see .This is less common when the consonant following the guttural is a begadkefat letter, e.g. rtl=yes ('you take in pledge'). This suggests that begadkefat spirantization was no longer automatic by the time that this epenthesis occurred, see
The following chart summarizes the most regular reflexes of the Proto-Semitic vowels in the various stages of Hebrew:
| +Hebrew vowel reflexes ! colspan="3" rowspan="3" | Hebrew vowel reflexes ! colspan="5" | Hebrew language stage |
Notes:
In proto-Semitic nouns were marked for case: in the singular the markers were in the Nominative case, in the Accusative case (used also for adverbials), and in the Genitive case, as evidenced in Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Arabic. The Amarna letters show that this was probably still present in Hebrew In the development of Hebrew, final were dropped first, and later was elided as well. Mimation, a nominal suffix of unclear meaning, was found in early Canaanite, as shown by early Egyptian transcriptions () of Jerusalem as Urušalimim, but there is no indication of its presence after 1800 BCE.It has been suggested that the construct forms rtl=yes, rtl=yes have long lacking in the absolute rtl=yes because the later stem from forms like > (because Proto-Semitic did not allow long vowels in closed syllables) > (loss of mimation and final short vowel), see Final is preserved in rtl=yes , originally meaning 'at night' but in prose replacing rtl=yes ('night'), and in the "connective vowels" of some prepositions (originally adverbials), e.g. rtl=yes ('with us'); nouns preserve in forms like יָדֵ֫נוּ.The unstressed suffix -ה in words like rtl=yes ('to the earth'), occurring also in exclamations like rtl=yes and used ornamentally in poetry, e.g. rtl=yes, may have originally terminated in consonantal which was later elided, following the suffix . This is evidenced by Ugaritic orthography, almost purely consonantal, where rtl=yes appears with , see Construct state nouns lost case vowels at an early period (similar to Akkadian), as shown by the reflexes of (rtl=yes in absolute but rtl=yes in construct) and the reflexes of (יָד and יַד) However forms like rtl=yes show that this was not yet a feature of Proto-Hebrew.
Biblical Hebrew has two genders, masculine and feminine, which are reflected in nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs. Hebrew distinguishes between singular and plural numbers, and plural forms may also be used for collectives and honorifics. Hebrew has a morphological dual form for nouns that naturally occur in pairs and for units of measurement and time which contrasts with the plural (rtl=yes 'day' rtl=yes 'two days' rtl=yes 'days'). A widespread misconception is that the Hebrew plural denotes three or more objects. In truth, it denotes two or more objects. However adjectives, pronouns, and verbs do not have dual forms, and most nominal dual forms can function as plurals (rtl=yes 'six wings' from Isaiah 6:2). Finite verbs are marked for subject person, number, and gender. Nouns also have a construct form which is used in genitive constructions.
Common nouns may be marked as definiteness with the prefix followed by gemination of the initial consonant of the noun. In Tiberian Hebrew the vowel of the article may become or in certain phonetic environments, for example rtl=yes ('the wise man'), rtl=yes ('the man'). However, according early Hebrew grammarians like Abraham Ibn Ezra and David Kimhi have already noted that in Biblical Hebrew, the definite article may not be attached to proper noun. Nevertheless, Reuven Chaim Klein cites philology who point out that rabbinic judaism sources like the Talmud seem to understand that a definite article can be applied even to a proper name.
The traditions differ on the form of segolate nouns, nouns stemming from roots with two final consonants. The anaptyctic of the Tiberian tradition in segolates appears in the Septuagint (3rd century BCE) but not the Hexapla (2nd century CE), e.g. rtl=yes = Γαθερ versus rtl=yes = Χεσλ (Psalms 49:14). This may reflect dialectal variation or phonetic versus phonemic transcriptions. Both the Palestinian and Babylonian traditions have an anaptyctic vowel in segolates, in the Palestinian tradition (e.g. 'land' = Tiberian rtl=yes Deuteronomy 26:15) and in Babylonian (e.g. 'item' = Tiberian rtl=yes Jeremiah 22:28). The Qumran tradition sometimes shows some type of back epenthetic vowel when the first vowel is back, e.g. for Tiberian ('tent').
Biblical Hebrew has two sets of personal pronouns: the free-standing independent pronouns have a nominative function, while the pronominal suffixes are genitive or accusative. Only the first person suffix has different possessive and objective forms (-י and -ני).
The Imperfect portrays the verb as an incomplete action along with the process by which it came about, either as an event that has not begun, an event that has begun but is still in the process, or a habitual or cyclic action that is on an ongoing repetition. The Imperfect can also express modal or conditional verbs, as well as commands in the Jussive and Cohortative moods. It is conjectured that the imperfect can express modal quality through the paragogic nun added to certain imperfect forms. While often future tense, it also has uses in the past and present under certain contexts. Biblical Hebrew tense is not necessarily reflected in the verb forms per se, but rather is determined primarily by context. The Participles also reflect ongoing or continuous actions, but are also subject to the context determining their tense.
The verbal forms can be Past Tense in these circumstances:
28. tetragrammaton 29. 30. tetragrammaton 31. tetragrammaton | 29. χι αθθα θαειρ νηρι YHWH ελωαι αγι οσχι 30. χι βαχ αρους γεδουδ ουβελωαι εδαλλεγ σουρ 31. αηλ θαμμιν (*-μ) δερχω εμαραθ YHWH σερουφα μαγεν ου λαχολ αωσιμ βω 32. χι μι ελω μεββελαδη YHWH ουμι σουρ ζουλαθι ελωννου (*-ηνου) | 29. tetragrammaton 30. 31. tetragrammaton 32. tetragrammaton |
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