21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:10, noun plurals

Genesis 1:10

 

י וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לַיַּבָּשָׁה אֶרֶץ וּלְמִקְוֵה הַמַּיִם קָרָא יַמִּים וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים כִּי־טוֹב:

 

Transliteration: Va-yiqra elohim la-yabashah erets ul’miqveh ha-mayim qara yamim vayar elohim ki-tov.

Translation:     Gd called the dry land earth and the gathering of waters he called seas; Gd must have revealed that it was good.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

מִקְוֵה	gathering, collection
יַמִּים	seas

 

If the first word of the vocabulary looks familiar, you have good eyes. It’s a noun form of the verb you saw in the last verse. Yes, it’s true, Hebrew builds nouns and adjectives out of three letter roots, sometimes the same roots as it uses for verbs. This is a verbal noun.

 

In Jewish law,a miqveh is a natural collection of at least 40 seahs (22 liters, 5.5 gallons) of water, that renews itself. It is used for immersion for various reasons. You can see that an ocean should be eligible for this use, and that is indeed what Jewish law says, and it includes rivers and permanent lakes. The Chabad organization runs a miqveh near the Yam ha-Melach (Dead Sea) but it is in a building set back from the shore. This is to preserve the modesty of people using the miqveh.

 

See if you can tell me the difference between the following words.

 

Plural	Singular
יַמִּים	יּוֹם
יָמִים	יָם

 

Somebody once told me that without the vowels, Hebrew was a free-form language. According to that argument, if the plurals above were used without the vowels, you wouldn’t be able to tell whether the text mean “seas” or “days”.

 

That’s not true. Come up with a context in all of literature in which you could read “seas” where you should read “days,” and not get confused. I will be very interested to see what you come up with, but right now, without going through all of literature that has ever existed in the world, I have a lot of trouble believing that you would be able to make sense out of a book that discussed ships sailing the days of the ocean, or setting a record by making a trip in two seas instead of three.

 

A written language is a recording of how people express themselves in their language, and with exceptions such as dadaism or the failed Russian formalist school, the written language will use the same concepts and idioms as when people speak out loud. Writing is not at all free-form.

 

Thiis verse is where we get the possibility that the manifestations were good in and of themselves – but only the manifestations, and since the raqia was not revealed, Torah had to separately say va-y’hi khen.

Next time: more on nouns.

 

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