Bit at a time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:5

Genesis 1:5

 

ה וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה וַיְהִי־עֶרֶב וַיְהִי־בֹקֶר יוֹם אֶחָד:

 

Transliteration: Va-yiqra elohim la-or yom v’la-choshekh qara lailah va-y’hi-erev va-y’hi-voqer yom echad.

Translation:    Gd named the light day and the darkness He named night and there was evening and there was morning one day.

Letters in this lesson: ק

Vocabulary in this lesson:

 

יִּקְרָא	call (to), call by name, name
לָ	Indirect object preposition, genitive preposition, possessive
יוֹם	day
לָיְלָה	night
עֶרֶב	evening
בֹקֶר	morning
אֶחָד	one

 

Notice that in the first word, after va with the patach, the yod takes dagesh.  Also notice that toward the end of the verse, after y’hi, it’s not boqer, it’s voqer.  But notice after the other y’hi, there’s no dagesh in the ayin.  Ayin is a letter that never takes dagesh.  Also notice that after voqer, the yod in yom does NOT take dagesh.  The word before the yod ended in a resh, not a vowel as at the start of the verse.  Are you starting to see a pattern?

 

Notice that yiqra has the root qof resh alef.  That is just like bara which was the second word in Torah.  It also happens to be true that yiqra is the paal binyan like bara, but the difference between them is that bara is in the past and yiqra is in the aorist.  So what impression does it give?  That bara happened so long ago but yiqra is part of a rapid sequence or happened relatively recently.  In this case it’s the rapid sequence.  Remember the guy who said that from Gd’s point of view it all happened in a blink?  That’s what’s going on with creation.

 

Memorize the lamed for two VERY IMPORTANT things.

“to X” as in “give to X” is lamed plus X.

“of X” as in possession also uses lamed plus X, especially in phrases like “X has a hat” or “the hat which is X’s.” 

In this verse, however, the lamed is part of an idiom: “call the name of”.  You’ll see this again soon, if I remember correctly.

 

The other VERY IMPORTANT thing to notice is that there’s a qamats under the lamed.  That means it’s “the light”, not just “light”.  In the following word, it’s a patach.  All prepositions in Hebrew can take a qamats or patach to indicate that the word they are attached to is “the” whatever.   Also notice that the qamats is with alef and the patach is with chet.  Are you sensing a pattern?

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