21st century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:2; "to be"

Genesis 1:2.

 

ב וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם:

 

Transliteration: V’ha-arets haitah tohu va-vohu v’choshekh al-p’nei t’hom v’ruach elohim m’rachefet al-p’nei ha-maim.

Translation:     The earth was empty and chaotic and dark above the depths and a spirit of Gd was wafting back and forth above the water.

Letters in this lesson: (“oo”) ח, ך, ע, פּ, נ, וּ

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

 

הָיְתָה	was (f.s.)
תֹהוּ	empty
בֹהוּ	chaotic
חשֶׁךְ	dark, darkness
עַל	on, over, above
תְהוֹם	depths
רוּחַ	spirit, wind
מְרַחֶפֶת	waft, 3rd f. s., piel form (repetitive)
עַל־פְּנֵי	above
פְּנֵי	face, construct state, masculine plural

 

All right. It won’t take 7 weeks to explain every verse, I promise.

 

The first word in this verse is vav plus ha-arets. We can translate this “and the earth” but let me get you started on a concept that will show up again in Genesis 2. We just said that Gd created earth and the first assumption somebody might make is that how it was created is the same as how it is now. Verse 2 says something quite different and in English, when that happens, we say “but”, not “and”. So here is your first example that a vav prefix doesn’t necessarily mean “and”.

 

Second, here is a crucial verb in every language, “be”, in perfect aspect.

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
הָיִיתִי	הָיִינוּ	First
הָיִיתָ	הֱיִיתֶם	Second/masculine
הָיִית	הֱיִיתֶם	Second/feminine
הָיָה	הָיוּ	Third/masculine
הָיְתָה		Third/feminine

 

Notice the vowel under the first letter in 2^nd person plural, both masculine and feminine, and remember that in bara, there was a shva here.

 

Because heh is a guttural (what are the other three, do you remember?), it can’t do that. It needs a vowel. Why the vowel has to be “e”, is beyond the scope of this course.

 

Also notice that the second vowel is “i", not “a” as in bara.

 

Probably the most important thing in “be” in BH is that it’s not like “be” in other languages. In Western languages, “be” is usually classed as “irregular” meaning that compared to other verbs that look like it, it doesn’t conjugate the same.

 

The conjugation rules in BH partly depend on the root letters. In hayah, we have heh at the start and end, and heh is a guttural which works by different rules than other letters. Also, the middle letter is yod and that puts hayah in a verb root class called ayin yod. Once all the rules are adjusted, the conjugation of hayah falls out so it’s not an irregular verb.

Next: something on nouns.

 

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