Why Study The Tanakh In Hebrew?

This series of web pages provides free lessons to help you learn about the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible).

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Why take the time and trouble to study the Tanakh in Hebrew? What's wrong with sticking to a reliable and trusted translation? After all, learning Hebrew can be a long and arduous road, so why even start to walk it?

A wise Rabbi once said, "Reading a translation of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) is like kissing your bride through a veil." In other words, a translation of the Tanakh is just not the same as "the real thing". It can never be the same. It is not even close.

The Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) is the inspired word of YHWH. By contrast, a translation is only a translation. It is only as reliable as the people who translated it. The translators are free to 'tinker' with the words they choose to translate the Tanakh in order to find a 'better' translation. (Or a translation that is closer to what they believe.) Everyone is familiar with this process. Translators use the words of a different translation here; they substitute a word or two there. When you study the Tanakh through a translation, you probably use Strong's or Young's Concordance to check what the original Hebrew word is, and you might paraphrase a verse differently if you believe something 'brings out the point better'.

Even if a translator is the most honest, most accurate and most reliable translation in the whole world, you still miss a lot by not reading the Hebrew Bible in the original Hebrew. You miss the beauty of the original Hebrew. You miss the poetry, the puns, the plays on words, the acrostics, the rhymes, the rhythm of the Tanakh in Hebrew. You miss the intonation and stress behind the Hebrew words and the turn of phrase used. You miss important points that the Hebrew brings out. You lose the soul of the Tanakh and the Hebrew language. You are not aware of the Treasures of the Tanakh. You will lose connections between words because you won't see the original Hebrew. You will concentrate instead in the words used in English.

Since Hebrew and Aramaic were the languages in which YHWH chose to reveal the Tanakh to mankind, only the original Hebrew or Aramaic are inspired in the sense of being the exact, original message that YHWH revealed to mankind. If you have only ever read a translation of the Tanakh, you may not have thought about the implications of this before. When you read the Tanakh, each book, each chapter, each paragraph, each sentence, each word, and each letter is intentional and was placed there when YHWH revealed his inspired message. Every letter in the original Hebrew and Aramaic is important; every word has been put there for a purpose and cannot be substituted for another; every phrase is expressed in the way that YHWH wants it; and every sentence is exactly as YHWH intended. When you study a translation, you are not studying YHWH's Word. You are studying a translation of YHWH's Word. That is not the same thing at all. It's the difference between seeing a photo of a person, and meeting them in the flesh.

Thus, in contrast to a translation into English or any other language, studying the Hebrew or Aramaic of the Tanakh is very important because every letter, every word and every sentence in it makes up the original divinely inspired message. It is all exactly as YHWH intended it. Problems or questions can therefore always be resolved by looking at the original Hebrew - not by checking what another English version says, as is so often done. Looking up the meaning of a Hebrew word only helps if you can be sure that you understand how the word is actually used in the Hebrew Bible. Relying on what somebody else has told you only helps if you know that the person is correct.

With the above points in mind, here are a few reasons why studying the Tanakh in Hebrew is worthwhile:

Being the original language in which the Tanakh was written, it is only the Hebrew (and Aramaic) that is wholly inspired.
Because Hebrew was chosen by YHWH as the language to reveal His spiritual truths, you can learn a great deal about YHWH's purpose for mankind by studying the original Hebrew.
Much is lost forever in translating from Hebrew to English. The Hebrew Scriptures contain a beauty, elegance and subtlety that is impossible to see, let alone capture, in a translation. In Hebrew there are plays on words, on the sounds of words, and on peoples' names; there are acrostics and word puzzles; there are meanings to all those long chapters of Hebrew names of places and people; and it is easy to see the connections between words when they are not obscured by translation into another language.
Without a knowledge of Hebrew, it is easy to misunderstand the information given in concordances such as Strong's, or to be misled by people who give the impression they know Hebrew but really don't.

Therefore, do not be satisfied with a translation of the Tanakh. Study the inspired Hebrew (and Aramaic) for yourself. Otherwise, you will always be hostage to a translation, and you will never see for yourself how beautiful and elegant YHWH's inspired Word really is.

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