the Berasit Hebrew Dictionary

The ancient Hebrew lexicon contains many subtle variations on root words. Supposedly, these variations affect the meaning of the word in a similar fashion to how prepositions work in English. The variations are composed of two main structural components; The first of the is prefixes and suffixes. The second of which are diacritics.

This article will discuss prefixes and suffixes.

We performed an audit on 1,500 unique Hebrew words used in the Hebrew Old Testament to determine whether Hebrew prefixes ostensible meanings were actually borne out in the typical translations.

Only two of the prefixes examined held up to the ostensible meanings with a large degree of consistency. these were the prefixes 'wa' and 'ka', meaning “and” and “like” respectively. Both of these prefixes actually appear to indicate the meaning as traditionally understood. When the prefix 'wa' is applied to a root word, the resulting word is semantically equivalent to placing the word “and” in front of the root. Likewise, when the prefix 'ka' is applied to a root word, the resulting word is semantically equivalent to placing the word “like” in front of the root word.

Some of the other prefixes did not fare so well when subjected to scrutiny.

The 'Ha' prefix ostensibly means “of”.

The English preposition “of” has several different meanings in English, only some of which denote possession. Some excellent answers were given concerning the two ways to handle “of” as a possession marker:

In ancient Hebrew, possession is indicated by constructing the sentence with <the object possessed> followed immediately by <the possessor> with no intervening preposition, and this technique does not require the use of a prefix. For example: בית מרים (beit miryam) = Miriam’s house.

It should be noted that in modern Hebrew, the usage has shifted to include the use of a prepositional phrase, “shel” being the equivalent of the English preposition “of”. For example: בית של מרים (bayit shel miryam) = Miriam’s house.

To further muddy the waters, another example is: הבית של מרים (habayit shel miryam) = of Miriam’s house. This example does use a “ha” prefix, but it is attached to the word “house” instead of Miriam, yielding “of the house of Miriam” which actually has a different meaning altogether as the object signified now becomes some unidentified object that belongs to or in Miriam's house.

But how about the following occurrences where “of” is not indicating possession? In English, we are accustomed to the word “of” and don't give it much thought, but in reality, we are using the term for several very different semantic tasks.

In Hebrew, these tasks are performed by distinct words.

For example:

• “I’m tired of this work.” = נמאס לי מהעבודה הזאת uses the preposition “mi”
• “Of course!” = כמובן uses the preposition “ki”
• “I’m thinking of you.” = אני חושב עלייך uses the preposition “al”
• “Most of the people.” = רוב האנשים has no equivalent preposition in Hebrew

Therefore, rather than asking how do you say “of” in Hebrew, it makes more sense to ask what LIST of Hebrew words are used for the various tasks we assign to “of” in English.

Clearly, there are many different words in Hebrew, for what we in English mistakenly think is one word, so the question is not as simple as it first appeared.

However, looking specifically at the “ha” prefix. We can ask “what does it mean?”

We examined 29,000 uses of the prefix “ha” in the Hebrew Old Testament. In 18% of these instances, the semantic meaning “of” (possessive) is supported by the usage of the prefix “ha”. In 82% of the occasions where the “ha” prefix occurs, the prefix does NOT appear to indicate possession. Furthermore, in these cases the prefix is not translated at all, but simply ignored. This is a case where we tend to agree with the traditional translators that ignoring the prefix is the more accurate translation.

Although there is still a bit of a sticking point. While we agree that “most of the time” ignoring it is preferred, we would prefer to apply the logic consistently; that is “all the time” is much to be preferred than “most of the time” when attempting to follow a logical process for translation. Alas, human language is somewhat fluid and less mathematical, so it may not be possible to enforce hard and fast rules.

ת The Hebrew suffix pronounced 'it' or 'eet' was found in our study to be 21% accurate in terms of actually being used to indicate the ostensible meaning of

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please format links as [[affixes|prefix]], [[affixes|suffix]]