the Berasit Hebrew Dictionary

את

The intended meaning of 'at' in the ancient Hebrew texts is somewhat unclear. 'at' appears over 13,000 times in the ancient Hebrew texts. Oddly though, in most English bible translations the word is typically ignored and not translated, but simply left out of the text. Around 6% of instances are traditionally translated as “with”, but there is reason to doubt the veracity of this tradition.¹⁾

There is some scholarly concensus that the word is cognate with Akkadian 𒀉𒋾 (itti), meaning “with”. This should indicate that an appropriate translation is possible at least within texts roughly contemporary with Akkadian, that is some time between 2500 BCE and 500 BCE. A corollary to this is that texts where this definition does not work may predate this period or at least may be passed down from earlier traditional histories, whether written or oral, that predate Akkadian.

This does not necessarily imply that the ancient meaning and usage was the same, but it does give us a secondary meaning with a consistent pattern which can be tested against the text.

the simplest case is to assign 'at'=“with” and perform an audit - So far the audit is looking good

In modern Hebrew, 'at' functions as the definite article roughly equivalent to the English word “the”, although it differs slightly in that it can also function similar to English pronouns.

In the modern Hebrew language, the word has come to mean 'you', but this is actually cognate with ancient Hebrew eteh, not 'et'. It but also plays a variety of other roles in the modern Hebrew grammar. Specifically, it is placed before a noun that is the object of a sentence, but never before the same noun when it is the subject of a sentence. In grammatical terms, it specifies the accusative case.

Based on modern usage, one might conclude that 'at' should be simply translated as “the”. Furthermore, one would expect the word to prove useful in identifying which noun in a sentence is the direct object, acted upon by the verb, as opposed to the subject of the verb which performs the action. This would be especially handy considering that ancient Hebrew does not always separate sentences clearly, and the word order of the sentence structure can vary. Unfortunately, the actual ancient Hebrew usage is somewhat less straightforward.

Consider the example of Genesis 6:18.

The Hebrew is as follows: קמ את ברית את בא אל תב את בנ אש אש בנ את. which can be transliterated as “qem at berit at ba al teb at ben as as ben at”. Notice that there are four occurrences of 'at' within what we assume to be a single sentence. This seems strange if the word is supposed to point out the single direct object of the verb. There should be only one per sentence.

The next important thing to notice is that in this sentence, the traditional translations do not treat the word consistently. Within one short phrase, the word supposedly has two different meanings. If the phrase is translated directly and strictly, the result is:

“stood the contract with arrived to boat the son wife wife son with.”

Or if a more consistent translation is chosen where we take the common meaning of “the” and ignore the likely incorrect idea that it can sometimes mean “with”, then the result is:

“stood the contract the arrival to boat the son wife wife son the.”

The traditional interpretation reads something along the lines of:

“But I will establish - My covenant with you and you shall go into the ark you and your sons and your wife and the wives of your sons with you.”

Note that a lot of words have to be artificially inserted into the sentence in order to make the traditional translation make sense. Here it is again with few words highlighted.

“But I will establish My covenant with you and you shall go into the ark you and your sons and your wife and the wives of your sons with you.”

Out of the 30 words that ostensibly make up the traditionally accepted translation, 20 of the words were inserted into the text by the translators. Only 1/3 of the sentence is original material. The entire narrative structure that we think we know is dependent on words that simply do not exist in the original text. Only by returning to the original Hebrew words can the real meaning be appreciated.

The phrase 'qem at berit' does indicate that a contract exists. In this phrase 'at' does indeed signify that the verb 'qem' acts on the noun 'berit'.

The next phrase 'at' ba al teb' indicates an event in which someone goes to a boat. In this phrase 'at' again does indeed indicate the object but it is attached to 'ba' which is ordinarily a verb, so the attachment of 'at' appears to transform the verb “arrive” into the noun form of that verb which indicates an event, the “arrival”. Further, the 'at' here may indicate that the arrival is the direct object of the contract, effectively treating the contract as a verb, which in this case is quite appropriate since it appears to be the contractual action that drives the narrative.

The remainder of the verse continues:

'at ben as as ben at' - It says something about at least one son and at least one wife, but again the traditional translation inserts a lot of meaning that should not be there. The nouns used here are not the plural forms and the “possessive” nature implied in the traditional translation is not substantiated in the original text. The idea of “with” in the last occurrence does make sense contextually, but a case could also be made that the final occurrence should mean “the”.

In conclusion, the word 'at' is difficult to interpret on a purely semantic basis and seems to add layers of intricacy to adjacent words and to the structure of the sentence in which it appears.

A small number of instances are traditionally translated as “sign”, but this interpretation is highly dubious. It is possible that these instances are actually a separate word, aot