Why Hebrew: On Cancer and Memory
With winter coming in, and cancer having done rather more to my memory than I would have liked, I decided to do something completely different with my brain.
I had read those unfamiliar mental exercises—even something as simple as writing your name backwards—can be good for the brain. So I decided to go the whole hog and learn Biblical Hebrew.
Why Hebrew? I was hoping you would ask.
For a start, it is certainly different. You read from right to left, the alphabet is unfamiliar, and at first a page of Hebrew looks as though it might require archaeological equipment. More importantly, though, I love the Bible. The Old Testament was written predominantly in Hebrew, and I wanted to get a little closer to the language behind the English translations I have read for years.
One of the delights of Biblical Hebrew is the way it can make you see and feel an idea rather than simply define it.
The Hebrew word שָׂפָה (safah) literally means “lip,” but it can also mean an edge, border or shore. So, the expression שְׂפַת הַיָּם (sefat hayyam) is literally “the lip of the sea”, where English would naturally say “the seashore” or “the edge of the sea.”
You can see the image: the land forms a lip around the water. It’s wonderfully physical.
For example, Genesis 22:17 describes Abraham’s descendants as being as numerous as “the sand which is upon the seashore.” The Hebrew is literally the sand that is “upon the lip of the sea.”
Biblical Hebrew can be wonderfully concrete. Where English speaks of the ‘seashore’, Hebrew can speak of the lip of the sea. The ordinary word for a human lip, safah, can also describe an edge or boundary. Suddenly the coastline becomes almost bodily: the place where land and water meet is the sea’s lip.”
There’s another intriguing twist: the same Hebrew word safah can also mean “language” or “speech”—presumably through the association with the lips that produce speech. That is why Genesis 11:1, just before the Tower of Babel story, can say that the whole earth had “one safah”—one language, but quite literally, “one lip.”
Take the famous opening of Psalm 23:
יְהוָה רֹעִי לֹא אֶחְסָר
YHWH ro‘i, lo ’eḥsar.
“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not lack.”
There is no separate Hebrew word for “is” in that first phrase. The two realities are simply placed together: The LORD—my shepherd. It has a wonderful, almost carved-in-stone directness.
Hebrew is rich in concrete imagery. The word ruaḥ (רוּחַ), for example, can mean wind, breath or spirit. These meanings inhabit the same imaginative world: something invisible that cannot be grasped, yet whose presence is known by what it does. It moves, breathes and gives life.
Then there is shalom (שָׁלוֹם). We translate it as “peace,” but it can suggest something fuller: well-being, completeness, wholeness, things being as they ought to be. So when the ancient priestly blessing asks God to give someone shalom, it means rather more than wishing them a quiet life. It is a blessing of flourishing and wholeness.
Another beautiful word is ḥesed (חֶסֶד), variously translated as “steadfast love,” “mercy,” “lovingkindness” or “faithful love.” No single English word quite carries its range. It speaks of a committed, loyal goodness: love that does something.
This is where learning even a little Hebrew becomes fascinating. You don't suddenly discover that English Bibles have been getting everything wrong. Quite the opposite. You begin to appreciate what translators have been trying to carry across—and how difficult their task is.
Hebrew is a real language, not a secret biblical code, and context always determines what a word means. Yet some of its richness inevitably gets thinned out in translation. The face can signify presence and favour; the heart can think and choose; walking can describe how a person lives; breath can speak of spirit; and peace can mean the restoration of wholeness.
Perhaps that is what I am beginning to enjoy most. I am not discovering a different Bible hidden behind the English one. I am beginning to glimpse something of the texture of the original.
Sometimes you can see exactly what the translators managed to carry across. And occasionally you spot something beautiful that fell out of the boat on the journey.
So this winter, while the weather closes in, I shall be sitting with my unfamiliar alphabet, trying to persuade my brain to remember which way the words go.
Cancer has taken a few liberties with my memory. Hebrew, I have decided, can have a go at putting it through its paces.
And if nothing else, I have finally found a language in which starting at the right-hand side of the page is not a mistake.