"Let the water that is under the sky gather into one place" (Gen 1:9)
Reading through the story of creation
9 Let the water that is under the Sky gather into one place
יִקָּו֨וּ הַמַּ֜יִם מִתַּ֤חַת הַשָּׁמַ֙יִם֙ אֶל־מָק֣וֹם אֶחָ֔ד
[Recording here.]
It’s time for a look at Biblical Hebrew punctuation. Why? Because my translation, like many other common ones, is going to ignore the punctuation of this phrase, and I’d like to explain why. First, a short introduction to what I mean when I say “Biblical Hebrew punctuation.” Those who want a longer look and some instruction will find it in Lesson 34 of my Biblical Hebrew course for the Teaching Company.
While English has punctuation marks within the sentence (such as commas, semicolons, and dashes)—and modern Hebrew works the same way—in the Bible, every word has a punctuation mark. And these marks serve three functions: They indicate …
where in the word the accent falls
how to chant the biblical text musically, and
how to group the words of each verse in a sensible way.
The traditional Hebrew text was originally written (like Modern Hebrew) with consonants only. Ten or 12 centuries ago, a system of marks was developed that would indicate vowel sounds, to which was added a system telling you how to connect the words into phrases. The simplest mark to recognize is the little wishbone under the שׁ of the word היבשה ha-yabashah ‘the dry land’ in the next phrase of our verse: וְתֵרָאֶ֖ה הַיַּבָּשָׁ֑ה. That breaks the verse into two parts. I do the same thing in my translation by putting a period after the phrase “so that the dry land can appear.” (Subject and verb are reversed in English.)
I’ll describe this system in more detail some other time (and will link to it here when I do). In the meantime, a quick look at the clause we’re examining in this post.
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