3
Review the Fundamentals Often

The 1991 movie The Pistol: Birth of a Legend is an inspiring presentation of the eighth-grade basketball season for Pete Maravich, also known as “Pistol Pete.” The film depicts the story of Pete, who is only five feet two, making the 1959 basketball team at D. W. Daniel High School in Clemson, South Carolina. Like any good sports drama, there are ups and downs in Pete’s story. However, the one thing consistently portrayed throughout the movie is Pete’s diligence to practice the fundamentals of basketball in order to achieve his goal of making the team. In certain montages, you see Pete endlessly dribbling a basketball or shooting foul shots in the rain. No matter the situation, Pete was focused on his goal and practiced the fundamentals necessary to make the team. For Pete, repetition of these fundamentals was the key to success.

Like sports fundamentals, repetition is also essential for a language learner to survive the onslaught of terms and forms that come our way. At first it might seem like Biblical Hebrew is a behemoth or leviathan too big to conquer. However, by reviewing and memorizing vocabulary words and grammatical forms, we slowly begin to gain the upper hand, surviving and even thriving in our pursuit of Hebrew. When a random Hebrew term or phrase is hurled our way, we will not panic, because we have seen something like it before. Through our repetitive practice of the fundamentals, our repertoire of terms and forms will help us accurately identify what may seem like an alien word before us. Mastering the Hebrew language is possible, but it will take effort—and once again, repetition is the key.

My younger two children are learning to read, and one of the exercises they have to do is read lists of words that have the same letter combination of sounds with different consonantal beginnings—for example, an, van, can, ran, man, Dan, Stan. The idea is that they repeat (by seeing, saying, and hearing) the letter combination “-an” so much that it sets into their brain’s subconscious. The next time they see the combination “-an,” they will read it without thinking much about it. Repetition generates that kind of internalized knowledge.

I used to work as a personal trainer, and one thing I would teach my clients is that most people begin performing functional movements with unconscious dysfunction. They don’t perceive that their squat is bad for their knees because they don’t know what a correct squat feels like. Once we worked on their squat form and it improved, they began to perform the workout with better form and progressed to a conscious dysfunction. While the movement still needed practice (repetition), they at least were aware when they were performing the movement incorrectly, because they had done enough proper squats that they knew what a good squat felt like. The next phase these clients would enter was conscious function, where they performed the movement flawlessly but really had to think about it. They had to consciously tell themselves to push the knees out, squeeze the abs, and keep the chest up. The final phase of developing a proper squat was unconscious function. In this last phase, due to hundreds of repetitions, clients preformed the squat flawlessly and without thinking about it. The movement patterns that generated a certain functional goal became second nature.

Like functional fitness, Hebrew takes hundreds (or thousands) of repetitions for the language to become second nature. For that valiant goal to become a reality, repetition will be necessary.

Some may wonder if it is even necessary to memorize Hebrew vocabulary and paradigms since there are resources to aid the modern interpreter. With so many resources, including Bible software and apps, is it worth going through the hard work of learning these fundamentals of a language? We addressed this question in chapter 1. From practical experience, we know that if students do not have a basic foundation in the language, they are not likely to use it. It is simply too time consuming for a pastor (or anyone studying the Bible using Hebrew) to have to look up every word and every form in order to read the text. On the other hand, the broader the vocabulary base and the more familiar one is with the grammar of the language, the more likely Hebrew will be used in ministry. This chapter offers four strategies for how to study new material, and the following chapter focuses on how to memorize new material.

Review Frequently

When you meet someone for the first time, it is likely that you repeat their name after they tell you what it is. If you’re determined to learn their name, you may call them by name several times in various sentences in order to reinforce their name and burn it into your memory. Perhaps you even introduce them to someone else so that you force yourself to remember their name again. Why does this use of repetition work? Because repetition is a key building block for effectively memorizing information. But we cannot simply sit down and try to memorize fifty vocabulary words at one sitting. If you have tried to do that in the past, you know that it simply does not work well.

When I was studying for my PhD comprehensive exams, my last exam was the Hebrew language exam. I had put off my final vocabulary review for the night before the exam so that it would be fresh on my mind for the following morning. I had my vocabulary cards out on my desk, scattered in stacks of words that (a) I knew well, (b) I sort of knew, and (c) I didn’t remember at all. I didn’t make the mistake of trying to learn fifty words at a time; I made the mistake of trying to cram into my working memory hundreds of words. My wife finally came to the office at 3:30 a.m. to tell me I should go to sleep! I can’t say that studying those words that night didn’t help some, but I can certainly tell you that I don’t remember many of those less frequent words even now. Our long-term memory of Hebrew vocabulary and grammatical concepts will come from consistent, short segments of study rather than from sporadic, marathon study times.

Have Short Study Times

The brain cannot absorb massive amounts of new information at once. Research has shown that it is best to take a break after fifteen to thirty minutes of studying. If we continue to study after thirty minutes, our productivity will drop off considerably. Not only can our short-term and working memories not keep up, but our concentration and motivation wane after thirty minutes. Both of these factors directly affect our productivity. One example of a shorter study-time scheme is the Pomodoro technique. This technique suggests that after twenty-five minutes of work or study, you should take a five-minute break. In addition, for every two hours of study you should take a fifteen- to thirty-minute break.1 Similarly, memory coach Dominic O’Brien maintains that “taking regular breaks is essential. It is much better to divide your time into, say, six 20-minute bursts of study than to try to focus for a full two hours before taking a break.”2

The point here is that it is impossible to cram in Hebrew vocabulary and expect to retain it. Instead, it is best to have small blocks of time to study intensively, followed by a break to allow your brain to relax and process the information. Processing of the information is key here. To retain our study after the ten to twenty minutes of working memory, we have to move those newly learned items into “storage.” This usually takes conscious effort to make mental images of the vocabulary words, use mnemonic devices, or build memory palaces (see chap. 4 for these techniques for memorizing). While we may take a break after twenty-five minutes of studying new information, we are still processing and working to move that information to our cerebral hard drive. Sometimes highly motivated students cannot imagine that twenty-five-minute blocks of study can be effective. However, you may be shocked at how well twenty-five minutes of new information can be retained if followed by five minutes of processing.

During my time as an adjunct Hebrew professor, I realized that I had to make my vocabulary tests cumulative. Each chapter in the textbook had twelve to fifteen vocabulary words, and I found that students did very well on the chapter vocabulary quizzes. When I finally gave them a cumulative vocabulary quiz, the grades plummeted. I found that the students could memorize twelve to fifteen words for a quiz, but without the regular repetition of those same words, they didn’t retain them. Repetition, in short study sessions, will not only benefit the intake of new information, but it will also help with long-term retention.

Have Many Study Times

German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) is well known for the so-called forgetting curve, which charts the rate of memory loss after new material has been learned. He discovered that most of the loss occurs within the first two hours of memorization. We lose about 50 percent after the first hour, another 10 percent after the first day, and another 14 percent after the first month. O’Brien notes the results of Ebbinghaus’s study: “Ebbinghaus discovered that if we take notes as we listen, and then review the notes immediately following the event, we can retain 80 percent or more of the information we absorbed. . . . For optimal recall, he concluded that we should then follow this first review with a second review a day later, a third one a week later, a fourth one a month later, and a fifth review three to six months later (if the content was particularly complex).”3

Just looking at (or listening to) a vocabulary word once is not going to prove effective. The more times we review a word or paradigm, the more etched it becomes in our memory. This means that we should study a word and then leave it for at least an hour before we try to recall it again. You may think you don’t have an hour to wait to review words again and again, but one reason vocabulary cards are so helpful is that you can take a small stack in your pocket wherever you go. If you find a few minutes, you can look over them. While I prefer hard-copy vocabulary cards, vocabulary apps on phones make studying vocabulary accessible as well.

O’Brien, a former memory world champion, states he needs to review material at least five times to effectively memorize it: “If I have a limited amount of time to memorize a large amount of data, I know that I need to be able to review it five times for that information to stick. The more reviews I have, the stronger the retention and the longer I can store the memories, but if time is short, such as during a competition or if I have to memorize a series of names in a room quickly, five reviews is the minimum.”4 If an eight-time memory world champion needs to review data five times before he feels confident that he can recall it, then certainly this is true for the rest of us. Research suggests that it takes between ten and twenty repetitions before a student can “own” a particular word. And yet, how many of us have merely glanced over a vocabulary list before an exam only to realize that we did not know the material like we thought we did?

Language teacher Marjory Brown-Azarowicz suggests that words are best learned when (1) memorized in groups of related words (see below); (2) reviewed ten minutes after initial learning; (3) reviewed one hour later; (4) reviewed one day later; and (5) reviewed every two days until mastery is attained.5 The exact method is not as important as the general principle: we must review vocabulary, morphology rules, and paradigms often. The more times we are able to review the material, the greater our retention of the material will be. But there is more to successfully gaining information than reviewing it often.

Optimize Your Review Times

It is also important to review material at optimal times. Otherwise, we are in danger of wasting, or at least not getting the most out of, our limited time for study. When should you not study? First, you should not study after a meal. After we eat, our brains naturally divert energy to our digestion by sending red blood cells that help break down and metabolize food. Consequently, the rest of our body tends to slow down and relax, making us feel tired and lethargic. Furthermore, we especially should not study after eating large meals or meals with high sugar or carbohydrates since such food can lead to increased levels of serotonin, resulting in sleepiness.

Second, avoid studying while listening to the radio (music, talk radio) or while watching TV. Memorizing new information requires a great amount of concentration and effort. If you are distracted with other information, you will not be able to direct your full concentration toward memorization.6 Because of how our brains have been influenced by our fast-paced and “loud” society, some people prefer to study with music. The silence, for some, is more distracting than the music in the background. If you must listen to music while you study, choose a genre that doesn’t have lyrics. If your brain is processing (even subconsciously) lyrics to a song in the background, you’re using “RAM” that could be devoted to learning the new material. Even though studying with music may be a society-induced preference, you may be surprised at how valuable it can be to study without any distractions, musical or otherwise.

At my school, the library has some musical practice rooms that are acoustically sealed. The idea is to keep the musical rehearsals inside the room, but the unintended beauty of these rooms is that they also keep the distractions outside the room. I spoke with a student over the summer who had discovered these rooms (they’re hidden in our library basement), and he said that he had been down there for nearly four hours. He started and nearly finished an entire paper. While he broke the rule of studying in smaller chunks of time, I think he discovered the value of studying without aural distractions.

Third, avoid studying and memorizing while occasionally checking your email or social media accounts. This one may be especially difficult because we have become so accustomed to checking and responding to updates. Trying to multitask and study Hebrew will not go well. You must be able to concentrate on the task at hand. If you’re using your computer to study, don’t even open your email program or web browser. Turn off email notifications so that you’re not distracted by the ever-alluring ding of new information that only turns out to be the latest online spring catalog for your favorite clothing store.

Finally, avoid studying in crowded places or in locations where you may run into your friends. When I was in college, I would make sure my study times lined up with when a certain beautiful lady would be in the library as well (she later became my wife). Let’s just say the distraction proved to be more powerful than the studying. In our fast-paced culture, many people say they prefer to study in a coffee shop where there is hustle and bustle around them where they can plug in headphones and “focus.” That environment feels calming to them because that busyness is part of our daily lives. However, that scenario is not optimal for intense studying. Try studying alone and in the quiet in order to avoid distractions.

Stated positively, you must find times when you are most alert and are free from distractions. For some people this might be early in the morning, and for others it might be late at night. Some may have access to a quiet room in the house or a secluded location in the library in which to study midday. Ideally, you will find a primary time that provides the optimal study situation and also find several secondary times throughout the day to review.

Review Only a Few Words at a Time

It is not only important to study at the right time(s); it is also crucial to study in the right way. For vocabulary, one helpful rule of thumb is to study only a few words at a time. This rule is important because our brains can handle only a limited amount of material at once. Studies have shown that the average person can recall only seven discrete things at a time.7 Thus, it is helpful to group words together (sometimes called “chunking”). This strategy is used with phone numbers and social security numbers. Notice that when we memorize phone numbers (111-222-3333) or social security numbers (444-55-6666), we divide them into groups.

It has been suggested that a student should work on five to ten words at the same time (five is better for those just beginning to learn the language). For example, if you have fifteen words to memorize, divide them into three groups and start with only the first five. After spending several minutes with the first five, you can then move on to the second group (and then the third group). Another method is to learn five words in the morning, another five at lunch, and the final five at dinner (followed by a review session for all fifteen). Remember that these strategies aren’t just given for the sake of passing a quiz on the vocabulary. They’re designed for retention and overall Hebrew acquisition. While you may be able to learn all fifteen words at once, it will pay off in the long run to develop the practice of mastering smaller bits of information.

Another way to study smaller lists of words is to group words that have related meanings. The New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDOTTE) contains an “Index of Semantic Fields” that has Hebrew words listed together under their respective English semantic domains.

Daughter → בַּת (daughter, granddaughter, H1426); → כַּלָּה (bride, daughter-in-law, H3987); see Family 8
Dressing → ‏לָבַשׁ‎ (put on, clothe, wear, H4252; ‏לְבוּשׁ‎, garment, clothing, apparel, vestment, H4230; ‏מַלְבּוּשׁ‎, garment, H4860; ‏תִּלְבֹּשֶׁת, garment, H9432); see Clothes9

You can see in these examples from NIDOTTE that additional Hebrew words are related under their respective semantic field headings (e.g., “Daughter” and “Dressing”). This is a good way to sort vocabulary into smaller groups and have the words in those groups naturally related to one another.

Working the other direction, it is also sometimes helpful to dissect words to see the triliteral root and see if this word is related to another you may already know. For example, the Hebrew root זבח means “to sacrifice,” and other words containing those same letters may be related in meaning. Very often, Hebrew will add a מ to the front of a word to make it the place of that action. For זבח, the מ makes it “the place of the sacrifice” or an “altar” (מִזְבֵּחַ). In addition to focusing on a limited number of words at a time, you can use these helpful tricks when you encounter a word you’ve never studied before. If you can identify the triliteral root, you may also be able to identify various affixes that can direct you toward the right meaning of a word you’ve never formally learned.

Use a Multifaceted Review

Our memories include a complex number of intertwined associations. The more associations that we make, the more likely we will be able to recall the needed information. Thus, memory experts stress the importance of using as many senses as possible when learning new data. According to the William Glasser Institute (California), we retain only 10 percent of what we read, about 50 percent of information we see and hear, and about 80 percent of information we gain from personal experience. Furthermore, if we actively teach something, we have about a 95 percent retention rate.11

Reading

Reading the Hebrew text is a skill that should be utilized as soon as the alphabet, vowels, and phonological principles are learned. Even if we can’t translate what we’re reading, it is helpful to practice the pronunciation of all the letters (including vowel points and cantillation marks) and learn the flow of the language. Unfamiliar words are easiest when learned from context, so it is helpful to read as much as possible. As we read, even if we don’t know the meaning of a particular word, we can sometimes guess its meaning on the basis of the surrounding words. If we read a familiar passage and can at least see the difference between a noun and a verb, we can possibly translate small sections of the verse even if we can’t translate all of it.

For beginning Hebrew students, reading will often simply be reading the Hebrew text without an attempt to translate. While this may seem like an elementary approach, it is helpful for gaining the flow of the language, the sounds and rhythm. The phonological principles of Hebrew are sometimes difficult to grasp for English speakers, but regular reading of the Hebrew text will prepare a linguistic environment in your mind so that as your vocabulary grows, reading (and translating) will become easier. The key here is to engage more senses, not fewer. Reading the Hebrew text out loud (seeing and hearing combined) will serve that purpose well.

When I began learning Hebrew, one of the books I purchased was First Thousand Words in Hebrew by Heather Amery.12 This picture book is much like your standard high school language textbook, with pictures depicting a context and vocabulary related to that context. For example, you’ll find a picture of a kitchen and then all of the Hebrew vocabulary associated with a kitchen. Next, you’ll see a playground and all of its associated vocabulary. I bought the book primarily because I thought it was cool to have a kindergarten-level vocabulary guide, but using it also solidified for me the importance of context. The pictures provided a visual context to remember the vocabulary. As we read more and more of the Hebrew Bible, even if we don’t know all the vocabulary words, the contexts we do know will provide direction as to the meaning of many words.

Alternatively, we sometimes remember vocabulary words because of their context in the Hebrew Bible. When I introduce new vocabulary words in my first-year classes, I give the students a familiar Bible story that uses a particular word so that they have a context in which to situate the word. For example, the Hebrew word לָחַךְ (to lick) is not an incredibly common word, and so it helps students to give them the context in 1 Kings 18:38 of the fire God sent on the altar to consume the burnt offering. This fire also “licked up” the water the servants had poured on the offering. Providing this context may not be a game changer for students, but it may help them remember the word. Likewise, reading the Hebrew Bible and seeing vocabulary words in more and more familiar contexts will only add to your proficiency in the language.

Speaking

In addition to reading, it is also helpful to speak Hebrew. By this I don’t necessarily mean holding a conversation with someone. In most of our learning environments, especially as beginning students, conversing in Hebrew will be inconsistent at best.13 But as we are learning vocabulary words, we should say them out loud. It is difficult to memorize a word that you can’t pronounce. The same is true for paradigms. As you read or write them, say them aloud, and you will more likely remember them at a later time. When we hear something, we process that information differently than when we read it. The more senses we use, the better we will be able to recall what we are learning. If you combine speaking the word along with seeing it on a vocabulary card, that’s even better.

When we first began homeschooling our children, we used a phonetics system that taught the children the various sounds that a letter can make in English. The flashcards for this system had the letter on one side and the sounds listed on the other. The goal was for our kids to memorize all the possible sounds the letter could make, but they didn’t learn them by staring at the phonetic values listed on the back of the card. They learned them by saying them aloud hundreds of times. Even if you’re just working on the alphabet and vowels, saying Hebrew out loud will reinforce what you’re learning: בַּ (ba), בֶּ (be), בֵּ (bey), בִּ (bi), בֹּ (bo), בֻּ (boo). Challenge yourself to see how many strange looks you can get as you ride public transportation and recite the Hebrew vowel chart to yourself.

Writing

One of the most effective tools for learning Hebrew is to write it (and rewrite it and then rewrite it again!). If you seek to memorize a word, simply staring at it is not very effective. In fact, looking at a word a hundred times is less effective than employing a mnemonic device (see the next chapter). The way you should test to see whether you really have memorized a word is to write it out (from memory, of course—especially after not having looked at the word for at least an hour). If the word doesn’t stick for at least an hour, you don’t know it. Yes, you might be able to learn it long enough to take a quiz, but after the quiz it will quickly be forgotten. Furthermore, the purpose of learning Hebrew is not simply to pass a quiz or exam but to learn it well enough to utilize it in life and ministry.

I currently have a student who comes to me regularly after class with a word written in his notebook in Hebrew. Sometime during the class, I said a Hebrew word that he didn’t know, and he attempted to sound it out phonetically in his notebook. He comes to me to ask if he has spelled it correctly. Many times, I’m correcting differences between an א or ע, but it is encouraging for me to see him trying to “use” the Hebrew he’s learning by writing it. Many of us are not using Hebrew by speaking it through an immersive model, but we can still use Hebrew by writing it again and again and again. This applies to all aspects of learning the language, including vocabulary. The more you write vocabulary words, the better they will stick.

The same is true for learning paradigms. An effective way to learn paradigms is to write and rewrite them until you can write them with no mistakes. Then try to write them an hour later, without looking at the paradigms, to see if you really know them. If you cannot reproduce an entire paradigm without any mistakes, then you need to look it over and write it out again. Simply looking at a paradigm will do little good if you don’t test your memory by writing it out.

Hearing

Along with reading, speaking, and writing Hebrew, you can also listen to it. First, you can listen to vocabulary words. A good strategy is to use simple audio files so that you can listen to the words during a lengthy commute or just when you’re studying. Some textbooks now come with access to audio files of the vocabulary words.14 Another option is Basics of Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary, read by Jonathan T. Pennington.15 To hear the Hebrew Bible being read, you can purchase The Entire Hebrew Bible in Audio with Music and Sound Effects produced by the Bible Society in Israel. This recording is a dramatized reading in Modern Hebrew. Another option for listening to the Hebrew Bible is to listen online. One of my favorites is the Hebrew Audio Bible housed at the Academy of Ancient Languages.16 The audio is recorded by Abraham Shmuelof, born to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in 1913. As a result of his upbringing, his reading of the text sounds delightfully liturgical. Another free online audio Hebrew Bible is HaKtuvim, which is produced by the Bible Society in Israel and is another excellent audio Hebrew Bible that uses modern pronunciation.17 Listening to audio files is especially useful for those who have a long commute or spend a significant amount of time driving. For beginning students, it is best to follow the pronunciation system employed by your teacher, whether Classical pronunciation or Modern pronunciation. Since Modern Hebrew is spoken in Israel, it may be more difficult to find entire readings of the Hebrew Bible using a Classical pronunciation. Even so, it will be beneficial to hear both vocabulary words and texts to aid your learning of the language.

Singing

Finally, singing is a proven way of memorizing information. Many of us can still remember a phone number that we never called but is etched in our minds because somebody sang it in the song “867-5309” by Tommy TuTone in 1981. We often tell our students that if you can sing it, you can memorize it. Why is this so? Joshua Foer explains, “The brain best remembers things that are repeated, rhythmic, rhyming, structured, and above all easily visualized.”18 This reality is not something that is new to the modern world but something that has been practiced for millennia.

Foer again notes, “Finding patterns and structure in information is how our brains extract meaning from the world, and putting words to music and rhyme are a way of adding extra levels of pattern and structure to language. It’s the reason Homeric bards sang their epic oral poems, the reason that the Torah is marked up with little musical notations, and the reason we teach kids the alphabet in a song and not as twenty-six individual letters.”19

The value of teaching Hebrew with songs has been long noted. One strategy is to use tunes that the students already know and then simply replace the lyrics with Hebrew words or paradigms. Another strategy is to use various genres of music. The key is for the song to be memorable, and often a genre that is off the beaten path may be more memorable than your favorite type of music. A quick search on YouTube will produce the Hebrew alphabet song in a rap version, a rock version, and more. A final strategy for singing Hebrew is to just sing Hebrew, even if it is not directly related to your textbook drills or paradigms. The folks at Biblearc.com have produced an online course to learn Hebrew, and one of the major components of their methodology is to sing. They have various psalms set to music, and in the videos, they display the translation in addition to various parsings of strategic words as you sing. You may not know all the vocabulary or parsing of the psalm you’re singing, but as with reading Hebrew (described earlier), you will be exposed to the language in a memorable way. The more you see, hear, and vocalize (sing) the phonetics of Hebrew, the more these fundamentals will stick. Remember, if you can sing it, you can memorize it. In the case of singing the Psalms, you will also be memorizing Scripture in Hebrew!

One final note on singing Hebrew. Many people will not take advantage of this learning methodology because they think their singing is mediocre at best. My family can attest that my singing is subpar. In fact, it’s probably some of the worst they hear. My daughters are kind to give me only a look of confusion when I begin to sing. My sons just flat out tell me it’s bad. I’ve had to swallow my pride on several occasions in class as I began the alphabet song in the wrong key and we found ourselves singing a few notes down on the bass clef. Or I’ve started too high and we were all sopranos by the time we got to ג (gimel). The students usually get a kick out of it, and then I can regroup and start on the right note. Once they chime in, the song flows rather nicely. If you’re learning to sing Hebrew on your own, then the fear of not singing well shouldn’t be a factor. Let’s face it; you belt out your favorite songs in the car all the time anyway, no matter how bad it sounds. Don’t be afraid to sing Hebrew, and don’t let a lack of musical expertise be an excuse to ignore this method of learning Hebrew.

We tend to think this is a novel way to learn an ancient language, but in fact it’s how we learn to do many other things too. A similar, though categorically different, analogy is learning to hit a baseball. You cannot learn to hit a baseball by staring at video footage of the best hitters swinging endlessly. You have to go to the field and actually hit a baseball. Whether we are reading, writing, speaking, hearing, or singing Hebrew, we have to actually use the language to learn it. Just staring at it will not accomplish the goal of learning Hebrew.

As a final encouragement, combine as many of these methods for learning as possible. For some methods, they are combined already. Singing is a combination of speaking and hearing (and seeing, if you’re looking at the words from a psalm as you sing it). Perhaps you combine reading with hearing and you read out loud while listening to the same passage read by someone else. Perhaps you combine hearing with speaking and you meet with a group to read Hebrew together. You read along quietly, seeing the words, as you hear the others in the group reading out loud. At the end of the day, no single method is absolutely the right way to learn Hebrew, but it is certain that the more of these methodologies you use and combine, the better off you will be. Remember to put in the work ahead of time to develop a plan for how you’re going to conquer this language. Using these strategies, you will be well on your way.

Chapter Reflections

How important is reviewing in the acquisition of a language?
What are the best times of the day for you to study?
How many times do you need to review something before you have memorized it?
What are some practical ways you can incorporate all of your senses in learning Hebrew?
What sense do you think is the most productive or effective in memorizing Hebrew?

Making Sense of שִׂמְחָה

William Fullilove

Well-meaning congregants and preachers often make the mistake of assuming that words and ideas have a one-to-one correspondence. If you think for just a moment, however, you realize that a single word typically corresponds to several ideas. Think of the English word funny. It can be positive, as in “a funny joke,” or negative, as in “a funny smell.” This difference of meaning is what linguists call a “semantic range,” the range of ideas that a word can convey, depending on the context.

Words only mean something in context. If I simply say “funny,” without any other words or gestures, it’s impossible for someone listening to me to understand which meaning of the word I intend. In our native languages, we use all sorts of contexts—situational, literary, tone of voice, and so forth—to quickly clarify the meaning of a word. In other words, we very quickly—so quickly that we often do not even realize we are doing so—scan through the range of potential meanings and mentally pick the one that fits the context and understand the word that way.

For this reason, when a Hebrew word is repeated in a passage, translators generally try to use the same English word to translate it each time it is repeated. If we don’t, the reader of our translation might not realize that a word is repeated in the document. So, for instance, the Hebrew word חֶ֫סֶד is tremendously rich in meaning, and because of that richness, it’s almost impossible to translate with a single English word. My favorite “translation” of חֶ֫סֶד comes from Sally Lloyd-Jones in The Jesus Storybook Bible. To convey the meaning of חֶ֫סֶד in English, she uses the phrase the “never-stopping, never-giving-up, unbreaking, always-and-forever love” of God for us. That’s חֶ֫סֶד! In a more traditional translation, of course, the translators can use only a single English term for חֶ֫סֶד. Otherwise the translation would become unwieldy. And translators will therefore—usually with much handwringing—pick a single English term to use to translate חֶ֫סֶד and use that term every time it appears in a passage. At least the reader therefore realizes the repeated concept the author is using.

At times, however, the context forces translators to break that tendency and use different English words to translate the same Hebrew word. When that happens, we can miss the richness and nuance of the Hebrew text. The word שִׂמְחָה in Ecclesiastes presents a good example. As a book, Ecclesiastes is constantly challenging the reader to work out the twists and turns of its author’s thought. When is the author quoting someone else and disagreeing? When is the author quoting someone else and agreeing? When is he wrestling with his own—even contradictory—thoughts?

However, the reader of Ecclesiastes in translation may not even realize this is occurring. Consider Ecclesiastes 2:2 and 8:15a. In most English translations, there is little apparent connection between the two verses. For instance, the HCSB translates them as follows:

I said about laughter, “It is madness,” and about pleasure, “What does this accomplish?” (2:2)

So I commended enjoyment because there is nothing better for man under the sun than to eat, drink, and enjoy himself. (8:15a)

You might get the connection in English—“pleasure” and “enjoyment” are certainly related concepts—but in Hebrew you can’t miss it.

לִשְׂח֖וֹק אָמַ֣רְתִּי מְהוֹלָ֑ל וּלְשִׂמְחָ֖ה מַה־זֹּ֥ה עֹשָֽׂה׃ (2:2)

וְשִׁבַּ֤חְתִּֽי אֲנִי֙ אֶת־הַשִּׂמְחָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֨ר אֵֽין־ט֤וֹב לָֽאָדָם֙ תַּ֣חַת הַשֶּׁ֔מֶשׁ כִּ֛י אִם־לֶאֱכ֥וֹל וְלִשְׁתּ֖וֹת וְלִשְׂמ֑וֹחַ (8:15a)

Note the clearly repeated word, שִׂמְחָה, which, because of context, the HCSB was forced to translate with two different English terms. The author of Ecclesiastes is challenging you to work out in what sense שִׂמְחָה is good and in what sense it is insufficient, even a distraction from true meaning. And that gets to the core of understanding the book.

How can the author critique “pleasure/enjoyment” in one verse and commend it in a later verse? Ecclesiastes demands the reader wrestle with God’s approach to שִׂמְחָה. It is too simple to say that pleasure/joy/enjoyment (pick your English gloss for שִׂמְחָה) is always bad. Christians are not pure ascetics. But it is also too naive to say that pleasure/joy/enjoyment is always good. Christians are also not pure hedonists. Instead, our approach to joy is more nuanced. Ecclesiastes really means for us to find joy in life—God made this world good, good, good, . . . very good, and therefore there is real joy to be had. But Ecclesiastes simultaneously means for us to see the limits of trying to find joy in this life—that even joyful pursuits are meaningless if they become the goal themselves. At the thematic level of the book, Ecclesiastes forces us to wrestle with joy in this life. It reminds us that we do not find joy when we chase it. Instead, we find joy when we chase God (Eccles. 12:13). That overall theme extends down to the very linguistic level of the book—is שִׂמְחָה good or bad? The reader, in Hebrew, is forced to wrestle with that question and therefore brought face-to-face with the themes of Ecclesiastes as a whole.

1. See http://pomodorotechnique.com/.

2. Dominic O’Brien, You Can Have an Amazing Memory (London: Watkins, 2011), 159–60.

3. O’Brien, You Can Have an Amazing Memory, 161–62.

4. O’Brien, You Can Have an Amazing Memory, 76.

5. Marjory Brown-Azarowicz, Charlotte Stannard, and Mark Goldin, Yes! You Can Learn a Foreign Language (Lincolnwood, IL: Passport Books, 1989), 28.

6. Many competitive mnemonists typically wear industrial grade earmuffs and dark glasses (or even glasses that are blacked out except for a small hole to see through) in order to give their undivided attention to memorizing information.

7. See George A. Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” Psychological Review 63 (1956): 81–97. O’Brien comments, “Psychologists have determined that, on average, the human brain can retain around only seven to nine pieces of data in its short-term (working) memory” (You Can Have an Amazing Memory, 81).

8. NIDOTTE 5:52.

9. NIDOTTE 5:66.

10. George M. Landes, Building Your Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary: Learning Words by Frequency and Cognate (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001). See also “Word List 2: Hebrew Words Arranged by Common Root Listed Alphabetically,” in Miles V. Van Pelt and Gary D. Pratico, The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 90–137.

11. As cited in O’Brien, You Can Have an Amazing Memory, 154.

12. Heather Amery, First Thousand Words in Hebrew (Tulsa: Usborne, 2014).

13. Keep in mind here that some models for learning Hebrew use an immersion model in which you learn Biblical Hebrew by immersing yourself in Modern Hebrew. Some of these models even require several months of living in Israel. Find out more about one of these methods at the Biblical Language Center’s immersion courses (https://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/immersion-courses-2/).

14. See, e.g., Duane A. Garrett and Jason S. DeRouchie, A Modern Grammar for Biblical Hebrew (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2009).

15. Gary D. Pratico and Miles V. Van Pelt, Basics of Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006). Keep in mind that because of the different systems for pronouncing Hebrew (Classical versus Modern), you will want to find a vocabulary audio file that matches the pronunciation of your grammar. For the audio files associated with Garrett and DeRouchie’s introductory grammar (A Modern Grammar for Biblical Hebrew [Nashville: B&H Academic, 2009]), visit http://hebrewgrammar.sbts.edu/page5/page5.html.

16. See http://www.aoal.org/hebrew_audiobible.htm.

17. See https://haktuvim.co.il.

18. Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (New York: Penguin, 2011), 128.

19. Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein, 128.

3 Review the Fundamentals Often

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Review the Fundamentals Often