, etc.The Hebrews have twenty-two letters whose shape and order as they occur among the most ancient scribes is this:
, etc.
 | A letter no other European language can explain. It indicates, as we have said, the opening of the throat. Its name is Aleph. | |
 | b | The name is Bet. |
 | g | Gimel; if it is without a dot it is weak. |
 | d | Dalet; without a dot it is weak. |
 | h | called He. It indicates that the originating sound comes from the deepest part of the throat. |
 | v | Vav and also w; and I believe that it never was pronounced otherwise by the ancients; and also it is not a vowel but a letter indicating that the originating sound is heard in the lips. |
 | z | Zain. |
 | ch | Chet. |
 | t | Tet. |
 | Yod. It indicates that the origin of the sound is heard in the middle of the tongue and the palate and, like the  w, the i is also sometimes without sound. | |
 | k | Kaf, if it has a dot in the middle; otherwise it has the force of ch or the Greek  . |
 | l | Lamed. |
 | m | Mem. |
 | n | Nun. |
 | s | Samech. |
 | Ayin. | |
 | p | Pe, if it has a dot in the middle; otherwise it has the force of ph. |
 | ts | Tsade. |
 | q | Qof. |
 | r | Resh, weak in the middle of a word, harsh in the beginning. |
 | sh | Shin, if the dot is on the right bar; if it is on the left it is the same as Samech. |
 | th | (Thaw) weak; with a dot, however, it has the force of t. |
Among all these letters there are five which are written differently in the beginning or the middle of a word and differently at the end of a word, namely 
. So the kaf, when it occurs at the end of a word, its bottom line is elongated thus 
; the mem, however, is closed up at the bottom thus 
; the remaining three, like the 
, are lengthened out thus: 
. Finally also the Hebrews for the sake of brevity usually combine the 
and 
thus 
.
This is the Syriac script, which Ezra preferred over the ancient Hebrew letters, and which the Pharisees superstitiously followed in their holy writings. In reality the authors frequently used other scripts. See Buxtorf, Thesaur.1
Further, the letters were divided by the grammarians for greater usefulness into five classes, namely into gutturals, labials, dentals, linguals, and palatals. 
(ahacha) are called gutturals, 
(bumaph) labials, 
(gichaq) palatals, 
(datlenath) linguals, 
(zastserash) dentals.
Every letter in the middle of a word must have either a long or a short or a very short vowel, except these four 
(ehevi), which are therefore called mutes or quiescents.
Hence it is that when a consonant needs to be doubled between two vowels, it is not actually doubled, but rather the doubling is indicated by a dot which is called 
dagesh, like 
instead of 
piqqed.
Gutturals occurring between two vowels are unable to be doubled because they indicate a certain opening of the throat and a form of breathing; thus, like the letter H among the Latins, so among the Hebrews gutturals between two vowels may not be doubled. Also the letter 
r, because it is always weak in the middle of a word, may likewise not be doubled, and on that account these five letters 
never have the dagesh point in them. Next it must be noted that although a dagesh indicates the doubling of letters between two vowels it is not always true in the reverse that every dagesh means the doubling of a letter. The same punctuation is also used to convert the 
begadkephat letters from weak into aspirate sounds as we have shown in its place. Finally, a dot at times occurs in the letter 
at the end of a word for reasons which I shall explain in its place, but then it is not called a dagesh, but a 
mappiq.
The letters 
at the beginning of a word are aspirate, that is, they are “dageshed” unless the last letter of the preceding word is one of the quiescents. For then, generally they are weak, unless the quiescent is a 
with a mappiq, or the preceding word ending in the quiescent letter has a great accent. Finally, letters of the same organ of speech are often substituted one for the other in the Scriptures, and an 
for an 
a 
for a 
for 
for a 
, etc. The reason for this, I think, is that the Scriptures were written by men of various dialects, and that now the dialects are not recognizable, namely from which tribe this or that dialect originated. That this language had this in common with the others is substantiated by Scripture itself. For the Ephraimites everywhere substituted a 
samech for a 
, letters which really are from the same organ of speech. Nevertheless, although in Sacred Scripture occasionally one letter is changed for another of the same organ, one may not now follow this example. For if it were otherwise, then the dialects would confuse the language.
Notes by Spinoza are indicated by asterisks. Notes by translator Maurice J. Bloom (main annotator for this work) and Michael L. Morgan are indicated by numerals and appear in brackets.
1. [Johannis Buxtorf, Thesaurus Grammaticus Linguae Sanctae Hebraeae … Bâle, 1651 (first edition, 1609), p. 2.—M.L.M.]