Adjectives, Comparison and Numbers

Biblical Hebrew has fewer adjectives than English, and often uses a construct chain where English would use one, as Lesson 2 showed with mountain of my holiness for my holy mountain. But it does have adjectives, and they behave in two distinct ways. Which way an adjective is working depends mostly on where it stands and whether it has the article.

An adjective that describes, which grammarians call attributive, comes after its noun and agrees with it in gender, number and definiteness. If the noun has the article, so does the adjective. Jonah 1:2, quoted here from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC), has הָעִיר הַגְּדוֹלָה (ha'ir haggedolah), the city, the great, which the BSB renders 'the great city of Nineveh': both words have the article, and the adjective has the feminine ending -ah because city is feminine. Genesis 1:16 has שְׁנֵי הַמְּאֹרֹת הַגְּדֹלִים (shenei hamme'orot haggedolim), the two great lights, with a plural adjective for a plural noun. And Exodus 20:3 has אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים (elohim acherim), other gods, a plural adjective agreeing with elohim used as a true plural.

An adjective that declares, which grammarians call predicate, makes a statement about its noun. It does not take the article, and it often stands first, with no verb, in the verbless clauses met in Lessons 2 and 4. Genesis 3:6 says the woman saw כִּי טוֹב הָעֵץ (ki tov ha'ets), that good the tree: tov has no article and comes first, so the BSB renders 'that the tree was good', supplying was. Now read Isaiah 6:3: קָדוֹשׁ קָדוֹשׁ קָדוֹשׁ יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת (qadosh qadosh qadosh YHWH tseva'ot). Holy stands first, three times, with no article; the divine name follows. This is a declaration, not a description: Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts. The BSB supplies is.

Adjectives can also stand as nouns. The holy one, the righteous, the wicked are adjectives used without a noun. Isaiah's favourite title for God is a construct chain built on one: קְדוֹשׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל (qedosh yisra'el), the Holy One of Israel, used about twenty-five times in the book, as in Isaiah 1:4, 'they have despised the Holy One of Israel'. A prophet who saw what Isaiah saw in chapter 6 never stopped calling God by that name.

English has endings for comparison: great, greater, greatest. Hebrew has none. To compare, it uses the plain adjective with the little word min, from, which Lesson 3 introduced. Psalm 118:8 reads טוֹב לַחֲסוֹת בַּיהוָה מִבְּטֹחַ בָּאָדָם (tov lachasot baYHWH mibbetoach ba'adam), literally good to take refuge in the LORD from trusting in man, which the BSB renders 'It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man'. The good became better and the from became than. 1 Samuel 15:22 works the same way: 'obedience is better than sacrifice' is, word for word, obedience from sacrifice good. Genesis 3:1 says the serpent was עָרוּם מִכֹּל (arum mikkol), crafty from all, 'more crafty than any beast of the field'.

The same min can mean too much for. In Genesis 18:14, 'Is anything too difficult for the LORD?', the Hebrew is literally is anything too wonderful from the LORD, that is, beyond him. So when you see min after an adjective or a verb of being, ask whether it is comparing: more than, or too much for.

For the highest degree, the superlative, Hebrew has several ways and no special ending. The first is the article. In 1 Samuel 17:14, 'David was the youngest. The three oldest had followed Saul', the Hebrew says David was הַקָּטָן (haqqatan), the small one, and the three were הַגְּדֹלִים (haggedolim), the big ones. The article marks the extreme of a group, and English turns it into -est. Context can also make a plain adjective comparative: in Genesis 1:16 the BSB's 'the greater light' and 'the lesser light' are in Hebrew the great light and the small light.

The second way is a construct chain of a noun with its own plural. שִׁיר הַשִּׁירִים (shir hashirim) in Song of Solomon 1:1 is the song of the songs, the finest song, which is why English calls the book the Song of Songs. קֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִׁים (qodesh haqqodashim) in Exodus 26:33 is the holy of the holies, which the BSB renders 'the Most Holy Place'. The third way, and the one that matters most for the anchor, is repetition.

Hebrew can intensify a word by repeating it. Twice is common. Genesis 14:10 says the Valley of Siddim was בֶּאֱרֹת בֶּאֱרֹת (be'erot be'erot), pits pits, which the BSB renders 'full of tar pits'. Deuteronomy 16:20 begins צֶדֶק צֶדֶק (tsedeq tsedeq), justice justice, which the BSB renders 'Pursue justice, and justice alone'. The repetition says: this and nothing less, this to the full.

Three times is rare, and it is strong. Jeremiah 7:4 mocks the people's slogan, 'the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD', as a charm they trust instead of obeying. Jeremiah 22:29 cries 'O land, land, land, hear the word of the LORD!' Ezekiel 21:27 says 'A ruin, a ruin, I will make it a ruin!', where the Hebrew repeats the noun three times, עַוָּה עַוָּה עַוָּה (avvah avvah avvah), and the BSB renders the third as part of the verb. In each case the triple means the utmost: total ruin, the whole land, the slogan said over and over.

Against that background, Isaiah 6:3 is the Hebrew superlative at its fullest. No other attribute of God is repeated three times in the Old Testament. The seraphim do not say that the LORD is great, great, great or wise, wise, wise; they say he is holy, and say it three times, and that is why Christians and Jews alike have sung this verse more than almost any other. The Jewish liturgy of the synagogue sets it at the heart of the prayer called the Kedushah, the sanctification. The Christian liturgy sets it at the heart of the Eucharistic prayer in the Sanctus. Revelation 4:8 hears the living creatures saying it still: 'Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!'

What does holy, קָדוֹשׁ (qadosh), mean? Be careful of the common sermon point that it means separate or cut off. That may be part of the history of the root, and lexicons have proposed it, but the etymology is debated, and a word's history is not its meaning, as Module 2's lesson Hebrew Myths and Word-Study Traps showed. Learn what qadosh means from how it is used, and Isaiah 6 is the best place to start. Isaiah's response in verse 5 is 'Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips', and the answer in verse 7 is 'your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for'. Holiness here is God's majesty and his moral purity together, the quality that makes an unclean man undone in his presence and that only God's own provision can make him fit to stand in.

Christians have read the threefold holy in two ways, and both deserve to be heard at full strength.

The first reading takes the triple as the Hebrew superlative and nothing more. Its case is the grammar of the last section: repetition is a known Hebrew intensive, and the triple in Jeremiah 7:4 does not mean three temples, nor in Jeremiah 22:29 three lands. The seraphim are saying that the LORD is holy in the highest degree. The context points the same way: Isaiah responds to holiness, not to a plurality, and the title the vision leaves him with is the Holy One of Israel, singular. And Revelation 4:8, the New Testament's own echo of the cry, applies it to 'the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come', with no hint that the three holies name three persons. This is the reading of Jewish interpreters, who have sung the verse for many centuries without hearing persons in it, and of many Christian scholars who hold the doctrine of the Trinity firmly and simply judge that this verse does not teach it. They add a warning: if Christians press the grammar of an Old Testament verse into service for a doctrine it does not state, they invite the same treatment of verses that do state their doctrines.

The second reading agrees that the triple is an intensive, and holds that it is not only that. From the early centuries many Christian writers heard in the threefold holy a sign of the three persons; Ambrose of Milan used the verse so in his treatise On the Holy Spirit (381), and the church's hymns have carried that reading ever since, most famously Reginald Heber's Holy, Holy, Holy, published in 1826 for Trinity Sunday, which joins the seraphim's cry to God in three persons. Its strongest defenders rest the case less on the number three than on the New Testament's reading of Isaiah 6 as a whole. John 12:41, after quoting this chapter, says 'Isaiah said these things because he saw Jesus' glory and spoke about Him'. Acts 28:25 introduces the words of Isaiah 6:9-10 with 'The Holy Spirit was right when He spoke to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet'. And in Isaiah 6:8 the LORD asks 'Who will go for Us?', with the plural Lesson 1 examined. So within the canon the one Isaiah saw is identified with the Son, the words he heard are attributed to the Spirit, and the LORD speaks of himself as Us. On this reading the threefold holy is not a proof of the Trinity but a fitting echo of what the New Testament says Isaiah was shown.

Each reading answers the other. Those who read a superlative only reply that John 12:41 and Acts 28:25 tell us whose glory Isaiah saw and whose voice spoke, which is a claim about the vision, not about the number of holies; the triple would mean the same if the doctrine of the Trinity rested entirely on other texts. Those who hear more reply that they do not claim the grammar requires it, only that the triple, the plural speech of verse 8 and the New Testament's identifications belong together, and that a Christian reader who has learned the whole story of Scripture may hear more in Isaiah's words than Isaiah could have put into words. Settled: the grammar is the Hebrew superlative of repetition, and it declares the LORD supremely holy. Open, even among people who share a confession: whether the threefold form also points ahead to the three persons. When you preach the verse, preach the superlative first, because that is what the Hebrew certainly says; if you go further, say that you are reading Isaiah with John and Acts, and say it as a reading.

Two smaller points in the same verse are worth knowing. The title יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת (YHWH tseva'ot), the LORD of Hosts, is grammatically unusual, because a proper name does not normally stand first in a construct chain. Some grammarians explain it as a shortened form of the LORD God of Hosts, which appears in full in 2 Samuel 5:10; others take hosts as a second title standing beside the name. The hosts are armies: the heavenly host of 1 Kings 22:19, 'all the host of heaven standing by Him', and sometimes Israel's own armies, as 1 Samuel 17:45 suggests. In many books the Greek translators of the Septuagint rendered the title with a word meaning almighty, which is why some English versions do the same; in Isaiah they mostly kept the Hebrew word itself, sabaoth. And the second half of the cry, מְלֹא כָל־הָאָרֶץ כְּבוֹדוֹ (melo khol ha'arets kevodo), is literally the fullness of all the earth is his glory. The BSB and the King James Version render it 'all the earth is full of His glory'; a translator could also render it as what fills the whole earth is his glory. Both say that God's glory is not confined to the temple where Isaiah stood.

Hebrew numbers have some habits that surprise English readers, and the tools will show them all. The number one agrees with its noun in gender: Genesis 11:6 has עַם אֶחָד (am echad, one people) and שָׂפָה אַחַת (safah achat, one language), masculine echad with a masculine noun and feminine achat with a feminine one. Two is a dual, שְׁנַיִם (shenayim) or, with feminine nouns, שְׁתַּיִם (shetayim). Isaiah 6:2 shows it: the seraphim have שֵׁשׁ כְּנָפַיִם (shesh kenafayim, six wings), and with two, בִּשְׁתַּיִם (bishtayim), they cover their faces.

From three to ten, Hebrew numbers do something odd: the form that looks feminine is used with masculine nouns, and the form that looks masculine with feminine ones. Genesis 6:10 says Noah had שְׁלֹשָׁה בָנִים (sheloshah vanim), three sons, with an -ah ending on the number although sons is masculine. Grammarians call this gender polarity, and it is simply how Hebrew counts; do not draw anything from it. With larger numbers the noun is often singular: Genesis 7:4 has אַרְבָּעִים יוֹם (arba'im yom), forty day, for forty days, and Psalm 90:10 has שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה (shiv'im shanah), seventy year.

Hebrew also uses a cardinal number where English expects an ordinal. Genesis 1:5 ends יוֹם אֶחָד (yom echad), day one, which the BSB renders 'the first day'. The following days use ordinals, a second day, a third day, and only the sixth and seventh have the article: יוֹם הַשִּׁשִּׁי (yom hashishi, the sixth day) in 1:31 and בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי (bayyom hashevi'i, on the seventh day) in 2:2. English versions smooth these differences, which is reasonable, but a student with a tool can see them and ask whether they mean anything. Interpreters disagree about that, and this lesson leaves it with them.

Numbers in Scripture can also carry associations: seven for completion, as in the seven days of creation; forty for a time of testing, as in the forty days of rain and Israel's forty years in the wilderness. Those associations are real and worth noticing where the text invites it. But turning the letters of words into numbers to find hidden codes, a practice called gematria, is not reading the Bible; it is reading something into it. Module 2 dealt with such traps.

Last, the word one in the Shema. Deuteronomy 6:4 ends יְהוָה אֶחָד (YHWH echad), which the BSB renders 'the LORD is One'. Some Christian teachers argue that echad means a compound unity, pointing to Genesis 2:24, 'they will become one flesh', and Genesis 11:6, one people, and contrast it with יָחִיד (yachid), the word for only in Genesis 22:2, 'your only son'. Others answer that echad is simply the ordinary Hebrew word for one, used for one day, one man and one stone, and that any unity of parts in one flesh or one people comes from the noun being counted, not from the number. On that point, the word study, the second answer has the stronger evidence, and careful Trinitarian theologians do not rest their doctrine on the meaning of echad. Whether the oneness the Shema confesses can include the Father, the Son and the Spirit is a question for the whole of Scripture, and the lesson The Trinity in Scripture, in the Systematic Theology track, takes it up there. How Deuteronomy 6:4 itself should be translated is a separate debate, which Module 4 sets out.

This is the last layer of your noun map for the capstone passage, and with it you finish the module. Take out the pages you have built over the last four lessons.

First, on STEP Bible or Blue Letter Bible, find every adjective in your passage. Beside each, write A for attributive if it comes after its noun and agrees with it, or P for predicate if it makes a statement, usually standing first with no article. For each P, write the English verb your translation has supplied: is, was or will be.

Second, look for any comparison or superlative. Mark every min that means than or too much for, every article that marks the extreme of a group, every construct chain of a noun with its own plural, and every repeated word. For each repetition, write how many times the word is said and how your English version handles it. Third, list every number in your passage, its gender, and the number of the noun it counts.

Finally, read through all five layers of your noun map and write a short summary at the top of a fresh page: the three observations about nouns, particles and pronouns in your passage that would most change how you teach it, each in one sentence, with the verse. Underneath, write one question the grammar has raised that you cannot yet answer. Module 4 turns to the verbs, which is where many such questions are answered. Keep this page; it becomes the first section of your capstone study.