The Aramaic Chapters

The Old Testament is written in two languages. Most of it is Hebrew, but a few passages, about two hundred and seventy verses by the usual count, are in Aramaic. Here is the complete list, and it is short enough to learn.

Genesis 31:47: two words. When Jacob and Laban make a heap of stones as a witness between them, Laban names it יְגַר שָׂהֲדוּתָא (yegar sahadutha, heap of witness) in Aramaic, and Jacob names it גַּלְעֵד (gal'ed, Galeed, heap of witness) in Hebrew. The BSB transliterates the Aramaic as Jegar-sahadutha. Laban was from Aram, and the narrator lets each man name the place in his own language.

Jeremiah 10:11: one verse, in the middle of a Hebrew poem against idols. Section 4 looks at it.

Ezra 4:8 to 6:18, and Ezra 7:12-26: about sixty-seven verses. The first section begins as the letter of Rehum and Shimshai to the Persian king is introduced, and it runs through the rebuilding and dedication of the temple. The second is the decree of King Artaxerxes commissioning Ezra, which begins 'Artaxerxes, king of kings' (7:12), in Aramaic מֶלֶךְ מַלְכַיָּא (melekh malkhayya, king of the kings). Just before the first section, Ezra 4:7 says the letter was 'written in Aramaic and then translated'. The Hebrew there reads כָּתוּב אֲרָמִית וּמְתֻרְגָּם אֲרָמִית (katuv aramit umetorgam aramit), literally written in Aramaic and translated, Aramaic. Some take the final word as part of the sentence; others take it as a note to the reader, much like a heading, that what follows is in Aramaic. The word מְתֻרְגָּם (metorgam, translated) is a Pual participle from the same root as targum, the name later given to the Aramaic translations of scripture.

Daniel 2:4b to 7:28: about two hundred verses. The change comes in the middle of 2:4, at the word אֲרָמִית (aramit, in Aramaic), and the book stays in Aramaic until the end of chapter 7. Chapters 8 to 12 return to Hebrew. The Old Testament Survey lesson Daniel, in the module Exile and Return, has already noticed that the change of language and the change from court stories to visions do not happen at the same place: the visions begin in chapter 7, a chapter before the language changes back.

That is all. Two words in Genesis, one verse in Jeremiah, two sections of Ezra and six chapters of Daniel. Everything else in the Old Testament is Hebrew.

Aramaic did not stop at the edge of the Old Testament. After the exile, as more Jews spoke Aramaic than Hebrew, the scriptures read in the synagogue came to be accompanied by Aramaic translations, at first spoken and later written down. These are the Targums. Some, like Targum Onkelos on the Torah, are close to the Hebrew; others expand and explain freely. Later Jewish tradition, in the Babylonian Talmud (Megillah 3a), read Nehemiah 8:8, where the Levites read from the Book of the Law 'explaining it and giving insight', as the beginning of that practice. Whether Nehemiah 8:8 itself means translation or explanation is debated, and the verse can be read either way. What is not in doubt is that by the time of Jesus many Jews heard their scriptures in Hebrew and understood them through Aramaic, which is why the Gospels preserve Aramaic words on his lips, and why Paul's Greek letters still keep the Aramaic Abba, Father (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6), and the prayer the BSB renders 'Come, O Lord!' (1 Corinthians 16:22), Maranatha in Aramaic.

Aramaic is a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew, as Spanish is related to Portuguese. It was first the language of the Aramean peoples of Syria, but it spread far beyond them. The Assyrian empire used it for administration, and so did the Babylonian and then the Persian empires after it, so that by the sixth and fifth centuries BC a scribe could write in Aramaic to officials from Egypt to Afghanistan. Scholars call this form Imperial or Official Aramaic. In 2 Kings 18:26, about 701 BC, the officials of Jerusalem understand Aramaic and the people on the wall do not; the BSB's 'Hebrew' in that verse renders יְהוּדִית (yehudit), literally Judean, the language of Judah. By the time of Jesus, Aramaic had become the everyday speech of Jews in the land of Israel, and the Gospels keep some of his Aramaic words: 'Talitha koum!' (Mark 5:41) and the cry from the cross, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' (Mark 15:34).

There is a further, surprising connection. The square letters you learned in the first module of this track are not the oldest Hebrew script. Before the exile, Hebrew was written in an older script, now called Paleo-Hebrew, which you can see on inscriptions from the time of the kings. After the exile the Jews adopted the square script used for Aramaic, and Jewish tradition still calls it the Assyrian script. So every Hebrew letter on your phone is, in its shape, an Aramaic letter.

You do not need to learn Aramaic grammar to use your tools in these chapters, but four differences will help you recognise what you are seeing. First, Aramaic marks 'the' with an ending, usually -a, where Hebrew uses the prefix ha-. In Daniel 2:4, מַלְכָּא (malka) is the king, from the same root as the Hebrew מֶלֶךְ (melekh, king). Second, the masculine plural ending is often -in where Hebrew has -im: לְעָלְמִין (le'almin, for ever, literally for ages) in Daniel 2:4. Third, the relative word who or which is דִּי (di), not the Hebrew אֲשֶׁר (asher). Fourth, son is בַּר (bar), not בֵּן (ben); you know it from names like Bartholomew and Barabbas, and it will matter in the next lesson.

The Masoretes treated the Aramaic chapters exactly as they treated the Hebrew ones, with vowels, accents and ketiv and qere notes. There is one in the anchor verse. In Daniel 2:4 the consonants as written, לעבדיך, mean to your servants, plural; the qere, לְעַבְדָךְ (le'avdakh), means to your servant, singular. The BSB's 'Tell your servants the dream' follows the written form. As with Psalm 100:3, the first lesson of this module, the difference is inside the Masoretic Text itself, and a translator may follow either.

Your tools mark Aramaic clearly. On Blue Letter Bible, the lexicon entry for an Aramaic word says Aramaic, and often notes the Hebrew word it corresponds to; on STEP Bible the parsing shows the language. The Strong's numbers for Aramaic words sit within the same numbering as the Hebrew, so the number alone will not tell you; read the entry. The same is true of the parsing codes: the stems in Aramaic have different names from the Hebrew ones, so if a code looks unfamiliar in Daniel or Ezra, check whether the word is Aramaic before you assume a mistake.

Ezra is the easier case. Its Aramaic sections are built around official correspondence with the Persian court, and the narrator quotes the documents in the language in which they were written, continuing in that language for the connecting narrative. A modern historian writing in English who quotes a treaty in French and stays in French for a page is doing something similar. Few scholars dispute that this is at least part of the explanation, though why the narrative between the letters is also in Aramaic is discussed.

Daniel is harder, and no explanation has won full agreement. The first explanation is literary and theological. The Aramaic chapters, 2 to 7, are about the kingdoms of the world and God's rule over them: Nebuchadnezzar's dream of four kingdoms in chapter 2, the furnace in chapter 3, the king's madness in chapter 4, the writing on the wall in chapter 5, the lions' den in chapter 6, and the vision of four beasts in chapter 7. Many have noticed that these six chapters form a mirror pattern: chapters 2 and 7 both show four kingdoms followed by God's kingdom, chapters 3 and 6 both tell a deliverance of faithful Jews, and chapters 4 and 5 both tell of God's judgment on a proud king. On this reading, the chapters addressed to the nations' world are written in the nations' language, while chapters 1 and 8 to 12, which concern Israel's own future, are in Hebrew. The language change at 2:4, where the Chaldeans speak to the king, is the natural point to begin.

The second explanation is about how the book came to be, and here the dating debate that the Old Testament Survey lesson Daniel weighed comes into play. Those who date the book's final form to the second century BC often suggest that the Aramaic stories circulated first and that the Hebrew chapters were added later, perhaps with chapter 1 translated into Hebrew to frame the whole. Those who hold that Daniel wrote the book in the sixth century BC point out that a Jewish official at the Babylonian and Persian courts would have used both languages daily, as Ezra's documents show, and that the bilingual form fits such a writer. Each side has scholars who have studied the Aramaic itself. H. H. Rowley, in The Aramaic of the Old Testament (1929), argued that the Aramaic of Daniel is later than that of the Persian period. K. A. Kitchen, in his essay 'The Aramaic of Daniel' (1965), argued that its features are consistent with the Imperial Aramaic of the sixth to fourth centuries BC, and that language alone cannot fix a late date. The argument continues, and the Aramaic is evidence that both sides use.

One more feature of the Aramaic section of Ezra is worth knowing before you preach it. Ezra 4 does not run in simple time order. Verse 5 speaks of opposition from the reign of Cyrus to the reign of Darius; verses 6 to 23 then look ahead to later opposition under Xerxes (4:6) and Artaxerxes (4:7-23); and verse 24 returns to the second year of Darius, when the temple work resumed. The narrator has gathered the opposition of several reigns into one place, much as a preacher might gather examples on one theme. Read without noticing this, the chapter can seem to make the temple wait for a king who came later; read with it, the arrangement makes its own point, that opposition to God's work outlasted kings and was outlasted in its turn.

The two kinds of explanation are not exclusive. Someone may hold that the book grew in stages and also that its final shape uses the two languages meaningfully; someone may hold that Daniel wrote it all and also that the mirror pattern of chapters 2 to 7 is deliberate. For preaching, the literary observation is the one you can use whichever view of the date you hold: the chapters in which God shows his sovereignty to the kings of the earth are written in the language those kings' scribes would have read.

Jeremiah 10:1-16 is a Hebrew poem mocking the idols, which are cut from a tree, decorated with silver and gold, and fastened with nails so that they will not totter (10:3-4). In the middle of it comes a single verse in Aramaic, and it is introduced as something the people are to say: 'Thus you are to tell them: "These gods, who have made neither the heavens nor the earth, will perish from this earth and from under these heavens."'

The Aramaic is short and has a feature your interlinear will show you. It uses two words for earth: אַרְקָא (arqa, the earth), an older form, in the first half, and אַרְעָא (ar'a, the earth), the more common form, in the second. The gods are אֱלָהַיָּא (elahayya, the gods), and the heavens are שְׁמַיָּא (shemayya, the heavens). Both have the Aramaic -a ending for 'the'. The verse also plays on sound: the gods who did not make, עֲבַדוּ (avadu, they made), will perish, יֵאבַדוּ (ye'vadu, they will perish).

Why is it in Aramaic? There are two views, and each has able defenders. The first is that the verse is deliberate. Israel in exile, or facing exile, is given a sentence to say to its neighbours in the international language they understand, a short confession that the gods of the nations did not make the world and will not outlast it. The play on made and perish, and the verse's tight fit with the theme of the poem, which contrasts the idols with the LORD who made the earth by his power (10:12), suggest careful composition. On this reading the change of language is the point: a word for the nations, in the nations' tongue.

The second view is that the verse was added to the poem by a later hand, perhaps as a marginal note that was copied into the text. Its defenders point out that it is prose in the middle of poetry, that it interrupts the flow from 10:10 to 10:12, and that the Hebrew poem reads smoothly without it. The Septuagint of Jeremiah, which arranges 10:1-16 somewhat differently from the Masoretic Text, does include the verse, so if it is an addition it is an early one. Scholars who hold this view do not regard it as a mistake; they regard it as an ancient reader's response to the poem that became part of the scripture the church received.

Either way, the verse is in every Hebrew manuscript and every translation, and its message is not in doubt. It is the shortest summary of the poem: the gods who did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from under them.

For many churches this verse is unusually close to home. Many believers live among neighbours who honour other gods, ancestral spirits or shrines, and speak a different language at home, in the market and in church. Jeremiah 10:11 gives God's people a short, clear confession to say in the shared language of their neighbours, not a long argument but a sentence anyone can remember. A pastor might ask his congregation what that sentence would sound like in the languages they actually speak, and whether they could say it with the gentleness and confidence the poem around it shows. The poem does not mock the neighbours; it mocks the idols, and it ends with the LORD who made the earth by his power. That is the order of a faithful witness.

Open your notebook to your capstone passage and add a short section to your Hebrew Text page headed Language.

First, find out whether your passage includes any Aramaic. If it is from Daniel 2 to 7 or Ezra 4 to 7, it almost certainly does. Open it on STEP Bible or Blue Letter Bible and tap three words in each verse, checking whether the lexicon calls them Hebrew or Aramaic. Write down any verse where the language changes.

Second, if your passage is in Hebrew, as most will be, choose one important word in it and look up whether an Aramaic word from the same root exists. The Blue Letter Bible lexicon will often show you the Aramaic word that corresponds to a Hebrew one, or the Hebrew to an Aramaic one. Write down both words. This is practice for recognising Aramaic when you meet it, and it is quick.

Third, if your passage is in Aramaic, write the four differences from section 2 at the top of the page and find an example of each in your passage: a noun with the -a ending for 'the', a plural in -in, the relative word di, and any use of bar for son. Not every passage will have all four; note which ones you find.

Finally, write one sentence you might use in a sermon about the language of your passage, if it is worth mentioning at all. For most Hebrew passages it will not be, and that is a fine conclusion. For an Aramaic passage, the sentence might explain why God's word came to his people in the language of the empire, and what that says about whom his word is for.