Your Old Testament Passage

Everything in this track has been aimed at one act: opening a passage of the Old Testament so that its light reaches people. 'The unfolding of Your words gives light; it informs the simple' (Psalm 119:130). In the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) the verse is five words: פֵּתַח דְּבָרֶיךָ יָאִיר מֵבִין פְּתָיִים (petach devarekha ya'ir mevin petayim). Petach is an opening or doorway; devarekha is your words, with the suffix your; ya'ir is a Hiphil imperfect, third person masculine singular, of אור, gives light; mevin is a Hiphil participle of בין, making understand; and petayim are the simple. Listen to the sound of the verse: it begins with petach and ends with petayim, opening and the open-minded, a likeness of sound a reader of Hebrew can hear. The light is already in the words. The work of study is to open them, and those who gain are the simple, not the learned.

That is a good measure for a capstone. When you have finished, the question is not whether your notebook is impressive but whether you can now open this passage to someone who could not open it alone. This lesson gathers the whole track into a single path of twelve steps, in the order a working pastor would use them. Each step names the earlier lessons where its skills were taught, so you can go back to any step that is unclear. It is far more thorough than the weekly routine of Hebrew in the Study, because it is meant to be. Allow two or three weeks.

Beside your own passage, we will work one passage the whole way through, so that you can see each step done: Genesis 12:1-3, the call of Abram. It is short, it stands at a turning point of the whole Bible, it is quoted in the New Testament, and it touches almost every part of the grammar this track has taught, including one genuine translation debate. It is not necessarily the best passage for you. Choose your own.

Step 1: choose and bound the passage (Choosing and Bounding the Text in the Homiletics track; How Hebrew Tells a Story). Choose three to ten verses from the Old Testament: a scene from a narrative, a psalm or part of one, an oracle from a prophet, a short section of law or wisdom. Choose something you will actually teach. Ruth 1 and Psalm 23 were worked in A Narrative Passage: Ruth 1 and A Poem: Psalm 23, so choose something else. Do not choose the hardest passage you know to prove you can: the poetry of Job and of parts of the prophets is far harder Hebrew than the stories of Genesis, Ruth or Jonah. Read the chapters around your passage to see where it begins and ends, and write the reference at the top of a fresh double page. For the worked example: Genesis 11:27-32 introduces Terah's family, ending with the notice that Sarai 'was barren; she had no children' (11:30) and that Terah died in Haran. Genesis 12:1-3 is God's speech, and 12:4 begins Abram's response. The unit is 12:1-4, and you should read from 11:27 to 12:9; the closest Hebrew work will fall on verses 1-3.

Step 2: read it in your own language, many times (Why Learn Any Hebrew?; Reading Your First Verse). Before opening any Hebrew tool, read your passage at least ten times across several days, once aloud, and read the whole book if you can, or at least the chapters around it. Write everything you notice and every question you have. In the worked example, reading slowly shows how much the speech costs Abram: land, kindred and father's household, in that order. It shows that the destination is not named: 'the land I will show you'. And it shows a word repeated so often in two verses that you cannot miss it, even in English: bless, blessing, bless, bless, blessed. Count them and write the number down.

Step 3: compare translations and read the footnotes (Comparing Old Testament Translations). Read the passage in three or four translations side by side on STEP Bible or Blue Letter Bible and mark every difference that changes the sense. In the worked example, two differences matter. In 12:2, some translations say and you shall be a blessing or be a blessing, while the BSB says 'so that you will be a blessing'. In 12:3, most translations say will be blessed through you or in you, but some older modern versions, the Revised Standard Version of 1952 among them, said will bless themselves by you, and some translations give one of these in a footnote. Write both down; they point to a verb and a stem.

Step 4: sound out the Hebrew in the interlinear (The Consonants, Parts 1 and 2; The Vowel Points; Reading Right to Left in an Interlinear). Open your passage in the interlinear and read the Hebrew aloud, word by word, slowly, then again. Reading aloud forces your eye to see every letter and vowel, and you will hear repetitions that a glance misses. In the WLC, God's speech in Genesis 12:1 begins with the command לֶךְ־לְךָ (lekh-lekha, go, for yourself), and as you read on you hear the root ברך (barak, bless) five times in verses 2 and 3, and the suffix ךָ (kha, you, your) again and again: your land, your kindred, your father, I will show you, I will make you, I will bless you, your name, those who bless you. The whole speech is addressed to one man.

Step 5: check the text (The Masoretic Text; The Dead Sea Scrolls; The Septuagint). Look at the textual footnotes in your translations, and open the Septuagint of your passage in STEP Bible. Ask whether any ancient witness differs in a way that affects the sense, and if it does, weigh it as the module on the text taught, and mark in your notebook that the point is uncertain so that you never build a sermon on it. In Genesis 12:1-3 the Hebrew text is not in serious doubt, but the Septuagint is instructive. It renders 12:2's be a blessing as a future, and you will be blessed. And in 12:3 it uses one Greek verb for both of the Hebrew curse verbs, and makes the second plural, those who curse you. Those are a translator's smoothings, and they point you straight to two things in the Hebrew worth noticing in step 6. Write the result down even when it is nothing. Knowing that a passage's text is secure is itself a finding.

Step 6: parse every verb (The Three-Letter Root; The Basic Stem (Qal); The Seven Stems; Perfect and Imperfect; The Narrative Chain (Wayyiqtol); Commands, Infinitives and Participles; Reading Hebrew Parsing Codes). List every verb in your passage with its stem, conjugation, person, gender, number and root, check the main verbs in two tools, and ask what each form contributes without making it carry more than it can. In the worked example: וַיֹּאמֶר (vayyomer, then he said) is a Qal wayyiqtol, third person masculine singular, of אמר, the narrative chain moving the story on. לֶךְ (lekh, go) is a Qal imperative, second person masculine singular, of הלך, and it is followed by לְךָ (lekha), the preposition lamed with the suffix you. Grammarians usually explain this as an idiom that focuses attention on the one addressed, and it should not be made into a sermon about going to find yourself. The same phrase returns in Genesis 22:2, when God sends Abraham to Moriah, the verse that anchors Gaps and What the Text Leaves Out, so the phrase frames his story. אַרְאֶךָּ (ar'ekka, I will show you) is a Hiphil imperfect, first person common singular, of ראה, to see, with the suffix you: I will cause you to see.

Verse 2 continues with God's resolve. וְאֶעֶשְׂךָ (ve'e'eskha, and I will make you) is a Qal imperfect, first person common singular, of עשׂה with the suffix you. וַאֲבָרֶכְךָ (va'avarekhekha, and I will bless you) is a Piel imperfect, first person common singular, of ברך with the suffix you. וַאֲגַדְּלָה (va'agaddelah, and I will make great) is a Piel of גדל, first person common singular, with the ending ָה (-ah) that marks a cohortative, an expression of resolve or desire; the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible tags it as an imperfect and some other tools as a cohortative, and the English sense does not change. Then וֶהְיֵה (veheyeh, and be) is a Qal imperative, second person masculine singular, of היה. Is it a command or a result? After a series of first person promises, an imperative often expresses the intended result, which is why the BSB says 'so that you will be a blessing' and the Septuagint made it a future. Others keep its force as a charge: be a blessing. Both are faithful, and your honesty column should say probable for the result reading.

Verse 3 has the two points the Septuagint smoothed. וַאֲבָרֲכָה מְבָרְכֶיךָ (va'avarakhah mevarekhekha, and I will bless those who bless you): a Piel of ברך, first person common singular, again with the cohortative ending, then a Piel participle, masculine plural, with the suffix you. Then וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ אָאֹר (umqallelkha a'or, and the one who curses you I will curse): first a Piel participle, masculine singular, of קלל, with the suffix you, and then a Qal imperfect, first person common singular, of a different verb, ארר. So in Hebrew there are two different verbs for curse, and those who bless are plural while the one who curses is singular. The BSB uses curse for both and makes both groups plural, which is good English, and the Septuagint did the same. Many commentators take the Hebrew pattern to suggest that blessing is expected to be wide and cursing narrow. That is a reasonable reading of a real feature of the text. Mark it probable, not certain. Finally, וְנִבְרְכוּ (venivrekhu, and they will be blessed) is a Niphal perfect, third person common plural, of ברך, joined by vav and read as future in sequence with the promises. Hold that verb for step 10.

Step 7: the nouns, the article, the construct chain and the little words (Nouns: Gender and Number; The Article and the Construct Chain; Little Words Joined to Big Ones; Pronouns and Suffixes; Adjectives, Comparison and Numbers). Go through the nouns, noticing article, construct, prefixes and suffixes. In the worked example: מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ (me'artsekha umimmoladtekha umibbeit avikha, from your land and from your kindred and from the house of your father): three phrases, each with the preposition min, from, and each with your, moving from the widest circle to the closest, land, then kindred, then the household of a father, which is a construct chain. The cost is spelled out in widening and narrowing circles. לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל (legoy gadol, into a great nation): the lamed here marks what Abram will become, and the adjective follows its noun, as Adjectives, Comparison and Numbers taught. And at the end of verse 3, מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה (mishpechot ha'adamah, the families of the ground): a construct chain, with the feminine plural construct of mishpachah and the article on the second noun. The word adamah, ground, is the ground of which the LORD said in Genesis 3:17, 'cursed is the ground because of you'. Mark that echo; you will need it in step 8.

Step 8: the shape of the passage (How Hebrew Tells a Story; Key Words and Repetition; Dialogue and Speech; Parallelism; Acrostics and Structure). Ask what kind of text you have and how it is built. If it is narrative, trace the wayyiqtol chain, the dialogue and the key words. If it is poetry, set out the parallel lines and their images. In the worked example, a narrative frame holds an elevated speech. The narrator says only וַיֹּאמֶר, then he said, and gives God's words with no description at all, the terse style How Hebrew Tells a Story taught. Then 12:4 resumes the chain with וַיֵּלֶךְ אַבְרָם (vayyelekh avram, so Abram departed), the same verb as God's command lekh. The obedience is told by repeating the command's verb. Within the speech, the key word is plainly barak, five times. Now set that beside Genesis 3-11. The verb ארר, the solemn curse, occurs there five times: on the serpent (3:14), on the ground (3:17), on Cain (4:11), in Lamech's words about the ground (5:29), and on Canaan (9:25). Many readers have noticed that the five blessings of 12:2-3 answer the five curses of the chapters before, and that the families of the adamah, the cursed ground, are the ones who will be blessed. You can count the words for yourself in Hebrew and see them in English. Whether the number five was intended is probable rather than certain; that blessing answers curse at this turning point of Genesis is plain.

Step 9: the key words (Strong's, BDB and Gesenius; The Words That Matter Most; Covenant Words; Names, Idioms and Pictures; Hebrew Myths and Word-Study Traps). Choose two or three words your passage turns on, read their lexicon entries, look at their range and their use in the same book, let context choose, and test yourself against every trap you have learned. In the worked example, the word to test is ברך itself. A common sermon says that barak means to kneel, because the noun בֶּרֶךְ (berekh, knee) has the same consonants, and so to bless is really to bow the knee. That is the root fallacy in its purest form. Whether the two words are even related is disputed, and even if they were, a root's history does not decide what a word means in a sentence. In Genesis 12, God is the one blessing, and he does not kneel to Abram. The meaning comes from use: in Genesis, to bless is to give life, fruitfulness, land and well-being, as God blessed the creatures and the first humans in Genesis 1:22 and 1:28. The second word to weigh is qalal. Lexicons connect its root with being light or slight, and many commentators suggest that in the Piel it means to treat with contempt as well as to curse. That is a reasonable suggestion from the lexicon, but mark it possible: the Piel of qalal means to curse in many places where no lightness is in view.

Step 10: weigh the translation and name the debates (Comparing Old Testament Translations; Contested Translations; How the New Testament Reads the Old). With all your findings before you, test your main translation honestly, write down where it has made a choice, and identify any place where careful readers are genuinely divided. Then write each position as its own best defenders would state it. Genesis 12:3 has one such place, the Niphal וְנִבְרְכוּ. The Niphal of barak occurs only three times in the Hebrew Bible, all in promises to the patriarchs: here, in 18:18 and in 28:14. In two parallel promises, 22:18 and 26:4, the Hebrew has the Hithpael instead, וְהִתְבָּרֲכוּ (vehitbarakhu), and the Hithpael is usually reflexive or reciprocal.

One reading takes the Niphal as passive: all the families of the earth will be blessed through you. This is how the Septuagint read it, in all five promises, Niphal and Hithpael alike; it is how the BSB and most translations render it; and it is how the New Testament quotes it, in Galatians 3:8 ('All nations will be blessed through you') and Acts 3:25. Its defenders point out that the Niphal is very often passive, that God is the one blessing throughout 12:2-3, that Abram is to be a blessing (12:2), which implies others receiving blessing through him, and, for Christian readers, that the apostles read it this way. A second reading takes it as reflexive: all the families of the earth will bless themselves by you, that is, will use your name when they pronounce a blessing, saying in effect may God make you like Abram. Its defenders point to the Hithpael in the parallel promises, and to clear examples of exactly that kind of formula: 'By you shall Israel pronounce this blessing: May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh' (Genesis 48:20, where the BSB sets the blessing itself in inner quotation marks), and the curse formula of Jeremiah 29:22. They add that on this reading Abram is still the standard and pattern of blessing for the nations, so the promise is not emptied. A third view, held by some recent scholars, takes the Niphal as middle, will find blessing or will gain blessing through you, which sits between the two. The Hebrew alone does not settle this. Write all three in your notebook, teach the verse with the translation your people use, and if the question comes up, say that the Hebrew can be read more than one way, that the earliest translators and the apostles read it as will be blessed, and that on every reading the blessing of the nations is bound up with Abram.

This is also the step at which you should finally read anything others have written, if you have it: a commentary, a study Bible, notes from a teacher. Read them after your own work, not instead of it. Where they saw something you missed, add it in a different colour so that you can see what you found and what you were shown. Where you disagree, ask which of you has the better evidence. Often it will be them. Sometimes, because you have looked so carefully, it will be you.

Step 11: state the main idea, find the road to Christ, and sort what you will say (Hebrew in the Study; Preaching with Hebrew; How the New Testament Reads the Old). Write one sentence that states what your passage is about and what it says about it, in its own terms. Then ask how the passage reaches Christ, using the roads the New Testament itself travels, which the Homiletics lesson Preaching the Old Testament sets out. Then go through your notebook and check the confidence column beside every finding, and choose at most one or two Hebrew observations to mention, using the tests of Preaching with Hebrew. In the worked example, the main idea might be: after the curses of Genesis 3-11, God calls one childless man to leave everything for a land he has not seen, and promises to bless him and to make him a blessing, so that through him blessing will reach all the families of the cursed ground. The road to Christ is one Paul himself travels: 'The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and foretold the gospel to Abraham' (Galatians 3:8), and Galatians 3:16 names Christ as Abraham's seed. The Hebrew point most worth teaching is the fivefold blessing answering the curses, because the congregation can count it in English. The two curse verbs and the singular curser deserve at most one gentle sentence. The Niphal debate belongs to a class, not a sermon, unless someone asks.

Step 12: share it and keep going (Keeping Your Hebrew Alive). Teach what you have studied, in a sermon, a Bible study, a youth group or a class, as soon as you can. Ask two or three people afterwards what they understood. Then show your notebook pages to your reading group, or to a pastor or teacher who knows more Hebrew, and ask them to check the parts you marked probable and possible. Finally, put the pages where you can find them again. You will return to this passage, and next time you will see more.

You will notice that these steps describe a study far more thorough than you will manage every week. That is deliberate. The weekly routine of Hebrew in the Study is this capstone compressed. Once you have done the full study carefully on one passage, the weekly version will make sense, because you will know what each shortcut leaves out.

Copy what follows into the front of your notebook, or keep it on your phone, and use it whenever you study an Old Testament passage closely. It is the whole track in twelve lines. If a line is missing when you come to teach, go back to it.

1. Passage. I have chosen one unit of three to ten verses, checked where it begins and ends, read the chapters around it and if possible its whole book, learned its setting, and written the reference at the top of my page.

2. Reading. I have read the passage at least ten times in my own language, once aloud, and written what I noticed and what I asked, before opening any Hebrew tool.

3. Translations. I have compared three or four translations, read their footnotes, and listed every difference that changes the sense.

4. Sounding out. I have read the Hebrew aloud in an interlinear, word by word, checked the verse numbering, and marked the words and roots that repeat.

5. Text. I have checked the textual notes and the Septuagint, and I know whether any point in my passage is textually uncertain.

6. Verbs. I have parsed every verb by stem, conjugation, person, gender, number and root, checked the main verbs in two tools, and written what each form contributes without making a stem or conjugation say more than it can.

7. Nouns and little words. I have noted the article, construct chains, prefixes, suffixes and adjectives, and what each is doing.

8. Shape. I have traced the narrative chain and the dialogue, or set out the parallel lines and images, and marked the key words and the structure without forcing a pattern onto the text.

9. Words. I have studied two or three key words by their range and their use in the same book, let the context choose, and tested myself against letter pictures, root fallacies and every other trap.

10. Translation and debates. I have weighed my translation against the Hebrew, written down where it made a choice, and stated every genuinely debated point as each side's best defenders would.

11. Main idea, Christ and confidence. I have written the main idea in one sentence, traced the road from this passage to Christ that the New Testament itself travels, marked every finding certain, probable or possible, and chosen at most one or two Hebrew points to teach in plain words, pointing to the hearers' own Bible.

12. Sharing and keeping. I have taught the passage or planned when I will, asked someone who knows more to check my probable and possible points, and kept my pages where I can find them.

Your practical step now. Choose your passage today, if you have not already, and write it at the top of a fresh double page. Over the next two or three weeks, work the twelve steps in order, writing your results for each step in your notebook with the confidence column beside them. When you reach step 11, write your main idea, your road to Christ, and the one or two Hebrew points you will teach. Then teach the passage, in whatever setting is open to you: a sermon, a home group, a youth meeting, a class of new believers. Afterwards, go back through the checklist and mark which steps you did well and which you will do better next time. That study is the fruit of this whole track. It will not be the most learned study ever written on your passage. It will be yours, done with your own eyes on the words Moses, the prophets and the psalmists wrote, and the unfolding of those words gives light.