Do you know what the most frequently used words in the Hebrew language are?
It's a handy thing to know, because familiarizing yourself with those words will take you farther and faster in your studies than familiarizing yourself with the hapax legomena - the words that are used only once in the Tanach. (Be sure to drop that phrase in every conversation possible, by the way.)
Here's a website listing the 10,000 most frequently used words in the Hebrew language. Mind you, this is modern Hebrew, but there's significant overlap with biblical Hebrew, so you won't be led too far astray.
In fact, something you may enjoy doing is seeing how far down this list you have to go before you find a distinctly modern Hebrew word - one which isn't used in biblical Hebrew. Have fun!
Oh. One other thing - if you know of any other Hebrew resources or websites that the Holy Language tribe would find useful, please let me know about it here and I'll spread the good news! Thank you!
Sombra's Story
Sombra is following Yeshua and learning Hebrew! Here's her story.
Hi. I'm Sombra Wilson. I was raised in a home with no faith, under the title Anglican for official paperwork. I went to church a handful of times as a kid, a few times to a baptist church with a friend, but my dad's swear words of choice were our Lord's name and title. I tell you, there was no reverence for our Messiah at all.
However, during my childhood, this voice would whisper in my head at night, "There but for the grace of God go I.” I had no idea what it meant.
In my young adult life, I had some ugly relationships, really ugly, but I finally found the right one, the guy who, from day one, took responsibility for me. It took us three years to marry, and during that three years we had our first son. But when we started planning for this official "wedding" we had to decide what kind of wedding. We didn't believe in God, but we believed marriage was more than a legal contract... Could a minister marry us, but not in the church? My boss was a "christian" so I asked her, and eventually we met her pastor. We agreed to pre-marital counseling, and through this journey of exploring scripture to find what it said about marriage and money management and career and children etc.... We decided we wanted to meet this God. Let me lengthen the story by telling you details here.
We were on a trip home from an Amway convention, telling our upline about our pre-marital counseling. Funny, he went to that church too although he lived across the city.
At a certain point Gordy says to me, “What's keeping you from having a relationship with Christ?”
I replied, "I'm waiting for that clap of thunder to hit me on the head."
Gordy laughed and asked me “Do you remember when we met, someone introduced us, we shook hands 'hi Gordy' 'hi Sombra'?"
"Yes"
"Then the next time we met, we said Hi and exchanged small pleasantries?”
"Ya"
"And now when we get to together, we know each other more intimately right, we engage in deeper conversation…”
"Right"
"Well, today Jesus just wants to shake your hand.”
Well both my hubby and I chose to shake Yeshua's hand that day, and the journey for the next 11 years took us from Non-Denom, to Baptist to Pentecostal, as we moved from place to place and learned each place that there were little things we disagreed with in the previous church, therefore making changes as we went.
But after 4 years at the Pentecostal church, we really needed relationships. I was searching for the Acts chapter 2 church. I wanted Koinonia! Intimate caring relationships with people who would bear my burdens with me and mentor me and study with me. We looked in the local small town churches and were again disappointed. By then we had 4 children and we doubled the congregation size when we showed up. We then heard about a church 30 minutes away which taught "Christianity from the Hebrew Roots". Oh this sounded interesting to me! Hubby was concerned about the drive and the switching of days, we still had our foot in the Sunday church door.
After three weeks of hebrew roots church, we had found our path. This group worshipped in song and dance and prayer and study and midrash and meals from 10-4 on Sabbath, we learned liturgical prayer and hebrew through songs, we studied maps of Bible stories and learned the form of Hebrew poetry. We studied marriage and the difference between Hebrew and Greek Mindset. And we had Bar and Bat mitzvahs.
And that's when I met Izzy!
This wild dancing bunch of brothers came to a Bat mitzvah and I was smitten with their powerful love and passion for living for God. Over the years they , all 4 brothers and their mom too, from a distance, mentored me and my kids in our walk. My oldest son went on to Bar mitzvah and he learned to read Hebrew in order to do this. I was so impressed and proud of my son that I too wanted to learn, and eventually I realized I needed to learn, because I was now raising more children, there are 7 in total, 3 grown and 4 being homeschooled right now. I have a burning desire to get us all reading from the Hebrew Scriptures....and that's a long journey!
We're reading now, but we are just learning grammar and vocabulary.
I like to follow along with Izzy as he reads the Chapters and try and read the word before he tells me what it says, then I hang on ever word as he tells me what it means. An hour is hard to get to dedicate to the chapter, I have a 2 year old and 6,9,10 year olds needing me full time, but every chance I get, I find some little way to build my Hebrew learning.
I encourage you dear reader, there is no treasure like the treasure of reading scripture in it's original language. It's taken me 11 years to get to this point, if it takes me another 11 to be a fluent reader it's still worth every effort I make to slowly walk through this journey. You can do this. You too can learn Hebrew.
I'm Eema Wilson on FaceBook.
Are you following Yeshua in a Hebrew way? If so, the Holy Language tribe would love to hear your story, and we would love to help you tell it! Here's how.
new lessons
Hebrew Chapters Genesis 15. Watch the trailer here and the whole study here!
Hebrew Chapters Matthew 11. Watch the trailer here and the whole study here!
Modern Hebrew with Elihana Elia this Monday evening, watch here!
Biblical Hebrew with Rabbi Derek Leman this Thursday evening, watch here!
Live Shabbat services this Friday evening and Saturday morning, join us here!
Hats off to Jonathan Lovelace for this meme idea! Make your own Hebrew meme here or here and send it to meme@holylanguage.com and we'll share yours too.
In Messiah's love,
Izzy Avraham
Executive Director
P.S. I'm here for you and I would love to hear from you. But this email is unmonitored - so instead of replying to it, please contact me here. Thanks so much!