HEBREW LANGUAGE, that spoken by the Hebrews, and in which the books of the Old Testament are written.
The books of the Old Testament are the only compositions to be found, in all antiquity, written in pure Hebrew; and the language of many of them is extremely sublime. It appears perfectly regular, particularly in its conjugations; indeed, properly speaking, it has but one conjugation, but this is varied in each seven or eight different ways, which has the effect of so many different conjugations, and has a great variety of expressions to represent by a single word the different modifications of a verb, and many ideas which in the modern and in many of the ancient and learned languages cannot be expressed without a periphrasis.
The primitive words, which are called roots, have seldom more than three letters or two syllables.
In this language there are twenty-two letters, only five of which are usually reckoned vowels; but then each vowel is divided into two, a long and a short; the sound of the former being somewhat grave and long, and that of the latter short and acute. It must however be remarked, that the two last vowels have sounds which differ in other respects besides quantity and a greater or less elevation. To these ten or twelve vowels may be added others, called semi-vowels, which serve to connect the consonants, and to render easier the transitions from one to another. The
number of accents in this language is prodigious. Of these there are nearly forty, the use of some of which, notwithstanding all the inquiries of the learned, is not yet perfectly known. We know, in general, that they serve to distinguish the sentences, like the points called commas, semicolons, and colons in our language; to determine the quantity of the syllables; and to mark the tone with which they are to be spoken or sung. It is no wonder, then, that there are more accents in the Hebrew than in other languages, since they perform three offices, which in other languages are called by different names.
As we have no Hebrew but that which is contained in the Scripture, the language wants a great many words; not only because in those primitive times languages were not so copious as at present, but also on this account, that the inspired writers had no occasion to mention many of the terms which might be in use in the language.
The Chaldaic, Syriac, and Ethiopic languages, are by some held to be dialects of the Hebrew; as the French, Italian, and Spanish, are dialects of the Latin. It has been supposed by many learned men, that the Hebrew characters or letters were often used hieroglyphically, and that each had its several distinct sense understood as a hieroglyphic. Neumann, who seems to have taken infinite pains to find out the secret meaning of these letters, gives the following explication; a, aleph, he says, is a character denoting motion, readiness, and activity; b, beth, signifies matter, body, substance, thing, also place, space, or capacity, and lastly, in, within, or contained; g, ghimel, stands for flexion, bending, or obliquity of any kind; d, dhalet, signifies any protrusion made from without, or any promotion of any kind; h, he, stands for the presence or demonstrative essence of any thing; v, va, stands for copulation, or the growing together of things; t, tsain, expresses vehement protrusion and violent compression, such as is occasioned by at once violently discharging and constringing a thing, and sometimes the straitening of any figure into a narrow point at the end; ch, cheth, expresses association, society, or any kind of composition or combination of things; th, teth, stands for the withdrawing, drawing back, or recession of any thing; j, jod, signifies extension and length, whether in matter or in time; cap, cap, expresses a turning, incurvation, or concavity; l, lamech, stands for an addition, accession, impulse, or adversion, and sometimes for pressure; m, mem, expresses amplitude, or the amplifying any thing in whatever sense, and in regard to contiguous qualities it also signifies the adding length, breadth, and circumference, lastly, multitude; n, nun, signifies the propagation of one thing from another, or of the same thing from one person to another; s, samech, expresses cincture and coarctation; ain, ain, stands for observation, objection, or obviation; pe or phe, stands for a crookedness or an angle of any figure; tsadde, expresses contiguity and close succession; koph, expresses a circuit or ambit; resh, expresses the egress of any thing, as also the exterior part of a thing, and the extremity or end of any thing; schin or sin, signifies the number three, or the third degree, or the utmost perfection of any thing; and tau, tau, expresses a sequel, continuation, or succession of any thing.
As, according to this explication, the several letters of the Hebrew alphabet separately convey ideas of motion, matter, space, and several modifications of matter, space, and motion; it follows that a language, the words of which are composed of such expressive characters, must necessarily be of all languages the most perfect and expressive; as the words formed of such letters, according to their determinate separate significations, must convey the idea of all the matters contained in the sense of the several characters, and be at once a name and a definition, or succinct description, of the subject; and all things material as
well as spiritual, all objects in the natural and moral world, Hebriodes, must be known as soon as their names are known, and their separate letters considered.
The words urim and thummim are thus easily explained, and found to be perhaps the most apposite and expressive words that ever were formed.
Rabbinical or Modern Hebrew, is the language used by the Rabbi in the writings they have composed. Its basis or body is the Hebrew and Chaldaic, with various alterations in the words of these two languages, the meanings of which they have considerably enlarged and extended. They have borrowed freely from the Arabic; and the rest is composed of words and expressions, chiefly from the Greek, some from the Latin, and others from the modern tongues, particularly that spoken in the place where each Rabbi lived or wrote.