Michael Carasik

Study idioms that are common in Biblical Hebrew, but sound strange when translated into English. You'll explore different ways to take an oath in Biblical Hebrew, the customary way to state someone's age, and the danger of "crossing the mouth" of the Lord.

Professor Michael Carasik has designed these 36 episodes as your authoritative primer on everything from the Hebrew alphabet and punctuation marks to essential vocabulary and advanced grammatical rules. Whether you're just starting out on a study of Hebrew or you already know the basics, these lectures are a helpful resource that include line-by-line readings of passages from the Hebrew Bible.

Focus on two of the five forms of Biblical Hebrew verbs: the perfect and the imperfect, both of which have person, gender, and number. The perfect, as you'll learn, is always marked by endings. The imperfect, however, is marked by prefix letters as well: aleph, nun, tav, and yud.

The infinitive verb form is used to describe the action of a verb (as in "There's a time to rend ... and a time to mend."). Professor Carasik walks you through the different infinitive forms, then guides you through Ecclesiastes 3: what he calls the "mother lode" of the Hebrew infinitive.

Very few verbs in Hebrew are irregular. Those that are, as you'll learn here, are not very difficult, but they do work a little differently than what you're used to seeing. In this episode, learn how to master irregular Hebrew verbs by focusing on them individually.

Get to know the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and how Biblical Hebrew is pronounced. Surprises include the silent letter aleph (the first letter of "God"), the tricky letter samekh, which resembles an "o" but sounds like an "s," and nearly identical pairs of letters such as gimel and nun.

Unlike English, Hebrew adjectives have four forms (not one), and they must agree with their nouns based on whether they're singular or plural, and masculine or feminine. Learn the four forms of adjectives (tov, tovah, tovim, tovot), several adjectives, and two ways to put nouns and adjectives together.

In this episode, explore geminates: roots where radicals two and three are the same. Along the way, you'll learn how to spot these common two-letter combinations, consider a fascinating example from Ezekiel's vision of the messianic future Temple, and begin reading Numbers 22 from start to finish.

Sometimes it's the simpler nouns that are the most likely to surprise you. Examine several of the most common non-obvious nouns (irregular nouns) and adjectives (demonstratives) in Biblical Hebrew. These include family names (daughter, son, brother), as well as "this" (zeh, zot) and "these" (eleh).

Roots that begin with yud are plentiful in Hebrew, and very common. Professor Carasik walks you through a list of some of the most common first-yud verbs, including yada ("know"), yatza ("go out"), yarash ("take possession"), and yashav ("settle").