Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 17:5-15
Abram becomes Abraham; Sarai becomes Sarah. Both gain the same Hebrew letter, heh, also found in God's own name.
Genesis 17:5-15, in every translation this tool compares.
Imagine two people both receiving a new middle initial on the same day, and that initial turning out to be the same letter that starts the name of the one who renamed them. English spelling, Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, shows a name simply got longer; it cannot show that the added letter is the same letter both times, or that it echoes God's own name.
Because both Abram and Sarai receive the same added letter in their new names, and that one letter is also half of God's own four-letter name, a detail no transliteration into English letters can show since Abraham and Sarah simply look like longer versions of the old names, not names carrying a piece of God's own name inside them.
Every version reads Abraham and Sarah as the new names, correctly, but English spelling conventions cannot mark that both changes add the identical Hebrew letter, since the added sound lands differently in each English name.
ה heh (in אַבְרָהָם Abraham and שָׂרָה Sarah) · cf. H3068 YHWH
Abram, exalted father, gains a heh to become Abraham, popularly associated in the text itself with father of a multitude; Sarai becomes Sarah, both changes inserting the same Hebrew letter heh. That letter is also the second and fourth letter of the divine name YHWH, and a long-standing Jewish reading takes the shared letter as God placing a piece of His own name into both Abraham's and Sarah's identities at the same covenant moment.
English name changes are visible as added syllables, Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, but the specific added consonant, and its identity in both cases, and its resonance with the divine name, are facts about the Hebrew letters themselves that no English respelling can carry over.
When two characters receive parallel name changes in the same passage, check what letter or sound was actually added or changed in Hebrew, not just how the English transliteration looks. Two unrelated-looking English changes can be the identical Hebrew move performed twice.
Abraham and Sarah as the new names draw no disagreement among translators. The connection to the divine name and the shared letter is an observation about Hebrew orthography that English spelling simply has no mechanism to preserve, however the names are transliterated.
- The shared letter heh in both name changes: Genesis 17:5, 15
- Popular association of Abraham with av hamon (father of a multitude): Genesis 17:5 itself
- Standard Jewish exegetical tradition on the added heh echoing the divine name
