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 4:26
Then began men to call upon the name of the LORD. Or: then it became common, in a profaning sense, to call on that name.
Genesis 4:26, in every translation this tool compares.
English began and English profaned share no letters and no sound; nobody would confuse them. The Hebrew word behind began shares its root with the word for profane, and which one this verse means is a live question, not a translator's typo.
Because the verb describing humanity's first public worship of the LORD's name is built on a root that, in its other conjugation, means to profane or defile, and which sense is intended here has divided readers since at least the rabbis.
Nearly every English version reads began, a positive account of the first public worship of God. This is the majority reading and the one nearly all translations print.
הוּחַל huchal (חָלַל chalal I, begin / III, profane) · H2490
Huchal is a hophal form that most naturally derives from chalal I, to begin, giving began to call. But chalal is also the root behind chalal III, to profane or defile, and at least one ancient Jewish reading, reflected in Rashi's comment, takes the verse in the profaning sense: it became common, in a degraded way, to invoke the LORD's name, fitting the chapter's downward arc from Cain through Lamech.
English has entirely separate words for began and profaned, so a translation must commit to one root or the other. Hebrew's two roots converge in this one conjugated form, huchal, so the ambiguity that troubles Hebrew readers is invisible the moment an English verb is chosen.
A Hebrew word that could derive from more than one root with unrelated meanings needs its immediate context checked, and the larger unit it sits in, not just the dictionary entry with the highest frequency. A chapter's overall trajectory, here Cain's line sliding toward Lamech's violence, can be genuine evidence for which root fits.
Began to call is the reading nearly every translation prints, treating the verse as a bright note of true worship starting early in human history. The profaning reading, held by Rashi and a minority of modern scholars, fits the chapter's decline from Cain to Lamech but requires choosing the rarer sense of a shared root against the grain of most translation tradition.
- Rashi's commentary on Genesis 4:26, reading huchal in the profaning sense
- chalal I (begin) and chalal III (profane) as distinct homographic roots: standard Hebrew lexicons
- John Sailhamer's commentary on Genesis reading the verse as part of the broader decline in humanity traced across Genesis 4
