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.
Psalm 22:1
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The Gospels' version mixes Hebrew Eli with an Aramaic verb, not the Psalm's own Hebrew azavtani.
Psalm 22:1, in every translation this tool compares.
Imagine quoting a well-known English psalm but swapping in a word from a different, related dialect partway through, the kind of thing a bilingual speaker does without necessarily noticing. That is roughly what happens between the Hebrew Psalm and the Gospels' Greek transliteration of what Jesus said.
Because when Jesus quotes this verse from the cross, the Gospels record a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic, not the pure Hebrew of the Psalm itself, a small but real linguistic detail about which language, or blend of languages, Jesus was actually praying in at that moment.
Every version of the Gospels reads my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, translating the transliterated cry accurately, but without flagging that the underlying words Matthew and Mark preserve are not simply the Hebrew of Psalm 22:1 itself.
אֵלִי אֵלִי לָמָה עֲזַבְתָּנִי Eli Eli lamah azavtani (Hebrew) / שְׁבַקְתַּנִי shevaqtani (Aramaic, behind sabachthani)
Psalm 22:1's Hebrew reads Eli, Eli, lamah azavtani, using the Hebrew verb azav, forsake. The Gospels transliterate Jesus's cry as Eli or Eloi, lama sabachthani, using sabachthani, built on the Aramaic verb shevaq, not the Hebrew azav, while Eli or Eloi themselves could belong to either language. The mix suggests Jesus was praying the psalm through the Aramaic he ordinarily spoke, likely drawing on an Aramaic Targum tradition of the psalm rather than reciting the Hebrew text word for word.
English translations of both the Psalm and the Gospel accounts read forsaken in both places, so the fact that two different verbs, from two different though related languages, lie behind that one English word in each source is invisible without comparing the underlying transliterations directly.
If a quotation is given in transliterated form rather than translated, check the actual sounds preserved rather than assuming they simply reproduce the Hebrew original. Bilingual or Aramaic-influenced quotation was ordinary in first-century Judea.
Both the Psalm and the Gospels translate as forsaken without controversy. What gets smoothed away once both texts land in the same English phrase is a small, human detail: the exact words Jesus is recorded saying blend Hebrew and Aramaic.
- Psalm 22:1's Hebrew azavtani
- Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34's transliterated sabachthani, from Aramaic shevaq
- Aramaic Targum traditions of the Psalms using shevaq in their translation
