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 51:10a
Create in me a clean heart. The verb is the one only God is ever allowed to do.
Psalm 51:10, in every translation this tool compares.
If a language had one verb reserved for a single person, and a petitioner used it about himself, you would notice. In English the same request reads as a polite way of saying please change me.
Because the verb in this line is the reserved creation verb from Genesis 1:1, and David uses it of a heart. That is a deliberate echo and it is completely invisible in English, where create is an ordinary word.
All versions read create. The reservation of the verb cannot be shown and is not footnoted anywhere.
בָּרָא bara · H1254
Bara, the verb of Genesis 1:1, used around fifty times and never with a human subject. David is not asking for improvement. He is asking for the creation verb to be used on him, which is a request for something that does not yet exist rather than repair of something damaged. Lev here is the seat of thought and will, the same word as the Shema.
English create is used of anyone and anything. There is no way to signal that a verb is restricted, so the echo of the first sentence of the Bible simply does not survive.
When a psalm uses an unusual verb, check where else that verb appears. Hebrew poets quote Genesis constantly and almost never announce it.
Nothing to choose. Create is correct and carries none of the weight.
- bara with God as subject throughout: Genesis 1:1, 21, 27; Isaiah 45:7
- lev as the seat of thought and will: Deuteronomy 6:5; Proverbs 4:23
- Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, on leb
