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 72:17
His name shall be continued as long as the sun. Yinnon, a word used only here, read by Jewish tradition as one of the Messiah's own names.
Psalm 72:17, in every translation this tool compares.
Imagine a phrase, his name shall endure, where one Hebrew word for endure occurs nowhere else in the whole Bible, rare enough that later readers began treating it not as an ordinary verb but as a proper name in its own right, Yinnon, a title for a future king to come. English continued keeps the ordinary verb sense and loses the name entirely.
Because before the sun his name shall be continued contains a word, yinnon, that occurs only this once in the entire Hebrew Bible, and Jewish tradition took it as an actual name of the Messiah rather than simply a verb meaning endure, a reading no English translation preserves.
Every version reads shall be continued, endure, or flourish, treating yinnon as an ordinary Hebrew verb, correctly by the plain grammar, though without capturing the tradition that reads it as a proper name.
יִנּוֹן Yinnon (נוּן nun/נִין nin, sprout/continue) · H5125
Yinnon, related to a root meaning to sprout, flourish, or continue, is a hapax, its only appearance anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. The Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 98b, records the tradition that Yinnon is one of the Messiah's names, reading the phrase not as his name shall endure but as before the sun, his name is Yinnon, treating the rare word as a title rather than a verb, and connecting it to the wider cluster of sprouting and branch vocabulary associated with messianic expectation.
English continued or endure smooths yinnon into an ordinary predicate, erasing the possibility, taken seriously in the Talmud, that the word functions as an actual name being assigned to a future king, a reading no single-word English translation of a verb can preserve.
When a word is a hapax legomenon and later interpretive tradition treats it as a proper name rather than an ordinary word, take that tradition seriously as evidence of how ancient readers themselves heard the rare word, not merely as a curiosity.
Reading yinnon as an ordinary verb, shall be continued or shall endure, matches standard grammatical analysis and is what every translation prints. Reading it as the proper name Yinnon, following the Talmudic tradition, treats this hapax legomenon as a genuine messianic title embedded in an otherwise royal psalm.
- Only occurrence in the Hebrew Bible: Psalm 72:17
- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98b, on Yinnon as a name of the Messiah
