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 89:10
Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces. A different word entirely from Rahab the woman of Jericho.
Psalm 89:10, in every translation this tool compares.
Imagine two English words, spelled and pronounced identically, that happen to come from completely different roots with completely different meanings, the way bank the riverbank and bank the money-building share nothing but sound. Rahab the mythological sea monster and Rahab the woman of Jericho are exactly this kind of coincidence, invisible once both are simply transliterated the same way.
Because Rahab here is spelled with entirely different Hebrew consonants from Rahab the woman of Jericho, two completely unrelated words that happen to sound identical once transliterated into English, a false connection English spelling makes nearly impossible to avoid.
Every version transliterates both as Rahab, correctly reflecting how each name sounds, but with no way to show an English reader that the underlying Hebrew spellings and roots are entirely unrelated.
רַהַב Rahab (chaos-monster, heh) / רָחָב Rachav (Rahab of Jericho, chet) · H7294 / H7343
The mythological Rahab here is spelled with a heh, from a root meaning storm, arrogance, or, poetically, a primeval chaos-monster, used elsewhere as a symbolic name for Egypt at Isaiah 51:9-10. Rahab of Jericho is spelled with a chet, from a root meaning wide or broad, an entirely separate word. English transliteration erases the difference, producing one identical-looking name for two unconnected Hebrew words.
English readers meeting Rahab in this psalm and Rahab in Joshua have every reason to assume the same figure or at least a related word is meant in both places, when in fact the Hebrew spellings share no root at all, only an accident of how both happen to sound once flattened into English letters.
Never assume two identically transliterated biblical names are linguistically related. Hebrew has more consonant distinctions than English transliteration preserves, and coincidental sound-alikes across unrelated roots are common enough to always check rather than assume.
Rahab as the name is not disputed in either passage. What needs correcting is the natural but mistaken assumption that this psalm's chaos-monster Rahab and Joshua's Rahab of Jericho are in any way the same word or share any linguistic history.
- Rahab as a poetic name for Egypt: Isaiah 51:9-10
- The same chaos-monster Rahab: Job 26:12
- Rahab of Jericho's separate root, wide/broad: Joshua 2:1
