Hebrew WordPlay in the Bible

Playing with Words

This week I had the lovely experience of being interviewed by Rick Welch of the Burros of Berea podcast. We had a great chat about Hebrew words, idioms, chiasms and all sorts of fun Bible-based musings! Once it’s posted I’ll share the link.

Part of the conversation included why word studies alone aren’t enough for robust Biblical study. The Bible is made up of many words, many sentences, many paragraphs, many chapters, many books, and many authors. It’s vital to know the overarching story before you start to dissect the words! You should look at the whole sweater before examining every stitch.

Words have a life of their own, but to have any impact they have to work (and play) together with others, so today we’ll take a look at how some words play together in the text. If you think about it, a book is like a big playground of words…  sometimes they play, sometimes they tussle, and sometimes they dance. How words interact together is what makes reading fun!

Playing with Words: Root Connection & Alliteration

Probably the most common wordplay is connecting words that share the same root (base letters) and, therefore, have a connection, such as rekhem and rakham.

Rekhem means womb and rakham means comfort. In this season of nativity, these two words stand out. The One who became the Great Compassion (rakham) came to earth through the womb (rekhem) of a woman.

Not far from rakham and rekhem is ruakh, the word for Spirit. With the audible closeness of these three words, Biblical authors could have fun with some wordplay, which helped their writing stand out. So we have passages like this:

Nehemiah 9:19a-20a

You, in Your great compassion [b-ra’kha’meka ha-rabbim בְּרַחֲמֶ֣יךָ הָֽרַבִּ֔ים], did not abandon them in the wilderness…

…Instead, You gave Your good Spirit [w-ru’khaka ha-tovah וְרוּחֲךָ֨ הַטֹּובָ֔ה] to instruct them…

The author was highlighting God’s character by using the words, Your Compassion (ra’kha’meka) and Your Spirit (ru’khaka). These words stand out in their similarity. The use of alliteration is helps the text pop to reader, and the Biblical authors knew it. 

Playing with Words: Rhyming

Another way of playing with words was rhyming. This was quite easy to do with the Hebrew language because of indicating suffixes. Without getting into the weeds of Hebrew grammar, we’ll keep it simple. Possessive (my, your, her, his, our, their) words always ended in the same sound because they have the same suffixes. My house and my face would both end in an ee sound. Your house and your face would end in the same ka sound (if the person was masculine). Our house and our face would end in the same nu sound. There is no specific word for my, your, her, his, our, or their. These words (indicating possession) exist exclusively as suffixes added to the nouns. 

For example, Isaiah praised God for His great love and he said that it was granted to the people of Israel…

…according to His compassion [k-rakha’maw כְּֽרַחֲמָ֖יו] and according to the abundance of His lovingkindness [kha’sadaw חֲסָדָֽיו] (Isaiah 63:7)

This phrase in Hebrew is a lot less wordy. It’s ten words in English; it is three words in Hebrew, and the first and the third rhyme:

כְּֽרַחֲמָ֖יו וּכְרֹ֥ב חֲסָדָֽיו

K-ra’khamaw    u-k’rov    kha’sadaw

These words rhyme because they are both third person singular masculine possessive words, which means they both end with the letters yud vav (יו)

• Ra’khamaw (His mercies/lovingkindness)
• Kha’sadaw (His compassion)

The author puts these rhyming words in close proximity to drive home the beautiful expression of YHWH’s character. YHWH has bestowed on them (His) compassion and (His) abundant love. YHWH’s ra’khamaw and ka’sadaw are His to give and He gives them away freely. 

The very first Biblical rhyming sequence, by the way, was tohu wa-vohu which described the pre-ordered state of creation:

Genesis 1:2

And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness [tohu wa-vohu תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ], and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

Playing with Words: Striking Similarities

Tohu wa-vohu is a reminder of what we have escaped. We have been rescued from tohu wa-vohu… and now humans are called by God to maintain order. They are to look after all the fish, all the birds and all the ha-remes ha-romes al ha-arets, creeping things that creep on the earth (Genesis 1:26). Remes, romes, arets are all words closely connected in sound which dances in the readers or listeners ears. 

Authors took words that were almost identical but just slightly different and placed them together for the text to take on a kind of rhythmic cadence. This kind of wordplay is evident across every book in the Bible.

When Abraham petitioned YHWH to save the people of Sodom, he humbly declared that he was dust and ashes, or apar w-eper:

Genesis 18:27

And Abraham replied, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am only dust and ashes” [apar w-eper עָפָ֥ר וָאֵֽפֶר]. 

It’s kind of like saying, I’m only dust and slightly different dust. These words are very similar in context and sound, but different enough to be separate words (including a slightly different spelling). It’s a memorable phrase that sticks in the mind of the reader because it’s rhythmically pleasing.

This is why wordplay is so important in any writing. It helps the words dance across the page and connect with each other in unique ways. 

Playing with Words: Homophones

When two words sound alike but have different meanings, this (grammatically speaking) is a homophone. For example, pray and prey. To the ear they are the same, the meaning, however, is very different!

In Hebrew, ohr (light אוֹר) and ohr (skin עוֹר) are two different words, spelled with one different letter, but to the ear they sound identical. 

Exodus 34:29

And it came about, when Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai (and the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses’ hand as he was coming down from the mountain), that Moses did not know that the skin [ohr ע֥וֹר] of his face shone because of his speaking with Him.

Why say the skin of his face shone? Why not just say “his face shone”? The author was having fun with homophones. Moses’ skin radiated light… essentially his ohr ohr’ed, and the original readers would have heard the cleverness. 

Perhaps the lesson that we miss in this passage (because we do not see the homophone at play) is that the skin we’re in should reflect the light of YHWH. That little underlying message is missed when we read it in translation.

Playing with Words: Heteronyms

Heteronyms are words that are spelled the same but may sound different, such as dove (the bird) and dove (the action and past tense of dive). In the Hebrew Bible, authors frequently played with heteronyms. For example:

S-P/F-R (ספר) can mean a book (sefer), the verb to count (safar), a census (sefar), and the verb to tell (siper). These are spelled the same but vowel indicators give them a slightly different sound:

2 Chronicles 2:17

Solomon counted all the foreigners who were in the land of Israel, following the census which his father David had taken; and 153,600 were found.

Solomon safar (counted) the foreigners found in the sefar (census). These census numbers were probably written in some sort of sefer (scroll/book).

In another example, A/R/M (ערום) can mean crafty (arum) as well as naked (arom).

In Genesis 3:1-7 the arum (crafty) serpent deceived the humans and they immediately realised they were arom-im (naked). In English, we miss this, but it wasn’t lost to the ears of the original hearers.

Playing with Words: Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia are words that imitate the natural sounds they make, like swish, or hiccup, or twang, or flip-flop. The Bible had these too! A jug/drinking vessel was a baq-buq… like the sound of glug-glug when drinking from a jug. Running horses gallopped. In Hebrew the plural word for galloping was daharot which, said repeatedly (daharot-daharot-daharot), mimicked the sound of many galloping hoofs.

One of my favourites (maybe because my profession is known to shush people), is the Hebrew word hass meaning to be quiet or go silent. It is strikingly similar to our English word hush:

Habakkuk 2:19-20

“Woe to him who says to a piece of wood, ‘Awake!’ To a mute stone, ‘Arise!’ That is your teacher? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, yet there is no breath at all inside it.

But YHWH is in His holy temple. Let all the earth hass [הַ֥ס] before Him.”

We don’t need to yell at YHWH to rise up or wake up. We can just remain quiet, hushed, and let our living God lead the Kingdom. Hass, stay calm, because YHWH is in control.

Find the Fun in Playful Words!

Let’s face it. Hebrew authors frequently used wordplay throughout their writings. Why wouldn’t they? It’s what distinguishes good writers. Playing with words makes reading fun and it’s a shame we miss most of these clever actions when we read the Bible in translation. Wordplay, metaphors, and idioms aren’t always distinguishable in modern translations but they are there if you’re willing to dig for them. 

This study is just a hint of the playfulness of Biblical words. We are “skimming the surface.” (There’s an idiom for you!) There’s so much more to discover!

Someone recently said to me that we should stop trying to dive so deeply into scripture. A surface read, he said, gives us all we need to know. Truth be told, he’s not entirely wrong. 

The Bible presents the essential things quite clearly. And that’s great news for the new believer. But if you’ve been a follower of Yeshua for a long time and you want to stay excited about the Bible, keep diving in, go as deep as you like (as long as you can still see the surface). Discovering the wonderful layers and complexities that the Bible holds deep within its pages gives me great pleasure. To me, a deep dive into the Bible makes for a great day! Reading the Bible shouldn’t be a chore… it should be a delightful exploration. So go, pray for discernment, open the book and (metaphorically, not literally) “dive in”. There’s never a bad time to start!

Finally, to all who are celebrating God’s love and light at this time of year, I wish you the warmest greetings wherever you are. Yeshua came as an infant and would grow up to be revolutionary! He would change the world with his message of love and redemption and we are all (every single one of us) the better for it!

Isaiah 9:6

For a Child will be born to us, a Son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Pele (Wonderful), Yowetz (Counselor), El Gibbor (Mighty God), Aviad (Eternal Father), Sar Shalom (Prince of Peace).

P.S. If you happen to hear the hymn, “Silent Night”, perhaps you can quietly say, “hassss”, and experience the great peace only YHWH can give. Shalom!

Next Week: 2025’s Top Ten Words