The three-letter root

Words from one root

Genesis 1:31 begins like this.

And God looked upon all that He had made, and indeed, it was very good.

Genesis 1:31

The word translated "made" is עָשָׂה, "asah". Now look at Psalm 19:1.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.

Psalm 19:1

"The work of" is וּמַעֲשֵׂה, "uma'aseh", where the וּ is the word "and". Listen to the two: asah, ma'aseh. Both are built on the same three consonants, ע-ש-ה, and their meanings are connected too: to make, and something made. Hebrew is full of families like this, and the shared skeleton of consonants is called the root.

Three consonants are the skeleton

Most Hebrew words, and nearly all verbs, are built on a root of three consonants. The root is a skeleton: vowels go in between, and prefixes and endings are added at the front and back to make the actual word. Verbs, nouns and participles from the same root share those three consonants, so once you spot a root, a strange word starts to look like a relative of one you know.

Here are three families.

"King" and "reign" meet in the Psalms. מֶלֶךְ in Psalm 24:8 is "king", and the verb in Psalm 93:1, מָלָךְ, means "he reigns".

The LORD reigns! He is robed in majesty; the LORD has clothed and armed Himself with strength.

Psalm 93:1

(This verse spells the verb with a slightly different vowel from the dictionary form מָלַךְ. That is a change that happens at a pause in the verse, and you need not worry about it yet.)

Three words in one verse

In Genesis 18:25 Abraham pleads with God. Read the last part of his question.

הֲשֹׁפֵט, "hashofet", is "the judge", from the root ש-פ-ט; the opening הֲ is a small question marker. At the end, מִשְׁפָּט, "mishpat", comes from the same root and means "justice". Between them, יַעֲשֶׂה, "ya'aseh", is a form of עשׂה, "he will do". So the sentence ties together judge, justice and do. Once you see the roots, the shape of the sentence stands out.

Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?

Genesis 18:25

Finding the root in a real word

In real verses a verb seldom appears as the bare root; it comes with prefixes and endings. The skill is to peel off what has been added.

יָדַעְתִּי, "yada'ti", is "I know". The ending תִּי means "I". Take it away and יָדַע is left, from the root י-ד-ע, "know". מֵעֲשֹׂת, "me'asot", is "from doing", and the opening מֵ is the small word "from". Peel it off and you find the root עשׂה, but its last letter ה is gone and the word ends in ת. Weak letters such as ה, י and ו sometimes change or disappear, so at first you will sometimes need to check a lexicon. We will return to this in the lesson on weak verbs.

One more convention helps. Dictionaries and word lists usually file a verb under its simplest form, which is the Qal perfect, third person masculine singular, "he did". בָּרָא, "bara'", in Genesis 1:1 is such a form. When a lexicon says "create", the actual Hebrew word it shows means "he created". The terms Qal and perfect are the subject of the next two lessons.

A root is a clue, not a definition

Knowing the root helps a great deal, but with one caution. The meaning of a word is not simply the root's "core meaning" plus a pattern. English "butterfly" is not butter plus fly; a word's meaning comes from how it is used. Hebrew מִשְׁפָּט can mean a trial, a verdict, justice or an ordinance, depending on the passage, and it does not always unpack neatly from "to judge". Use the root to recognise the family, and settle the meaning from the verse and its context.

The panel's first label: verb

In the app's 원어 panel a verb is marked verb first. For עָשָׂה in Genesis 1:31 the labels read "verb, qal, perfect, third, masculine, singular". For this lesson, only the first, "verb", matters. The others will be explained one by one in the lessons that follow.

Summary

Most Hebrew words are built on a root of three consonants, and verbs and nouns grow from one root together. To find a root, peel off prefixes and endings. Lexicons usually list a verb as "he did" (Qal perfect, third masculine singular). A root is a clue to a word family, not a fixed meaning.

Words in this lesson

• מָלַךְmalakhto reign347 times in the OT
• שָׁפַטshaphatto judge202 times in the OT
• מִשְׁפָּטmishpatjustice: judgement216 times in the OT
• עָשָׂהasahto make740 times in the OT
• מַעֲשֶׂהmaasehdeed: work186 times in the OT

Practice