A Hebrew Primer - Bet

Learning curve

My original plan for digging into Hebrew was straightforward: since the first word of each verse of Psalm 119 starts with a letter of the alef-bet, I would use the first word of each section as my key word for each letter. Alef is for “How happy!” Bet is for … "the interrogative and indefinite particle What? How? or anything and is spelled mah." What?? I don’t remember what particles are and I’m frustrated that there’s not a bet in sight. This hiccup in my plan serves to remind me that my Hebrew project is actually going to take work. It isn't possible to learn a language and to enter into a different worldview quickly and in just a few minutes a day.

Bet is for Baruk (To kneel, to bless)

Praise be to you, LORD;
teach me your decrees. Ps 119:12

Both esher and baruk are translated "blessed" but they don’t seem to be synonyms. Esher exclaims "How happy is someone when…" while baruk is the linguistic expression of an action, “to kneel before someone and by implication to bless God as an act of adoration” (Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance). Even though I haven’t ever kneeled before anyone, I have enough biblical and historical references to understand the idea. Philippians 2:9-11 is a prime example of it, and one that actually includes me:

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

This scenario shows how the action of kneeling before someone and the praiseworthy character of the one being kneeled before are two sides of the same coin. There is a balance, in the sense of fitting correspondence, between the two elements.

I have heard that the Hebrew worldview is more holistic than the Greek one so I’m going to let baruk remind me that praise is not an activity that primarily involves my mouth or even my brain but that it is the response of my whole being to the worthiness of God.