ברך

I need to rage about Hebrew for a hot minute. So, imagine my face when I found out that the word for sin (חטא) can also mean not sin, blameless. Well, you can always spot the difference between the two usages by the inflection. Sin (Hata). Not sin (Hittey). The first is the base form, and the second takes that base meaning and turns it around to mean that the subject is making atonement for sin.

I’ve started reading through Job. When Job says, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts,” I didn’t recognize the word for curse. Actually, I did recognize it. It was the word bless (ברך). So, I say to myself, it must be something similar. I look up the word in my lexicon. Nope. Still means to bless. I know the book of Job. It should say to curse. Let me check this entry again. There, in the small print: “Bless, but with the antithetical meaning, curse . . . ” So, the same word, with no change in inflection, can mean

1. To bless

2. God blesses men

3. Men bless men

4. Greet

5. Bless, but sarcastically ” . . . a blessing overdone and so really a curse as in vulgar English as well as in the Shemitic cognates.”

I am DONE! (This is like the third time that a word means its opposite because the Hebrew people are so sarcastic that the definition of their words literally mean the opposite of what they mean!)