It’s that time again!

Welcome back for my 4th Bite-Sized Hebrew Lesson, part of my monthly Hebrew Through Reading (HTR) series. (In case you missed the first three, you can read lessons one, two, and three here.) As usual, we’ll translate a quote word by word, phrase by phrase, using my four steps to improving Hebrew reading.

תַּאֲמִינוּ [taaminu] is a future-tense verb that means you (pl. m) will believe. It’s the second person, plural form of the hifil verb לְהַאֲמִין [l’haamin], which means to believe. In spoken Hebrew, the future-tense form of the verb is often used also as the imperative, or command form of the verb: believe, as directed to a group.

שֶׁדְּבָרִים [shed’varim] is a combination of the prefix שֶׁ [she], and the plural noun דְּבָרִים [d’varim]. As you learned in Lesson 3, שֶׁ is a conjunction that means that, which, or who. The masculine plural noun דְּבָרִים means things; the singular form is דָּבָר [davar].

So far, we have: You will believe/believe that things…. (We see here that which or who wouldn’t make sense.)

טוֹבִים [tovim] is a plural masculine adjective that means good. In Hebrew, adjectives follow nouns, which is the opposite of what happens in English. In English, we would say “red ball” – the adjective first, followed by the noun; in Hebrew, we would phrase it as “ball red,” with the noun first, followed by the adjective. Furthermore, Hebrew adjectives must follow the gender and count of the noun it’s describing. This means that masculine nouns take masculine adjectives; feminine nouns take feminine adjectives; singular nouns take singular adjectives; and plural nouns take plural adjectives. (For more about adjectives, check out my video lesson and study guide.) Here, our masculine plural adjective טובים [tovim] is linked with the masculine plural noun דברים [d’varim], meaning good things.

At this point, we have: You will believe/believe that good things….

הוֹלְכִים [holchim] is a present-tense verb that means going or walking (pl. m). This is the masculine plural form of the paal verb לַלֶכֶת [lalechet], which means to go or walk.

לִקְרוֹת [liqrot] is a paal verb that means to happen, and this is the infinitive “to” form of the verb. Together, the phrase הולכים לקרות [holchim liqrot] means going to happen.

Putting this all together, we have: You will believe/believe that good things are going to happen. This quote sounds best using the imperative believe rather than you will believe, so our final translation is…

BELIEVE THAT GOOD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN.

Be sure to pin the Bite-Sized Hebrew Lesson summary below so you can always refer back to it.

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Until next time!
-T’helah 💙