Lesson 7 | Vocab
Speaking into the Air
Now that you've nearly completed one year's worth of biblical Hebrew, we hope you are excited about both what the Lord has allowed you to learn, and about what is left to learn as you move forward on the path of growing in Hebrew.
But as you speak to others about God's Word in a small-group Bible study, or from behind a pulpit, or in conversation with a friend, coffee in hand, here is one piece of important advice:
Don't talk about Hebrew.
Does that sound strange? “I’ve spent all this effort and money learning Hebrew, and now I’m not even supposed to bring it up?!” Of course, you should use Hebrew to the best of your abilities, but when speaking with people who don’t know Hebrew, what you talk about, compared with what you know, should be like an iceberg.
If you are ever fortunate enough to travel to Newfoundland, Canada, and see an iceberg floating by, even a massive one larger than a house, you are only seeing about 10% of its mass! The remaining 90% is out of sight under the water.¹
Why should you keep your knowledge of Hebrew largely out of sight, like 90% of an iceberg? Because if you talk about Hebrew with someone who knows nothing about it, or Greek, or even English grammar, you will be "speaking into the air."
And our goal when teaching, when speaking with others, should always be building them up. If you talk about things they don’t understand and cannot be readily explained, you won’t be building them up; you risk, rather, building yourself up—setting yourself up as an authority whom they cannot question.
So study Hebrew, read Scripture in Hebrew, dig into commentaries that use Hebrew, but keep most of that technical work under water. Typically, the sole thing above water should be the results of your study, with your aim on God’s glory and others’ edification.