7 Things Jews Should Know about the Hebrew Language by Meri Blye Kramer l Understanding Hebrew l Tips on Hebrew

It Often Gets Lost in Translation

Hebrew has imperfect (incompleted action) and perfect (completed action) tenses, rather than past, present and future, so when Hebrew is translated into English, virtually all sentences lose their mysterious potential. One of the most intriguing examples is found in Exodus 3:14, usually translated “I am that I am”. But the Hebrew verb commonly translated “am” is actually in the imperfect tense, causing some Jewish Bibles to translate this as “I Shall Be As I Shall Be”, a mysterious, Divine Name of God. Those who want to be able to explain God will squirm at this, but there it is: the untranslatable Hebrew introducing us to new imaginings of the Divine.