144 Names of God in the Hebrew Bible: A Journey to the Center of GodSpeak in Ancient Israel

The Hebrew alphabet contains 22 letters. A number of ancient Hebrew poems have an acrostic structure. The first line or set of lines of the poem begins with an alef, the second with a bet, the third with a gimel, and so on.

This section of the 144 names has an acrostic structure. The opening section of the list is introduced here. The series itself is introduced here.

Descriptive phrases for God are numerous and varied in the Hebrew Bible. It is possible to organize a subset of them in an acrostic pattern. A tight thematic unity is not attainable, but the associations that “fall out” in the process are nevertheless food for thought.

The list of names I offer is designed for memorization. Why would anyone want to memorize a text of any length? Isn’t “learning by rote” passé?

 

I suppose that’s true. The first time I was asked to memorize a text of any length was for a class on Homer’s Iliad at the UW-Madison. Students were required to memorize the epic poem’s first 100 lines and recite it in class. I learned a lot of Greek and even a little prosody in the process. Ever since I’ve been convinced that committing extended text to memory is an excellent way to get a language into one’s bones.

I was not asked to memorize extended text through grade school, middle school, and high school. In college the request was rare. It is as if a whole method of learning and knowing has been banned.

Are music and drama students in a class by themselves, a different subspecies of the human race? They learn long things by heart. Why can’t the rest of us?

Here are 22 names of God organized acrostically, with a scriptural preface. The text with vowels along with comment will be provided in an upcoming post.

 כי יהוה אלהיכם

הוא אלהי האלהים

ואדני האדנים

 

אשר לא־ישא פנים

ולא יקח שחד

 

אהב גר

בונה ירושלם

גדל חסד

דרך על־במתי ארץ

הפכי הצור אגם־מים

ואל מסתתר

 

זקף כפופים

חפץ חסד

טהור עינים

יושב תהלות ישראל

 

כביר כח לב

לא עץ

מהלל מאד

נאדר בקדש

סומך נפלים

עשה שמים וארץ

 

פעל ישועות

צדיק בכל־דרכיו

קרוב לכל־קראיו

 

רגע הים

שופך בוז על־נדיבים

תלה ארץ על־בלי־מה

 

If you can read the unvocalized text correctly and without difficulty, you have a strong working knowledge of ancient Hebrew. If you cannot, but you would like to be able to, stay with me. By committing these names to memory, you will take a giant step in the direction of being able to read the Hebrew of the Bible without the aid of vowels and without consulting a dictionary and a grammar at every turn.

Comments

[Lingamish]

Ok, I'll try...

[Bob MacDonald]

Just to let you know - I am staying with you - your tests are just beyond my easy reach. I have returned to doing some Brettler exercises with help from Lambdin - mostly pronomial suffixes the last two days - and my biggest concerns are my failure to see verbal forms and slowness of memory function - but what me worry? not a chance

[JohnFH]

That's impressive, Bob.

You'd be surprised to know how many people, even tenured professors of biblical Hebrew, would stumble their way through the whole list in unvocalized form.