Free Online Tools for Learning Biblical Hebrew

Image by zofiaEliyahu from Pixabay 

When I used to read and study the Bible in English. my native tongue, I generally thought that I knew what the text said and felt confident to argue a point based on the grammar and word choices in the English translation I held in my hands.

It wasn't until I started to explore the Hebrew text that I realised just how wrong I was. 

For example, did you know that there is a specific word for "work" in Hebrew that is only used in the creation narrative, tabernacle construction narrative, and instructions about observing the Sabbath? In English, this distinction is completely lost — leading most readers of English Bibles to think the 39 Jewish prohibitions are merely "rabbinical" and not based on anything in the text. 

The word Torah, as another example, is translated variously in English as "law", "instruction(s)" and "teaching". The English-speaking reader has no idea as they skim over these words that they all refer to one of the greatest and most treasured concepts in the Hebrew language.

If you're at a point in your journey that you'd like to dive deeper into the Hebrew words that God revealed to the nation, prophets, and people of Israel — and to identify mistranslations in English — here are few free online tools that can help you get started:

1. The Alef-Bet Song by Debbie Friedman

Hebrew uses a completely different writing system to English, so the first step when learning Hebrew is to learn the letters of the Hebrew alef-bet. The Alef-Bet Song by Debbie Friedman provides a fun and repetitive way to learn the letters in Hebrew with collaboration from the students from Tribeca Hebrew in New York City.

2. Chabad Interactive Torah Trainer (Orthodox Jewish)

The second web tool that I love for learning Biblical Hebrew is the Chabad Interactive Torah Trainer with Trope (audio). In synagogues around the world, the Torah portion of the week is sung or chanted rather than read, and with this interactive Torah trainer, you will hear each Torah portion chanted at a slower-than-usual speed while the Hebrew words are highlighted on the screen.

2. BibleHub.com (Christian)

Hearing the Hebrew text is great, but understanding it is even better! The BibleHub interlinear Hebrew/English Bible provides the Masoretic Text with links to Strong's Concordance, a guide to the pronunciation of the words, and the English words/phrases that roughly correspond to the Hebrew (called "parsing"). 

Usually, I read the Hebrew letters and English translation in BibleHub while listening to the Chabad interactive Torah trainer. The Torah portions that I have read so far appear to be parsed (translated) in a similar way to Jewish translations, but BibleHub's parsing of the Prophets and the Writings is definitively more Christian than Jewish. To get the most complete concept of what the Hebrew says, I would advise using other sources in addition to BibleHub, such as:

  • The Jewish translations offered online at Sefaria 
    • (to compare other translations in English)
  • The Christian translations offered online at Parallel Bible 
    • (to compare other translations in English)

When checking the meaning of a Hebrew word in BibleHub, it can also be helpful to click on the Strong's Concordance number and read through all of the other instances of that word in the Tanakh to compare how the word is translated in other places. However, this is not a foolproof strategy because a translation always reflects the beliefs of the translator about the meaning of a word.

Ultimately, the best way to learn Biblical Hebrew is to study with a Torah scholar who reads the Tanakh in Hebrew, prays in Hebrew, and who essentially lives and breathes in Hebrew. There's a lot that we can learn online but there's nothing like learning from a real live person!

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