The Code Behind the Cosmos

Hebrew is a Different Sort of Language

Welcome back to the Language of Life series.

Two posts ago, we introduced the radical notion that while other languages evolved naturally — together with the societies that produced them — Hebrew was designed by God, the same Designer Who designed the universe.

“…while other languages evolved naturally — together with the societies that produced them — Hebrew was designed by God, the same Designer Who designed the universe.”

As mind-blowing as this notion is, it is a central and normative belief found in oral traditions recorded in the Midrash, the Talmud, and the Zohar. It is also referenced by Rashi, the most-studied commentator on the Torah, and therefore familiar to Jewish school children.

Some of our readers may have never questioned this premise precisely because it is so pervasive in Jewish thought. Revealing the meaning of words by systematically breaking down their etymological roots, looking at their letter combinations letter-by-letter, or even analyzing words through their numerical value is considered completely normal in Torah culture. It might be normal for Jews, but it is not a normal way to analyze any other natural language, if you think about it.

Others, no doubt, will find the notion of a “Divine language” a hard pill to swallow. This is totally okay. I hope that we raise and answer some of your big questions as we continue our exploration. If we don’t, please put your questions in the comments below, or in any of the XL posts that follow. In the meantime, I invite you to allow yourself the luxury of pondering how a Divine language might work if it were to exist. Later, we can reassess if it does.

---

Here are 3 major upshots of the premise that Hebrew is Divine:

1. Correct Correspondence - If the Architect of the universe was also the Architect of the Hebrew language, Hebrew would have to fit like a glove on the hand of reality. Its words should correspond with perfect accuracy with the fundamental, underlying concepts of reality, specifically as they pertain to human life and human flourishing.¹

   Discovering the deeper meaning of Hebrew would be like decoding the genome and discovering the precise mapping of every part of life in the world back to its corresponding genes in the Hebrew language.

   As we discussed in last week’s post, the masterkey for determining the most authentic meaning of any Hebrew word would be the Torah. The Torah is the Rosetta Stone of the Holy language.

2. Perfect Precision - Natural languages are messy because they evolve in a disorganized way through their usage by people. A Divine language, in contrast, should possess a precise, perfectly designed, “laser cut” quality. There should be nothing superfluous. No synonyms or unnecessary grammatical elements that just “ended up in the language.” The Torah’s Hebrew should have no more and no less than what is needed to describe the essence of things — much like the elegant mathematical formulas scientists look to uncover beneath physical phenomena.

   

3. Maximal Meaningfulness - Everything about the language, from nuances in the shapes of letters, to the way they combine with one another — everything should encode meaning. If Hebrew is Divine, it must be a masterpiece of the highest order.

Rabbi Yaakov Marcus teaching about the shape of the letter Aleph-א in his Mystical Aleph Bet series.

As our series develops, we will see examples of these three phenomena in Hebrew, but let’s start by taking a peak at correspondence.

The Torah opens with the moment of creation, and very quickly arrives at the idea that language and communication are essential to being a human being. Except that the Torah’s notion of communication is not merely making arbitrary sounds in someone else’s direction, hoping that they happen to also be familiar with the arbitrary sounds we just made, and are capable of decoding what we meant by them. Instead, words are introduced as revealing the essence of that which one is speaking about.

Let me explain.

God initially made Adam alone. To make him appreciate Chava (Eve), the woman who would ultimately become his wife, he first brought all species of animals to him “to see what he would call them.” The names he would give them remained their names in Hebrew forever. (The Malbim, one of the great rabbis of the 19th century, explains how this process of language acquisition must have worked. I have included a translation below because it is fascinating and so apropos to our discussion.²)

The question is: How was Adam so good at picking names that would stick?

Hebrew language wasn’t invented by Adam — it was discovered by him. He was given the gift of a human mind that could see into things, and in so doing, understood their essence.

Here is a taste of some of the associations baked into names of animals given by the first human being with a soul (Neshama-נשמה, which has the word Shem-שם right in the middle of it):

• Tzippor - צפר (bird) – The Hebrew word for Bird is Tzippor-צפור. The kernel root of the word is Tzaf-צפ, which means to “rise above” and float” and “to see from afar.” Birds are more than just feathery flapping creatures. They are the emodiment of rising above to survey below.

• Kelev - כלב (dog) – “Dog” in Hebrew is Kelev-כלב, which is understood by many to be a contraction of Kulo Lev-כולו לב, meaning, “all heart.” Dogs are “man’s best friend” because they are all heart, pumping back to us the emotions we give them.

• Soos - סוס (horse) – Even if you can’t read Hebrew, you can see that the way to write Soos-סוס is two draw two circles with a line in between. A horse will run as fast as it can in a circle, and then do it all over again (I can’t help myself from sharing an old Seinfeld bit about horses that comes to mind). Horses are raw, undirected horsepower that will take you in circles nowhere unless you direct them where to go.³

This is, as I said, a taste of how Hebrew is the code behind the user-interface of the world we see with our physical eyes. Hebrew, as understood through the Torah, allows us to look into the essence of things.

“Hebrew, as understood through the Torah, allows us to look into the essence of things.”

Next post, we will take a more systematic look at the name Adam initially gave to the first woman when he first set eyes on her:

אשה

It is the understood by the Sages of the Talmud to be the textual proof that the Torah was originally given in Hebrew, and even more than this, evidence that the universe was created with Hebrew.

There’s literally a world in this word to be explored.

Stay tuned.

1. As Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel would say, “The Torah is not man’s theology of God, but rather, God’s anthropology of man.” The focus of the Torah teaching is the fulfillment of human potential. The language of the Torah is therefore fine-tuned for speaking about morality and the achieving of life’s purpose.

2. The meaning of words in the Written Torah (Tanakh, aka the “Hebrew Bible”) relies on the Oral Torah. The “Oral Torah” refers to the oral tradition of what was the original meaning of the words in the Torah. If I was learning English, and asked you what the word “blue” means, you would find something blue and point to it. How do you know that’s what it means? Because since before you learned to speak, that color was always referred to as “blue.”

Without an oral tradition, the meaning of words can drift. The word “gay,” for example, used to mean “happy.” Today, it almost exclusively means “homosexual.” The bird known as the Nesher-נשר, was commonly translated by European and American Jews as “eagle,” conjuring the image of a bald eagle. However, this is not possible as bald eagles didn’t exist in the Middle East. According to rabbi and zoologist Natan Slifkin, a Nesher-נשר is a griffon vulture, but its meaning drifted over time.

Since oral traditions on their own are subject to “broken telephone,” the Talmud and Midrash made it their business to amass evidence to and analysis to support oral traditions as to the meanings of words or phrases in the Torah. They also opened the floor to debate with proofs either way whenever there was disagreement as to the meaning of a word or phrase in context.

3. Translation of the Comments of Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser (Malbim, 1809-1879)

"And the Hashem God formed formed out of the ground every wild beast and every bird of heaven and brought [them] to man to see what he would name each one, whatever the human called each living thing remained its name."

The Torah teaches us many things here:

There has been a long-standing debate among scholars—since ancient times until today—about whether the first speech came to man through an intermediary or directly. Many books have been written on this topic, each presenting evidence for its perspective. However, the testimony of the Torah is reliable: the first speech was implanted in man by God through a miracle. As mentioned earlier (verse 8), anything that man could not exist without was implanted in him immediately at the moment of his creation. Our task now is only to respond to those who disagree.

God teaching Adam language and speech could be imagined as happening in two ways: either miraculously, in a single moment where he learned the entire language at once, or gradually, word by word, concept by concept. The answer is that a single miracle suffices; otherwise, it would require unnecessary multiple miracles. The way this could happen is either by placing in man's soul an innate understanding that spontaneously generates language, just as it produces comprehension and ideas, or by directly implanting the language within him.

The answer to this is that the soul is a simple essence—it has only the ability to perceive and conceive but not to invent a language. Therefore, it must be that God implanted language in man. This could have happened in two ways: either by implanting the words without their associated meanings—which is impossible, for then how would he later know that this is a "vulture" and that is a "lion" if he had never seen them before?—or by implanting both the words and their meanings. The latter is also impossible because it would mean that he understood concepts without ever having perceived them. How could the forms of a lion or a vulture enter his mind if he had never seen them?

The Torah provides an answer with the phrase "and He brought [them] to the man to see what he would call them"—that is, Adam learned language through experience, with God as his teacher. But unlike human teachers who assign arbitrary names, Adam himself devised the names. He saw the animals with his own eyes and recognized the differences between each species. That is why it says "to see"—the purpose of bringing the animals to Adam was for him to observe them and thereby determine their names. Yet, this was still an immediate comprehension, for God implanted the entire language in him in a single moment.

Another principle here is that all the qualities found scattered among the various creatures of creation were gathered together in the human soul. Ancient scholars have already explained that whenever a person doubts whether a certain trait exists in human nature, they should examine whether such a trait is found in an animal. If so, then it must also exist within the human soul. This was so well-known that ancient sages often used animal names as metaphors for human traits. For example, they called bravery "lion-like", audacity "leopard-like", pride "horse-like", and modesty "cat-like". They would say, "the horse within man," "the lion within man."

Maimonides discussed this in his explanation of the Merkavah (Divine Chariot) regarding the four creatures described in Ezekiel’s vision (as mentioned in Guide for the Perplexed, Part II). Similarly, Solomon said, "Go to the ant, you sluggard; observe its ways and become wise" (Proverbs 6:6). He meant: You, the lazy person who thinks diligence is impossible for you—see that this trait exists in the ant’s nature, and surely it must exist in human nature as well. In other words, all the characteristics that God implanted in animals during creation were designed as a preparation for their eventual collection within the human soul—just as rays of sunlight gather and focus on a polished glass lens.

I already explained (verse 7) the difference between human traits and those implanted in animals. This is indicated by the wording "And Hashem God formed man from the dust of the ground" in contrast to "And He formed the animals from the earth." Each animal possesses only a single dominant trait—like a single lump of earth—whereas man’s essence was gathered from all the earth, meaning his soul contains all the traits scattered among animals.

This is why the Midrash says that God told the angels that man's wisdom is greater than theirs, as proven by his ability to name all the animals. The angels then asked Adam, "And what is your name?" He replied, "Adam, because I was created from the earth." This is remarkable because all animals were also created from the earth. But what Adam meant was: Since my soul contains all the qualities found in animals, it is clear that I was created from all the earth, not from a single lump of it. That is why only man is worthy of the name "Adam"—which represents the entirety of the earth.

The Torah states "And Hashem God formed every beast of the field and brought them to Adam"—this means that all their characteristics and qualities were brought into Adam, for the human soul includes them all. That is why Adam was able to name them appropriately, as he could recognize in himself the unique quality of each species. Thus, the verse says "whatever Adam called a living soul, that was its name"—indicating that Adam named them based on their inherent nature, recognizing in them the traits that also existed within himself.

There is a distinction in Hebrew between "calling him" (קרא אותו) and "calling to him" (קרא לו). The phrase "calling him" refers to the first, original name, while "calling to him" suggests adding an additional, secondary name. All animals were initially given the general name "living soul" (נפש חיה), as stated earlier: "Let the earth bring forth living souls" (Genesis 1:24). Only man was given a unique name—Adam. When Adam assigned names to the animals, he was giving them a second, more specific name based on their distinct qualities.

The angels, however, were unable to assign these secondary names because they could only perceive the general category. Adam, having gathered all these qualities within himself, was able to perceive and name each species individually.

The Torah precedes this discussion with "It is not good for man to be alone," and concludes with "but for Adam, no helper was found suitable for him." This shows that the purpose of bringing the animals to Adam was not only to name them but also to determine whether any of them could serve as a helper for him.

Some animals indeed serve as helpers: the horse for riding, the donkey and camel for carrying loads, and so forth. However, God wanted to create a helper "opposite him"—one who would assist him in all his needs, including preparing food and household tasks. The phrase "opposite him" (כנגדו) implies not just utility but companionship.

That is why the Torah first says "And Hashem God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens", but later, when discussing the naming, it adds "and all the domesticated animals." Originally, all animals were wild, and their domesticated forms—such as cattle and donkeys—emerged later through human cultivation…