Biblical Hebrew pronunciation

Most apps teach Modern Israeli Hebrew. The Hebrew Bible was read aloud with more sounds than that. This guide shows the biblical (Tiberian) pronunciation that scholarly grammars teach, which is what you hear on Bible Hebrew, and where Modern Hebrew is different.

Where the Bible’s sounds differ from Modern Hebrew

The vowel marks and accents of the Hebrew Bible were written down by the Masoretes in Tiberias, around the 9th century. Their reading keeps sounds that Modern Israeli Hebrew has merged or lost:

• Throat sounds. ח is a strong h from deep in the throat, not the “kh” of soft כ. ע is a squeezed sound in the throat, not silent.
• Emphatic letters. ט, צ and ק are said with the back of the tongue raised, which is why they are different letters from ת, ס and כּ.
• Waw is w. ו is “w”, as in water. So “and” is wə, and the story verb וַיֹּאמֶר is wayyōmer.

Hard and soft letters

Six letters have a hard sound with a dot inside (after a consonant or at the start of a word) and a soft sound without it (after a vowel). Modern Hebrew keeps only three of these pairs; the Bible has all six.

The same words, old and modern

Even older: Hebrew before the Masoretes

The Masoretes wrote down one careful reading tradition, about 1,100 years ago. A few older sources let us hear further back, because they wrote Hebrew words in Greek letters.

• Two sounds behind ע. The Greek Septuagint (3rd–2nd centuries BC) writes עַזָּה as Gaza and עֲמֹרָה as Gomorrah, with a g, but עֵלִי as Eli, with nothing. In those days ע stood for two sounds: the throat squeeze, and a gargled “gh” like Arabic ghayn. They later merged into one.
• Two sounds behind ח. It writes רָחֵל as Rachēl, with Greek χ (kh), but יִצְחָק as Isaak, with nothing. ח too was once two sounds: the strong h the Masoretes kept, and a rougher “kh”.
• Short nouns had one syllable. Origen’s Hexapla (around AD 240) has a column of Hebrew in Greek letters. It spells בֹּקֶר “morning” as bokr, דֶּרֶךְ “way” as derkh and זֵכֶר “memory” as zekhr, without the extra e of bōqer, derekh and zēkher.

Bible Hebrew teaches the Tiberian reading, because it is the one written into the vowel marks of every printed Hebrew Bible. These older spellings show that the sounds it keeps, like the throat letters, really are ancient.

The divine name

God’s own name, יהוה, is read on this site as yəḥawwe. It appears 6,828 times in the Hebrew Bible. Many English Bibles print it as “LORD” in small capitals, and many readers say אֲדֹנָי in its place.

Start with the letters

The alphabet page has every letter with a recording in this pronunciation, and the vowels page has the vowel marks.

← Hebrew vowels