A large portion of my summer was spent learning Biblical Hebrew and…. man… it was hard. It’s just a hard thing to always feel as though you are behind. The sheer bulk of vocabulary that I had to make flash cards for and then memorize was incredible. Often, just not being able to recognize one or two words in a sentence we had to translate would throw off the entire translation. All that being said, I easily found myself distracted with so many other things that I can honestly say that I did not work as hard learning Hebrew as I did for Greek.
Still, it was a great experience. The first twenty minutes of every class was spent catching up with each other. Our professor told us that if we are all going through this experience then we had to do it together – that we don’t have the option of being anonymous individuals. When the World Cup came on he told us that we aren’t allowed to burry our heads in the sand and pretend like the rest of the world wasn’t happening around us – even as students in a rigorous program (8 months of classes in 9 weeks!) that we can’t disengage from the world.
So, my Hebrew skills are not amazing at all. Yet, I can use Hebrew to enhance my study of the Bible so that I might better serve others – and that is amazing!
Still, it was a great experience. The first twenty minutes of every class was spent catching up with each other. Our professor told us that if we are all going through this experience then we had to do it together – that we don’t have the option of being anonymous individuals. When the World Cup came on he told us that we aren’t allowed to burry our heads in the sand and pretend like the rest of the world wasn’t happening around us – even as students in a rigorous program (8 months of classes in 9 weeks!) that we can’t disengage from the world.
So, my Hebrew skills are not amazing at all. Yet, I can use Hebrew to enhance my study of the Bible so that I might better serve others – and that is amazing!