Welcome to my new blog, "Lost in Translation," which will be all about my efforts to understand the Hebrew Prayers of historical and contemporary Judaism better by analyzing their word choices and working out my own English translations of them. For me, this is fun (I know, I'm a geek). For you, hopefully it will be interesting reading and a nice break from your daily "real world" grind.
For each entry, I will present the prayer in Hebrew first, then stroll through its words and their roots and meanings in context, then end with a hopefully-somewhat-poetic English translation of the prayer.
So without further ado, I present the first prayer observant Jews are to say when they wake up:
| transliteration | |
original hebrew
|
| modeh 'ani l'phahneychah melech chay v'qayyahm, | |
,מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם
|
| shehechezar'tah bi nish'mahti b'chem'lah | |
.שֶׁהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה
|
| rabbah 'emunahtechah | |
|
Now, looking at the words:
'ani is the first-person pronoun, so "I" am doing whatever action
modeh means.
modeh appears to be the causative present form of a root (
y-d-h) meaning "throw," but this particular vowelization of that root has come to mean "give thanks" instead, for reasons that are not at all obvious.
l' is the Hebrew prefix that means "to or toward",
p-n-y is the Hebrew root meaning "face", and
-chah is the Hebrew suffix meaning "belonging to you". The third word, then, literally means "to your face," but this is a common Hebrew way of saying "in front of you"
This is a great illustration of the dangers of so-called literal translation. A very literal translation of the first three words we are to say to God each morning might be "I throw things in your face" (which might indeed be what we feel like saying first thing in the morning), when instead the figurative meaning is "I give thanks in front of you"
melech is a common word in Hebrew prayers that used to be translated "king" but in today's gender-inclusive and less-authoritarian world is often translated "ruler" or "sovereign"
chay is the Hebrew word for life. This is a great chance to mention that nouns in Hebrew can do things they don't ordinarily do in English. Here, this noun seems to be acting like an adjective.
v' is the universal Hebrew conjunction. It usually means "and", but it can also mean "so" or "then", and I think I have even seen it mean "or" or "but" in a certain context.
qayyahm is a form of the root
q-u-m, meaning to rise or to stand. It seems like an intensive form, but it also seems to be being used in parallel to
chay here, that is as an adjective.
So this second phrase of the prayer could translate as "king who is alive and still standing" or "living and forever-standing ruler"
she- is a Hebrew prefix meaning "who (does)" (linking the previous noun phrase to the following action)
hehechezar'tah means "causes to return"
bi is another fun Hebrew-ism: a prefix (
b' means "in" or "into") plus a suffix (
-i means "belonging to me"), so this word means "into me"
nishmaht is the construct (belonging-to-someone) form of "breath" or "spirit" (universally equated in the ancient world), and, as before,
-i is the suffix meaning "mine"
b' again means "in" or "into" and
chem'lah means "compassion", so "in compassion"
This third phrase of the prayer translates as "who, in compassion, causes my spirit to return into me" (a reference to an ancient belief that the soul wandered from the body during sleep)
rabbah means "(he/she/it) is great"
'emunaht means "steadfastness" or "faithfulness" or "fidelity" or "trustworthiness" and
-chah is the second-person-possessive suffix ("your").
So this last phrase of the prayer means "great is your faithfulness"
So a fairly straight translation of this prayer would be:
I give thanks in front of you, living and everlasting ruler,
who, in compassion, causes my spirit to return into me.
Great is your faithfulness!
A more poetic, free translation, following what seems to be the sense of the language, might be:
I stand thankful before you,
you who are in charge of everything,
alive and still standing!
in your compassion,
you have kept me alive all night
and given me a refreshed spirit this morning.
great are you,
and worthy of the trust I place in you each night!
