Translating and parsing sentences is one of the main things you will do while studying Biblical Hebrew. This ability helps you to translate and understand sentences to become more proficient in the Biblical Hebrew language.
First comes the original text, whether from the textbook or the Tanakh.
(א) בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת
הָאָֽרֶץ׃
The first thing I try and do, especially when I don't know any of the words, is to try and identify what is a verb, noun. etc. One thing that is helpful to remember is Hebrew tends to follow a Verb, Subject, Object sentence structure. Do not solely rely on this, because not all Hebrew text follows this, but it is a safe start.
I will identify verbs as red, nouns as blue, pronouns as light blue and prepositions as green.
In my homework, I usually identify them by writing a V above the verbs, and an N above the Nouns, but I figured it would be easier to see with colors here. You can do whatever you want, just do something that is helpful to you and will help you learn.
(א) בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
Dr. Riley, and other professors, often ask questions like "what part of speech is בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית ?" By identifying these earlier on in your homework, you will feel less pressure of being wrong in class. Also, by learning how to identify them, as we do in class, you will eventually be able to site read, and not need to do this extra work.
Next I try and parse the verbs, and I usually do that by rewriting them down below, including the person, number, gender, binyan/stem and root/shoresh.
ברא = בָּרָ֣א this is the root, which means "to create".
even though this doesn't look identical to the Qal binyan which we just learned in class, this is indeed the Qal form. By looking at the Qal stem, I know that this pattern is 3ms perfect (3rd person, masculine, singular).
By knowing these things, we know we translate this as "He created".
Since we know the other words in this sentence are nouns, if we don't know the words, we can simply look them up in our textbook (Any homework you will be assigned, for now, will be words given to you from the textbook. Later on, when we start reading the Tanakh, you will also be using a Lexicon, which is a big ol' book that includes every Biblical Hebrew word ever, in every form it has appeared, but don't worry about that right now).
When translating a difficult sentence, I first translate it literally, as in I don't rearrange the sentence to fit English grammar until I understand what the sentence is saying. This will become more apparent later on, right now, with sentences we are dealing with, this isn't that important.
As you can see, literally this is "In the beginning He created Elohim the heavens and the earth." Now this is kind of funky, so rearrange it to make sense "In the beginning, Elohim/God created the heavens and the earth."
(א) בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית(in the beginning) בָּרָ֣א(He created )אֱלֹהִ֑ים(Elohim) אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם(The heavens) וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ(And the earth)׃
Later on in this course, sentences will get trickier to translate. That is when parsing becomes really important, a masculine suffix applies to a masculine noun or if the suffix indicated 1cs (1st common singluar = I/me) it would not belong to a noun that was third person (ie. women), etc. That is why knowing how to parse is so important, because the translation might not be so obvious.
So here is a snapshot of what my homework would look like:
(ב) וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃
הָיְתָ֥ה
-from the root היה
-Qal perfect 3fs "She/it was"
מְרַחֶ֖פֶת
- from the root רחף
- Piel participle, translated as "hovering"
Translation:
The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
*If I didn't know the translation any of the nouns, I would have looked them up and written them down separately as well, just to help me remember.
Hope this helps!
Isabel