/lit/ - Literature

>>23423328
I'm the Hacket-lover, and I'll shill for her until the day that I die. Basic Introduction to Biblical Hebrew best book

>>23370172
You'd need to get through the verbal system. Hebrew's a funky language, it's built off triconsonantal roots, which means that all words are built off three consonants which have a general meaning, and then are formalized into actual words through other consonants and vowels. For example, שׁפת is a root with a general idea of judging. You can make it a noun, שֹׁפֵת , meaning a judge, or more specifically, one who judges in a participial sense, or you can turn it into another noun, מִשְׁפַּת , which is a judgement or a commandment. You can also take that same root and make it into a verb, שָׁפַת , which is to judge, which can then be fucked around with to create different meanings. For instance, the aforementioned form, שָׁפַת , is the third person singular suffix form in the Qal stem, which is the simple stem that doesn't carry an additional meaning, and the suffix form is the general past tense. You could also, however, make it into a third person prefix singular in the Hiphil stem, יַשְׁפִית , with prefix giving a present/future/modal meaning and Hiphil giving a causative meaning, giving a sense of "he will be caused to judge" or something along those lines. Most of translation is first figuring out the root of a word, then looking at what permutations it's been subject to and trying to figure out what exactly it means. For nouns, it's a bit simpler because you need to more memorize words themselves, and the roots are moreso aids in understanding what the exact word means. Like you can either memorize that מִשְׁפַּת means judgement, or you can look at the triconsonental root of judgement and try to figure its meaning thence. Verbs are different, because you memorize the root, and then look at what it's undergone, which gives a more formulaic way of figuring the meaning.

All this is a long winded way of saying that you can't really fake your way too well through a text, not without a pretty solid understanding of the grammar. I very highly recommend Jo Ann Hacket's Basic Introduction to Biblical Hebrew, it's really well done and allows you to have that basic working grammar to get through a lot of texts, though you'll need vocab assistance for most real texts, but that's not a necessary acquisition when you're first learning. When you're starting, you'd want to stick with what you're doing in the textbook and get most of the way through the book before you start looking at actual texts.