One reason to learn Hebrew...

I have been trying to learn more on the esoteric and Jewish mysticism side of things and I was at a few Jewish bookstores and tend to get everyone telling me to learn Hebrew if you want to get the true meaning of any text that originates from Israel.

Anyway I was talking to a local guy who is more familar with Esoteric and Mysticism than myself. This is one example he gave me and can you imagine the number of other things most people read wrong ...

"One tiny for instance -- linguistically, when it says, in Jacob's dream, that God was "standing" at his (Jacob's) head, we notice that the Hebrew word used is not the one for stand as in "go stand in the corner" -- it's the one used for stand as in "a stand of trees" or "a post standing in the ground" -- What we translate into English as simply "God was standing at his head" now means much more --- God is rooting Himself to Jacob, taking a stand with Jacob (soon to be Israel) for all time. Now there's an anchor for that ladder going from heaven to earth, a reason why all those "angels" (in Hebrew the same word as for "messenger") depart and return to Jacob's place -- this is where God is planted -- where the divine has "standing" in the material world. And so on."

Learning Hebrew is guaranteed to expand your understanding in profound ways--not just linguistically but also in a metaphysically sense that will clear your view on countless things concerning life, itself.

And it is actually not at all hard to pick up on in a very short time. One of the easiest (and most economical ways) to learn is by reading the OT in a translation that has the Strong's numbers listed and making reference to the lexicon. There is another aspect to Hebrew that is something best started out in the beginning; and that is learning the 'character' or 'personalities' of each letter. This is easily done on-line (there are many free sources for this activity)

It's also helpful, but not necessary, to look into the various evolution that the letters have gone through, and the very first forms of the letters that we know of shed quite a bit of light on the 'personality' side of studying the individual letters.

I have found a couple of really good websites which I learned a lot from--I'll look them up and post the links for you.

agree, that is often why sometimes i use a litteral translation of the bible. It can catch things like that but is a poor subtitute for knowing the real language. I really want to learn hebrew so i can fully appreciate Proverbs and psalms