This week's column is brought to you by the letter B and the number 2 (with apologies to Sesame Street!).
Hebrew בּית bêyth is the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet and meant a 'house or tent'. It is pronounced as a soft 'bh' or 'v' in the middle of words but at the beginning or when it has a dot (dagesh) in its centre it is hardened to a normal 'b'. The original letter-picture was of a tent and in Ethiopic the letter 'b' n still looks like a tent.
The familiar pronunciation of ב bêth as beth or bait is most reminiscent in such place names as Beth-el (Strong's #1008) and Beth-lehem (Strong's #1035), respectively 'house of God' and 'house of bread'. Aramaic has the related verb בּות bûth (Strong's #956) pronounced like 'booth' and in fact does mean somewhere 'to pass the night'. According to Jewish tradition (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Seasons 4:2) for a Succoth Tabernacles booth to be valid it was required to have 3 walls just as the letter ב bêth has 3 sides.
בית bayith 'house' (Strong's #1004) means more than just 'house', it ranges from 'tent' and 'tabernacle' (Exodus 23:19, Joshua 6:24) through 'fortress' to 'palace' or 'temple'. It is even used of a spider's web or man's body as a house of clay.
In Egyptian hieroglyphs bît is the ideogram of a bee and is listed first in the sign lists. It meant 'bee', 'honey' and later 'royalty'. The Hebrew for 'bee, swarm' is דּבורה debhôrâh (Strong's #1682/3) from דּבר dâbhar (Strong's #1696) 'to utter, speak, order, lead...', so possibly from the sense of order in bee-dom or the sound of their buzzing being like a verbal muttering or murmuring. Debhash דּבש (Strong's #1706) is 'honey' perhaps from the idea of softness or indeed its colour, Maltese has dibsi, 'yellow', honey colour. Curiously, דּבשת dabesheth (Strong's #1707) is the word for a camel's hump, possibly from its softness or its resembling a bee hive!
The Jewish Talmud in Haghigha 2 says that the world was created by ב bêyth, elsewhere beth is regarded as actually created first. ב bêyth signifies the number '2' which is seen as pointing to the fact that from the beginning two creations were signalled - this world and the world to come. ב bêyth also stood for the two messiahs: ben David (son of victory/glory) and ben Joseph (son of suffering). Proverbs 8:30 speaks of the Messiah as being beside God as a master builder before creation.
Since א begins the word arirah from ארר ârar 'to curse bitterly' (Strong's #779), it was not good that Scripture should begin with a curse but rather a blessing, hence ב bêyth is used which begins the word בּרך bârakh 'to bless' (Strong's #1288) or בּרכה berâkhâh, 'a blessing' (Strong's #1293), not because it begins the words bere'shith or bara' which come from the opening verse of Genesis. (Midrash Rabbah Genesis 1:10)
"Why does the creation story and Scripture itself begin with the letter ב bêth and not א aleph, the first letter as we might expect? Because ב is closed behind, above and below to indicate that that which is now and which will follow is open to you [reading and viewing from the right to the left] and that which is before creation, above in the heavens or below in hell is closed to you." (Mishnah, Chagigah 77c; cf. 11.1)
בּית bayith 'house' also means the 'inside, inner part, within'. A shortened form of בּית bayith, בי Bêy, is used in Aramaic for 'in', and this may also be the basis of the Hebrew preposition a be 'in, by, within', the very word and letter with which Scripture begins in the phrase, בּראשית berê'shîyth "In beginning".
It has been said that the letter ב bêth not only represents a 'house', as its namesake, but also a man bent over kneeling. The Hebrew for knee, בּרך berekh 'knee' (Strong's #1290), is derived from 'kneeling/blessing'. This is the position associated with the Hebrew verb 'to kneel' and 'to bless' since a blessing is received from a position of humility, kneeling. Thus the letter is often used to indicate 'blessing' as in the quote above.
In Hebrew thought one of the greatest blessings one can have is family and descendants. Both בּן bên 'son, child, grandson' (Strong's #1121) and בּית bayith 'house' (Strong's #1004) are used to describe a man's offspring, and both begin with 'b'.
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