Language Studies

Hebrew Thoughts

lô'' - לא (Strong's #3808)
Not'

לא lô’ (Strong's #3808) is לא l⒠(Strong's #3808, x67) in Aramaic and l⒠in Arabic, as in ’ilâha ill⒠’allâh "there is no God but Allah" (Sûrah Muhammad 47:19), which may feel awkward to Jews and Christians but which literally means "there is no deity if-not God" (a translation accepted even by some muslims such as Muhammad Asad, http://wahiduddin.net/words/tahlil.htm) for Allah is merely the Arabic for God and related to the similar Hebrew and Aramaic terms. The Syriac Peshitta New Testament, for example, says "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see Alaha".

לא lô’ and its variable spelling לוא lôw’ appear nearly 3300 times in the Hebrew Bible which could imply that there are thousands of don't's in the Old Testament. Indeed, it begins each of the Ten Commandments:

"You shall have no other gods before Me." ()
"Thou shalt not murder." ()

The first of these literally says, "Not will-be to-you gods another before my-face". The second is the first of three very short commandments "Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal" each of which is only 6 letters long in the Hebrew. There are actually 12 not's in the 10 commandments () one of which is a negative response from God ().

The first biblical use comes in Genesis 2:5 "No shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground" (JPS) - of all the no's and not's in this verse only "not rained" uses לא lô’, the first two negatives actually use the Hebrew for "before" טרם terem (Strong's #2962, x9) and the last is a word for "not exist" אין ’ayin (Strong's #369, x27) both of which can sometimes themselves be translated by "not".

"but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." ()

The second use in Scripture is the first negative commandment and the first one broken. Like a red rag to a bull or a "do not touch" to a child, this commandment didn't last long intact and the rest, as they say, is history.

The Jews break down the biblical commandments into do's and don't's, enumerating 365 negative commandments "Thou shall not's" and 248 positive injunctions. Combined these make up the 613 mitsvôth (plural of mitsvah "commandment"). Jewish tradition ties these to the daily opportunity to break one of God's laws, as there are 365 of them, and also to the possibility that with every bone of our body (by some counts there are 248 of them) we can do something positive.

On a more positive note, the next uses are in where God says that "It is not good" that man should be alone and since he could "not found a help meet for him" woman was created.

Reversing the letters of לא lô’ (Strong's #3808) we have אל 'al (Strong's #408, x583) which is another word for "not" first used in of Abram's plea to Lot that there should be "no" strife between them and then again in of God's plea to Abram to fear "not" as he would be Abram's shield and reward.

When added to the beginning of nouns לא lô’ means "not a..." or "not of..." as in "And Assyria will fall by a sword not of man, and a sword not of man/mortals will devour him".

Occasionally, a copyist's mistake and/or a later scribe's correction has resulted in some confusion in up to 18 instances according to the Masorah (the notes made in the Hebrew margins by the Masoretic scribes of the 6th-8th centuries A.D.. There are perhaps 15 occasions where לא lô’ has been written for לו lôw "to him". These words sound the same and Hebrew orthography (a posh word for "right writing" or correct spelling) is not consistent at the best of times. There are thought to be 3 times when the opposite is the case and לו lôw has been written for לא lô’ ().

For example, compare the following:

"For now ye are become His; ye see a terror, and are afraid." (, JPS)
"For now you are nothing, You see terror and are afraid." (, NKJ)

The phrases "become his" and "nothing" are alternate translations based upon either לו lôw or לא lô’ , respectively.

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