Book of the Principles of Hebrew Poetics

Arabic Version: Introduction

[ . . . ] The Muslims report that one of their learned men encountered a group of people who did not speak Arabic correctly, and it filled him with sadness, so he briefly summarized [the rules of the language] for them in a book from which they could learn correct usage. Similarly, I have seen that many Jews do not understand the correct [form] of our language as it has been transmitted, let alone its obscurities. If they speak, most of what they say is incorrect. If they compose poetry, they barely know its most important principles, and they ignore and neglect the rest. The same applies to rhymes. Even the Bible itself became for them obscure speech and incomprehensible utterances.

Therefore, I took it upon myself to compose a book. In it, I have collected most words, divided into two groups. The first contains all the nouns that begin with [the letter] alif, one after the other, and similarly, all the nouns that begin with ba, one after the other, and likewise gim and dal and the rest. The second contains all the rhymes ending with alif grouped in one place, and likewise all nouns that end with ba, and likewise the rhymes with gim and dal and ha, until the end of the letters, so that it may be easier to check and learn all of them, and in order to preserve this language, both its easy and its obscure parts. [ . . . ]

Hebrew Version: Introduction

[ . . . ] The land convulsed (Isaiah 15:4) and was divided (Daniel 11:4) into languages according to the number of the nations. Only the sons of ‘Ever continued to speak the holy tongue, for they alone were true to God, because they, our ancestors, were descended from our father Abraham, God’s beloved; Isaac, His chosen one; Jacob, His precious one; and all his offspring. Wherever they went, in all the kingdoms of Canaan and the land of Patros around it, [Hebrew] did not depart from their mouths. And when they went up from Egypt [to the land of Israel], God spoke pure words, laws, and precepts, to us in [Hebrew], through his servant Moses, the man of God, on the mountain of Horeb. Generation after generation, it was our heritage when we were in our inherited land, by the grace of our holy ones, in the writings of our kings, the songs of our Levites, and the melodies of our priests [kohanim]—in the hands of our prophets, a vision; in the mouths of our leaders, a meditation—until the exile of Jerusalem to Babylonia in the days of Zedekiah.

In the year 101 after the destruction of the city of our God [486 BCE], we began to forsake the holy language and to speak the languages of the foreign inhabitants of the land, three years before the reign of the king of the Greeks. In the days of the governor Nehemiah and his council, he [Nehemiah] saw us speaking the language of Ashdod, and he was enraged. He rebuked the people and quarreled with them. After that, we were driven into exile, to the four corners of the earth and [even to] the islands in the sea. There was no nation our exiles did not reach. Among them we raised our children, and we learned their languages. Their coarseness of tongue covered our beautiful words, which was not right.

Those in the East speak Greek and Persian, and those in Egypt speak Coptic, and also the exiles among the sons of Kenaz and those in Spain speak a foreign tongue, as do the residents of Christian lands; they all speak as the nations [among whom they live]. Our heart grieves and our soul is in anguish because the words of our holy tongue are absent from our mouths. All His utterances and the words of His mouth are [lost], like the words of a sealed book or a vision upon awakening, for our language has become barbarous in the lands of our captivity. [ . . . ]

Chapter on [Words Beginning with] Alef and Gimel

• Eged: From agudah [band, Exodus 12:22].

• Agah: Aramaic.

• Agel: From egle tal [drops of dew, Job 38:28].

• Agam: From agamim [ponds, Exodus 8:1], like “river.”

• Agmon: From ha-tasim agmon [will you put a ring (agmon) (in his nose)? Job 40:26].

• Agan: From agan ha-sahar [a round goblet, Song of Songs 7:3], “basin.”

• Agasin: From the Mishnah [pears, see m. Kilayim 1:4], “ijjāṣ-tree.”

• Agafim.

• Agar: From agrah ba-katsir [it gathers at the harvest, Proverbs 6:8], “collected.”

• Iggeret: Letter, “collection.”

• Egrof: From o be-egrof [or with his fist, Exodus 21:18], “rod.”

• Agartale: Vessels.