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From Eber to Yehudit: The True Origin of the Language of Israel

by Ram ben Ze'ev



From Eber to Yehudit: The True Origin of the Language of Israel
From Eber to Yehudit: The True Origin of the Language of Israel

From the dawn of our lineage, the sacred tongue that we today call “Hebrew” has carried within it the breath of our ancestors and the sound of the Divine Word. Yet in the Torah itself, the language is not called Ivrit (עברית). It is a name born centuries later. To understand how we arrived at this word, we must trace the path of our language through the generations — from Eber, to Yehuda, to Yisrael.


In בראשית (Bereshit / Genesis) we meet Eber (עבר), the great-grandson of Shem and the forefather of Avraham. Eber’s very name means “to cross over” — from the root עבר (avar) — symbolising separation, transition, and sanctity. The sages teach that after the dispersion at the Tower of Bavel, when languages were confused, Eber alone preserved the original Lashon HaKodesh (לשון הקדש) — the Holy Tongue — passing it down through his line. From him, Avraham received a language uncorrupted by idolatry and falsehood.



When Avraham is later called Avraham HaIvri (אברהם העברי) in בראשית 14:13, the name signifies more than ancestry. It describes a spiritual stance — that Avraham “stood on one side (עבר אחד)” while the entire world stood on the other. He “crossed over” from the world of false gods to the service of the One True G-D. Thus, Ivri became a title of distinction: one who transcends, one who stands apart in faith.


Yet the Torah itself does not name the language of Avraham or Yisrael as Ivrit. That term did not exist. The first scriptural name given to our spoken tongue appears many centuries later, in the days of King Hezekiah. In מלכים ב (Melakhim Bet / II Kings) 18:26, the officers of Yehuda beg the Assyrian envoy: דבר נא אל עבדיך ארמית כי שמעים אנחנו ואל תדבר עמנו יהודית באזני העם — “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; do not speak to us in Yehudit (the language of Yehuda) in the ears of the people.”This is the earliest biblical mention of the language’s name — Yehudit (יהודית) — the tongue of the southern kingdom of Yehuda.


For generations thereafter, Jews referred to their language as Lashon Yehudit or Lashon HaKodesh, distinguishing it from Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. Only during the late Second Temple and Hellenistic periods did the name Ivrit (עברית) begin to appear. The translator of Ben Sira in the second century BCE mentions that the book was originally written “in the Hebrew tongue,” using a Greek expression equivalent to Ivrit. This label, rooted in the memory of Eber and Avraham HaIvri, reflected both linguistic heritage and spiritual identity — but it was foreign in origin, introduced through translation and foreign scholarship.



Therefore, historically and faithfully, our language was never “Hebrew” in the modern or foreign sense. It was the preserved Lashon HaKodesh, later known as Yehudit, born of the line of Eber — who crossed over and kept pure the speech of truth. The later adoption of Ivrit is a tribute to his legacy, but its true essence remains the same: the Holy Tongue of Yisrael, the language through which G-D spoke the world into being.



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