A Handy Hebrew Sing-Along Guide

“Deliver us; there’s a land you promised us. Deliver us out of bondage. Deliver us to the Promised Land.”

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

Thanks to the Dreamworks Wikia for the image. Such a dramatically striking poster...

I first encountered Dreamworks’ legendary early project The Prince of Egypt during a wet lunch break at infant school. I finished eating and left the hall at such a time as to cause me to enter the television-hosting classroom just as the Nile was turning to blood.¹ I remember finding the scene vaguely disconcerting. Then, at a later point in my infant school career, we watched the whole film in RE, and I remember finding that downright disturbing. The whole chucking-small-children-into-the-river-to-be-eaten-by-crocodiles thing, for some crazy reason, rather bothered my six-year-old self, and so I employed what was one of my favourite devices as a child, to stop engaging with what was in front of me and retreat into my own brain.

After that, I avoided The Prince of Egypt for years, but, on eventually re-watching it, came to the inevitable conclusion² that it is a wonderful, wonderful film, for many reasons, including a stunning soundtrack which is one of the few able to physically give me chills.³ (I’ll throw the opinion out there that the best track, and the biggest reason I would love to see the film converted into a stage musical with full choir, is ‘The Plagues’. Discuss.) On my church’s student week away at the start of this year, I genuinely remained in the kitchen holding a tea towel and pretending to be useful even though it wasn’t my turn to wash up because someone was playing the soundtrack on his or her phone and I couldn’t bear to leave the room before it finished. Yes. Really.

And, after said week away ended, I decided, because I’m a nerd and this is the kind of thing I do in my spare time, to take up my trusty Davidson’s Lexicon⁴ and work out what the Hebrew sections in the songs consisted of. The fruits of this endeavour I record below, so that, in the event, dear reader, that you find yourself thwarted by the language change while trying to sing along to ‘Deliver Us’ or ‘When You Believe’, you might in future not only be able to get the lyrics right but actually understand what they mean. You’re very welcome.

First, the short section sung by Moses’ mother during ‘Deliver Us’ – this is what it looks like in the Hebrew, including vowels:

יַלְדִי הַטּוֹב וְהָרַךְ

אַל־תִּירָא וְאַל־תִּפְחַד

A transliteration for pronunciation purposes:

Yaldī hatt͗ōv w’hārakh

Al-tīra w’al-tiphchad
 

A translation:

My good and tender child (literally, ‘my child, the good one and the tender one’),

Don’t be afraid and don’t tremble.

Now the far longer section from ‘When You Believe’. This is all lifted straight out of Exodus 15,⁵ so it was pretty easy to work out:

אָשִׁירָה לַיהוָה כִּי־גָאֹה גָּאָה

Transliteration:

Āshīrah ladōnaī kī gā’oh gā’āh

Translation:

I will sing to the Lord, because he has been greatly exalted (literally, ‘because being exalted he has been exalted’; the basic point is that he has been exalted very much indeed – Hebrew is quite a fan of the policy of repetition for emphasis).

This is found in Exodus 15:1. In the film, the line is sung twice.

מִי־כָמֹכָה בָּאֵלִים יְהוָה

מִי כָּמֹכָה נֶאְדָּר בַּקֹדֶשׁ

Transliteration:

Mī khāmokhāh bā’ēlīm adōnaī

Mī khāmokhāh ne’dar baqodesh

Translation:

Who (is) like you among the gods, Lord?

Who (is) like you, glorious in holiness?

(The verb ‘to be’ is usually left implied in Hebrew, as it is here, hence I have bracketed it in my translation.)

These lines are from Exodus 15:11.

נָחִיתָ בְחַסְדְּךָ עַם־זוּ גָּאָלְתָּ

Transliteration:

Nāchīthā v’chasd’khā am zū gā’āltā 

Translation:

You have led, in your kindness, a people which you have redeemed (literally, ‘a people, this you have redeemed’; use of a demonstrative in place of a relative pronoun is unusual, but I reckon something about it makes sense).

This is from Exodus 15:13. Again, in the film, the line is sung twice. 

אָשִׁרָה

Transliteration:

Āshīrah 

Translation:

I will sing.

This is that first word from the first line again. It’s repeated three times in the film.

Note that where I’ve used ‘ch’ in my transliterations, that’s not a nice English sound as in ‘chips’, but one of those gritty ones you make in the back your throat, as in ‘loch’ and ‘Bach’, although it’s a softer, less percussive sound than the ‘kh’. The lines over the vowels are to show that they’re long ones, although, in practical terms, it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference for pronunciation. Pronounce a ‘w’ as in ‘wonderful’ or as in ‘wunderbar’, and ‘th’ as in ‘three’ or as in ‘Thomas’; the decision is yours. (I take no responsibility for speakers of Modern Hebrew making fun of you because your pronunciation is dreadfully archaic.)

Well, there you go: you’re now all set for a Prince of Egypt karaoke session, and I even managed to restrain myself from talking about Hebrew grammar too much (which, as anyone who knows me well will tell you, is quite an achievement).

Footnotes

¹ Yeah, I’m not going to provide a spoiler warning. The book came out literally thousands of years ago, so if you haven’t got round to reading it yet, that’s your own fault.

² Why an inevitable conclusion, you ask? I subscribe to a theory suggested by a friend of mine: The Prince of Egypt is so irresistible because it’s the story of salvation – of God rescuing his people from slavery and oppression. (Said friend contrasts the shorter Joseph King of Dreams, also by Dreamworks, which, though excellent, lacks the strong salvation narrative.) Those of us who have seen the same story take place in our own lives are obsessed with it. We’ll happily be told it again and again in any format available – and, what do you know, ’90s animated musicals are one of the absolute favourite formats of my generation.

³ Here’s a playlist of which I approve because it misses out all the pop versions that nobody cares about (sorry, Mariah Carey): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WKN0XF8-3Q&list=PLrjhOUTfRro7ro9MjrNV_W5gwFCMbSxEu.

⁴ It’s this huge great wodge of a book that contains a grammatical analysis of every single word that exists in the Hebrew Bible. I’m awfully fond of my copy. I have, on occasion, caught myself stroking the cover. You can actually get it free in various electronic formats from the Open Library, https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13507257M/The_analytical_Hebrew_and_Chaldee_lexicon, but it’s a nightmare trying to look things up on a screen, and, let’s be honest, we all know real books are better.

⁵ Don’t believe me? Check for yourself: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=exodus+15&version=ESV. My translation differs slightly, but the gist is the same. And if you’re that fussed about details, you’d probably do better to go with the ESV people; I expect they put a lot more time, effort, and research into their translation than I did into mine.