The Ten Words

אָנֹכִי is the pronoun “I.” It is not a verb, so it has no root, stem, prefix or suffix to change. Exodus 20:2 has no verb at all: it is a nominal sentence — “I · the LORD · your God.” For that reason the pronoun must be written out in full.

אָנֹכִי (anokhi) and אֲנִי (ani). Hebrew has two words for “I,” and both mean exactly the same: 1st person singular, the same for man or woman. אֲנִי is the short form, אָנֹכִי the long one, with the extra ending ־כִי (-khi). The long form is old and shared with neighboring languages (Akkadian anaku, Phoenician ʼnk). Its ending also seems related to the ending ־תִּי (-ti) of the perfect verb, as in שָׁמַרְתִּי (shamarti, “I kept”). In the Hebrew Bible anokhi appears about 360 times and ani about 870 times. Anokhi is frequent in the Torah, while the later books use mostly ani, and after the Bible ani alone remains. Here God opens the covenant with the long form, and Deuteronomy 5:6 repeats it exactly.

The imperfect is built by putting a prefix in front of the root. For “he / it” the prefix is י (yod), so yihyeh means “it will be.” This is why it is the only verb of the six here that does not begin with ת. The final ה is not a suffix: it is the third root letter of hayah (a lamed-he verb), which in the imperfect ends in the sound -eh.

לֹא (lo) is the ordinary word for “not.” Placed before an imperfect verb it gives a prohibition that is meant to hold always — “you shall not.”

The prefix ת marks “you.” Built regularly the word would be tinsa, but the first root letter נ (nun), having no vowel of its own, merges into the letter after it and disappears. The dot (dagesh) inside שּׂ is the trace of that merging: the letter is doubled. So tinsa becomes tissa.

לֹא (lo) is the ordinary word for “not.” Placed before an imperfect verb it gives a prohibition that is meant to hold always — “you shall not.”

The infinitive absolute is the bare form of the verb: no person, no prefix, no suffix. Standing on its own at the head of a sentence, it can serve as a forceful command — “Remember!” Deuteronomy 5:12 uses the same form with another verb: שָׁמוֹר (shamor), “Keep!”

The root kavad means “to be heavy.” In the Piel stem — marked by the doubled middle letter, the dot in בּ — it means “to give weight to,” that is, to honor. In the Piel the imperative and the infinitive absolute are spelled alike: many read kabbed as an imperative, while the OSHB analysis parses it as an infinitive absolute. Either way it is a command: “Honor!”

This is the basic shape of a 2nd-person imperfect: the prefix ת + the three root letters, with no suffix. The second vowel is a, not o (צָ), because the word ends in the guttural ח, which prefers an a-sound before it. It is normally a short a (ַ); here, at the pause at the end of the verse, it is written long (ָ).

לֹא (lo) is the ordinary word for “not.” Placed before an imperfect verb it gives a prohibition that is meant to hold always — “you shall not.”

The same pattern: prefix ת + root נ־א־ף. The last letter ף is simply the form that פ (pe) takes at the end of a word — it is not a suffix.

לֹא (lo) is the ordinary word for “not.” Placed before an imperfect verb it gives a prohibition that is meant to hold always — “you shall not.”

Again prefix ת + root ג־נ־ב. Here the second vowel is o (נֹב), the usual vowel of the Qal imperfect when no guttural letter changes it.

לֹא (lo) is the ordinary word for “not.” Placed before an imperfect verb it gives a prohibition that is meant to hold always — “you shall not.”

The prefix vowel changes from i to a (תַ) because the root begins with the guttural ע, which draws an a-sound to itself. The ending ֶה is not a suffix: like hayah, anah is a lamed-he verb, and its third root letter ה gives the imperfect its -eh ending.

לֹא (lo) is the ordinary word for “not.” Placed before an imperfect verb it gives a prohibition that is meant to hold always — “you shall not.”

As with taaneh, the root begins with a guttural (ח), so the prefix takes the vowel a (תַ). The second vowel is the ordinary o (מֹד), as in tignov.

לֹא (lo) is the ordinary word for “not.” Placed before an imperfect verb it gives a prohibition that is meant to hold always — “you shall not.”