What does ZAIN and VAV mean?

Psalms 119:41 VAV. Kaj venu al mi...

Psalms 119:49 ZAIN. Rememoru la vorton al Via sklavo...

There are many more of these random words. Why are they there?

Alkanadi:What does ZAIN and VAV mean?

Psalms 119:41 VAV. Kaj venu al mi...

Psalms 119:49 ZAIN. Rememoru la vorton al Via sklavo...

There are many more of these random words. Why are they there?

They are letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Well, their names. Actually it’s funny because they are in order, not in random position.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_alphabet

Ĝis, Novatago.

Alphabetic poems are a common thing in Hebrew poetry. Sometimes they have a line or a verse starting with each letter of the alphabet, in forwards or backwards order (and in post-biblical poetry, poems sometimes include the name of the author, through the first letter of each verse or line). In this particular case, psalm 119 has a verse starting with each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, in order, and the Esperanto translation has chosen to tell you which verse matches with each letters.

In your particular examples, "and" begins with a Hebrew letter vav, and "remember" begins with a Hebrew letter zayin.

Some English translations also choose to mark which verse comes from which letter.

Because of the alphabetic nature of this particular psalm, there is a Jewish custom of reading sections of it in a particular person's honor, that is, the sections spelling that person's name. You might do it to pray for someone's recovery from illness or to commemorate their death. Normally this would be done in Hebrew but if you wanted to do it in another language, you could use Hebrew alphabetic section headers to choose the appropriate sections to say in the other language.

Therefore, if you were going to pray for someone whose Hebrew name was Sarah, you would read the sections for shin, resh, and hey, because those letters spell Sarah in Hebrew.

erinja:Therefore, if you were going to pray for someone whose Hebrew name was Sarah, you would read the sections for shin, resh, and hey, because those letters spell Sarah in Hebrew.

That is a cool concept. It makes it more personalized.