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The Hebrew alphabet

New, published 17 October 2026. What else is new

In one sentence: Hebrew is written right to left in 22 letters, all consonants, with the vowels added as dots and dashes beneath and above them, and you can learn to read every one of them.

The letters are the same in a Hebrew Bible and on a street sign in Jerusalem today. What differs is how they are pronounced and whether the vowels are printed. This page gives both, and uses modern Israeli pronunciation as its standard: it is the pronunciation every study on this site spells out, and the one you will hear from Israeli speakers and most recordings. How Hebrew Is Pronounced explains the other traditions you will meet.

The 22 letters, in order, read from right to left:

א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ ל מ נ ס ע פ צ ק ר ש ת

Psalm 119 is built on this order. Its 176 verses fall into 22 stanzas of eight, one for each letter, and every verse in a stanza begins with that stanza's letter. The psalm in praise of God's word is laid out in His people's alphabet from first letter to last.

The letters

Letter Final Name Sound (Israeli, this site's standard) Biblical, where it differs Academic Paleo
א Alef silent (carries a vowel) a catch in the throat, as between uh-oh ʾ 𐤀
ב Bet / Vet b with the dot (בּ), v without — b 𐤁
ג Gimel g as in go without the dot, gh (reconstructed) g 𐤂
ד Dalet d as in day without the dot, th as in the (reconstructed) d 𐤃
ה He h as in hay, silent at a word's end — h 𐤄
ו Vav v as in vine; also a vowel letter (וֹ o, וּ u) w as in way w 𐤅
ז Zayin z as in zoo — z 𐤆
ח Het kh, as ch in Bach a breathy h from the throat, distinct from כ ḥ 𐤇
ט Tet t as in toy an emphatic t, distinct from ת ṭ 𐤈
י Yod y as in yes; also a vowel letter (ִי i, ֵי e) — y 𐤉
כ ך Kaf / Khaf k with the dot (כּ), kh without — k 𐤊
ל Lamed l as in lamp — l 𐤋
מ ם Mem m as in mother — m 𐤌
נ ן Nun n as in now — n 𐤍
ס Samekh s as in sun — s 𐤎
ע Ayin silent (carries a vowel) a voiced sound from the throat, distinct from א ʿ 𐤏
פ ף Pe / Fe p with the dot (פּ), f without — p 𐤐
צ ץ Tsadi ts as in boots an emphatic s (reconstructed) ṣ 𐤑
ק Qof k as in king a k from further back in the throat q 𐤒
ר Resh r, rolled or from the throat — r 𐤓
ש Shin / Sin sh with the dot on the right (שׁ), s with it on the left (שׂ) — š / ś 𐤔
ת Tav t as in toy without the dot, th as in thin (reconstructed) t 𐤕
  • Final forms. Five letters change shape at the end of a word: כ→ך, מ→ם, נ→ן, פ→ף, צ→ץ. They are the same letter with the same sound. Two of them are in the Bible's first verse: הַשָּׁמַיִם (hashamayim, "the heavens") ends in ם, and הָאָרֶץ (ha'arets, "the earth") in ץ.
  • The dot inside a letter (dagesh) changes three letters in Israeli speech: בּ b and ב v, כּ k and כ kh, פּ p and פ f. In biblical pronunciation it changed six (ב ג ד כ פ ת, remembered as begadkephat), which is why the "Biblical" column above gives a softer sound for ג, ד and ת without the dot.
  • Letters that sound alike. Israeli speech merged several pairs the biblical scribes kept apart: ט and ת are both t, כ and ח are both kh, ק and כּ are both k, ס and שׂ are both s, and א and ע are both silent. Spelling still keeps them apart, so learn each word with its letters.
  • The academic column is the transliteration commentaries and lexicons use (the SBL style). You need it to read a commentary, but read the words aloud with the Israeli sounds.
  • Paleo-Hebrew is the older script Israel wrote in before the exile: the same 22 letters in the shapes they shared with the Phoenicians. The square letters above were adopted from the Aramaic script after the exile and are the ones every printed Hebrew Bible uses. Three Scripts tells how the change happened.

The vowels

The biblical text was written in consonants only for over a thousand years. Between about AD 600 and 1000, the Masoretes, Jewish scribes in Tiberias, added vowel points so that the pronunciation they had received would never be lost. Printed Bibles carry them; modern Israeli books and newspapers mostly leave them out.

Each point sits under or over a letter and is read after it: בַ is ba. The faint ב below only carries the point.

Point Name Sound Like
בַ Patach a a as in father
בָ Qamats a a as in father (in a few words o)
בֶ Segol e e as in bed
בֵ Tsere e e as in bed (some say ay as in they)
בִ Hiriq i ee as in machine
בֹ Holam o o as in more
בֻ Qubuts u oo as in food
בְ Sheva e or silent a short e, or nothing at all
בֲ Hataf patach a a short a
בֱ Hataf segol e a short e
בֳ Hataf qamats o a short o
בוֹ Holam male o o, written with a vav
בוּ Shuruk u oo, written with a vav
  • Two points look alike. Qamats ָ is usually a, but in a closed unstressed syllable it is a short o (qamats qatan): כָּל־ (kol, "all").
  • Sheva ְ is said as a short e at the start of a syllable and is silent at the end of one: בְּרֵאשִׁית is be-re-SHIT.
  • Stress usually falls on the last syllable: e-lo-HIM, sha-LOM. A word stressed earlier is marked on this site's cards and transliterations.

Read your first words

You can now read the first verse of the Bible, seven words long:

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

be-re-SHIT ba-RA e-lo-HIM et ha-sha-MA-yim ve-ET ha-A-rets, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1, ESV). Verses Quoted Well takes it word by word, and the Memory Verse Cards print it.

Numbers

Hebrew does not have a separate set of characters to represent numbers (like the English 1, 2, 3, etc.). Rather, each letter of the Hebrew alphabet also does duty as a number — a system usually called gematria. This is just how the alphabet counts; later Jewish tradition (and, less carefully, some modern "Bible code" writers) built elaborate interpretive systems on top of it by comparing the numeric totals of different words, but that's a separate, much more speculative practice from the plain fact that every letter has a value.

Hebrew Letter Name Value Hebrew Letter Name Value
א Alef 1 ל Lamed 30
ב Bet 2 מ Mem 40
ג Gimel 3 נ Nun 50
ד Dalet 4 ס Samek 60
ה He 5 ע Ayin 70
ו Waw 6 פ Pe 80
ז Zayin 7 צ Tsade 90
ח Ḥet 8 ק Qof 100
ט Tet 9 ר Resh 200
י Yod 10 שׂ / שׁ Sin / Shin 300
כ Kaf 20 ת Taw 400

So: א–ט give 1–9, י–צ give 10–90 in multiples of ten, and ק–ת give 100–400 (שׂ and שׁ share the value 300 — the dot that distinguishes them is a much later addition to the text).

What Scripture actually does with these values — the acrostic poems, the one number Revelation asks the reader to calculate, and why the modern "Bible code" systems fail — is the subject of Biblical Numerology, which also carries the table of recurring symbolic numbers that used to sit on this page.

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