'So they read in the Book of the Law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.' (Nehemiah viii. 8.)
Since those days of Ezra, the Bible has been translated into nearly every known language. It is most interesting, therefore, to read in the Bible itself about what was most likely the very first translation of all—and this not a written translation, remember.
Now when the people heard the words of God's Book they were very sad; for now at last they understood how deeply they had sinned against Him.
They had been proud of their Bible, and had rightly felt it to be a great treasure; but now they saw that the words of the Bible must be shown forth in the lives of those who believe. To honour God's Book is not enough; we must obey it.
The Jewish people did not again learn to speak the old language of their nation. Yet all the copies of the Books of the Law, and the Books of the Prophets, the Psalms, and those writings which tell of the history of the Lord's people—that is, the whole of the Old Testament—were still written in the ancient tongue.
So it came to pass, after a while, that the Bible could only be read by the learned people; for the words in which the Law of God was given had become a 'dead language'—that is, a language that had ceased to be used in daily life at all.
Before the death of Ezra and Nehemiah, or else very soon after, the scribes of Jerusalem—that is, the writers and teachers—began to devote themselves almost entirely to the studying and copying of the Bible.
A young lad of those days who became a pupil in the School of the Scribes at Jerusalem would have to begin by learning the Old Testament almost by heart. To read an old Hebrew writing correctly was almost impossible, unless you had heard it read two or three times, and knew pretty well what was coming. For the ancient Hebrew alphabet consisted entirely of consonants; there were actually no vowels!
The little dots you see in the specimen of Hebrew given on this page are called 'vowel-points,' and are a guide to the sound of the word; but in the old, old days of which we are speaking, these dots had not been invented. The reader had nothing but consonants before him, and was obliged to guess the rest.
Just think of it! Suppose we followed this rule in English, and you came to the word, 'TP,' you would be puzzled indeed to know whether tap, tip, or top was meant!