Pronouncing biblical names is often tricky. They’re names from other languages, after all.
Some have become standard, English names. But for every David or John there’s also an Artaxerxes and a Mahershalalhashbaz.
When you’re reading the Bible aloud and you come across a name, you may:
- Use the standard English pronunciation
- Use the standard pronunciation in the original language (Hebrew, Greek, etc.)
- Fake it
Many readers that I hear seem to prefer option 3.
However, that’s not what I want to rant about today. Instead, I want to rant about a pet peeve of mine.
Yes, I know it’s trivial, but it drives me nuts.
Elijah and Elisha
Consider the names of these two Old Testament prophets: Elijah and Elisha.
They’re different, no? One of them has a /j/ in it and the other has an /sh/ in it.
And that’s the only difference.
So it should be the only difference in how you pronounce them, right?
The Traditional English Pronunciation
Sure enough, in the traditional English pronunciation, it is: Elijah is pronounced ee-LIE-jah and Elisha is pronounced ee-LIE-shah.
If somebody names their kid Elisha, you call him ee-LIE-shah.
At least, that’s how you do it if you’re using the standard English pronunciation.
The Traditional Hebrew Pronunciation
Normally when reading aloud, you wouldn’t want to use anything but the standard English pronunciation.
It would confuse your audience, and you could come across as just showing off.
Like if you pronounced the name David as dah-WEED in church for no reason.
However, there are situations—like in a language class—where you’d want to know the pronunciation in the original language.
So how would you pronounce Elijah and Elisha in biblical Hebrew?
There are a few things you need to know:
- Hebrew doesn’t have the /j/ sound; it uses the /y/ sound instead.
- Every syllable in Hebrew must begin with a consonant, even if it’s just a glottal stop—i.e., a constriction of the throat (we actually have this consonant in English, but it’s not part of our alphabet; if you pay attention, you can hear yourself saying it on the front of the word apple).
- After a glottal stop, Hebrew tends to have a short vowel that’s basically equivalent to the English /uh/ sound (like in the word upper).
- Both Elijah and Elisha start with a glottal stop followed by a short vowel.
- Both Elijah and Elisha have a long /ee/ sound (as in seem) in the middle.
- Hebrew tends to stress the last syllable of the word (in contrast, English often stresses the next-to-last syllable, as in gateway or edition).
With that in mind, you can work out how you should (roughly) pronounce Elijah and Elisha:
- Elijah becomes uh-lee-YAH
- Elisha becomes uh-lee-SHAH
The Newfangled Nonsense Pronunciation
In recent years—in some circles—the people who write biblical name pronunciation guides have been promoting a ridiculous, alternative pronunciation of this name.
I suspect it’s the same people who were pushing for all manner of liturgical novelties in the 1970s and 1980s, including items of Orwellian Liturgical Newspeak (e.g., “We Are Church,” which is just bad English).
The alternative pronunciation they’ve been promoting is ee-LISH-ah.
No!
This is not the standard English pronunciation, and as far as Hebrew goes, Every. Syllable. Of. This. Is. Wrong.
- The /ee/ on the front is wrong because Hebrew has a short vowel here: /uh/ as in upper, not /ee/ as in seem.
- The /LISH/ is wrong (a) because it’s improperly given the stress, when that should be on the last syllable, (b) because it grabs the /sh/ that must be on the beginning of the last syllable, and (c) because it uses a short /i/ sound (as in hit) when it should be an /ee/ sound (as in seem).
- The /ah/ on the end is wrong (a) because it doesn’t have a consonant on the front of it and (b) because it isn’t stressed, as it should be.
Weirdly, the people promoting the ee-LISH-ah pronunciation haven’t been doing the same thing with Elijah. They haven’t been urging people to pronounce it ee-LIJJ-ah.
This makes me suspect that they wanted to use the difference in pronunciation to help people keep Elijah and Elisha straight, given how similar their names are.
But they needn’t bother. Most people today don’t know the difference between Elijah and Elisha in the first place.
And they’re doing violence to the language.
So please, do not pronounce Elisha so that it kinda-sorta sounds like the word delicious.
The fancy way of saying that one word kinda-sorta sounds like another is to say that the two words are assonant.
So please, when it comes to Elisha, don’t be an assonant.
