It's "Ka-VODE", not "Ka-BOD"

The Hebrew word for glory or weight, Strong's Concordance 3519, kabowd כבוד, is properly pronounced "ka-VODE" (rhymes with road). It is not pronounced "ka-BOD" (rhymes with rod).

In churches I've heard pastors and leaders from the pulpit mispronounce this word as "ka-BOD" (rhymes rod). I've seen several video clips of well-known preachers mispronouncing this too!

I suspect the reason is Strong's Concordance 3519 has this rendered as "kabowd". Strong's is wrong. 🙂

In both Biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew, it's pronounced "ka-VODE" (rhymes with road). In fact in Israel today, if someone wants to encourge you to keep going or tell you you're doing a good job, they'll say, "kol ha-kaVODE!" כל הכבוד, literally meaning "all the glory". 

One reason Strong's gets this wrong is the second letter of the Hebrew alephbet, bet ב, can be pronounced as a B or V sound, depending on a special marking called a dagesh. If the dagesh is present, it's a B sound. If it's not present, it's the V sound.

• בּ - The letter bet, with a B sound. It has a dagesh (dot) in the middle.
• ב - Same letter but without the dagesh, has a V sound. Sometimes called vet.

Complicating things, the ancient Hebrew of the Bible didn't originally have these dagesh markings. The dagesh, along with vowel markings called niqqud, were added to Hebrew in the 10th century AD as a pronunciation aid. So with ancient Biblical Hebrew, it's either the B or V sound and context tells you which. Not unlike the English letter C, whose sound varies depending on context: a K sound as in care or an S sound as in cinnamon.

Modern Hebrew doesn't help the B/V pronunciation either. It's typically written without the dagesh marking. Consider this recent post from Israel's Prime Minister:

Notice the highlighted bet letters in his post. They have no dagesh marking! Are they B or V sound? You only know from context. 

For this reason, Strong's Concordance also appears to mistransliterate many Hebrew words. For example, the Hebrew word for prophet, navi נביא, is mistransliterated as "nabi" - it confuses the bet בּ (B sound) and the vet ב (V sound) again. 

The rest of the "kabowd" mispronunciation is the vowel sound, which again should be the "-ode" sound, as in road. Perhaps Strong spelled it with the English letters "bowd" to convey this sound, but laypeople just mistake that for "bod" as in rod.

Whatever the cause of the confusion, don't say "ka-BOD". Say "ka-VODE" (rhymes with road).

Hope this helps on your Hebrew learning journey. 

Kol ha-kavod! !כל הכבוד