Red

The name ‘Adam’ (Adam, man), and the two words that are directly related to it: a•da•ma (earth, soil, ground) and ‘dam,’ ‘blood’; sound almost identical, except for the addition of the ‘ah’ sound at the end of the word ‘adama’ and the omission of that ‘ah’ sound at the beginning of ‘dan.’ It begins to look like a secret metaphysical formula that God has infused into the Hebrew language in order to mirror his Creation by uncontested, unarguable solid physical facts to which every human being can attest! Therefore, learning Hebrew is far away from just learning another language. It is the key to connect you spiritually to your physical existence, of course, only if you understand that your own essence is a part of God’s Creation in the spiritual and existential way, and not just the physical way.

The color link to the story of creation and its key word ‘adam’ comes by the word ‘adom,’ red. The close connection between the physical, perceptual elements becomes now even tighter: red, adom is the color of dam, blood. The chain: Adam-adama-dam-adom, men-ground-blood-red is the metaphorical mirror of God’s language in the physical word.

Today’s word, adom, is set in masculine singular form. You may know that colors are actually adjectives (adjectives describe nouns) and animate, living nouns always have four forms in Hebrew: Masculine-Singular, Feminine-Singular, Masculine-Plural, and Feminine-Plural. Therefore adjectives, also, must have four forms to match the noun(s) they describe. The other three forms for ‘red’ ‘adom,’ by the same order above are: a•du•ma, a•du•mim, and a•du•mot. The following verse includes two ‘red’ adjectives, Masculine-Singular (horse), adom; and Masculine-Plural (horses), adoomim.

“I saw in the night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees in the glen; and behind him were red, sorrel, and white horses”