The Jerusalem Bridge
ה.ל.ך

h-l-kh — to go, to walk

ה.ל.ך (halakh) means to walk, and halakhah — Jewish law — is literally "the way one walks". One of the most irregular verbs in the language.

Biblical HebrewModern HebrewIrregular (behaves like Pei-Yod in the future and infinitive)

The word family

Every word below is built on ה.ל.ך. Same three letters, different vowels and prefixes.

הָלַךְhalakhPa'al
went, walked
הוֹלֵךְholekhPa'al present
goes, walking
יֵלֵךְyelekhPa'al future
he will go

The ה vanishes completely in the future. This is the irregularity worth memorising early.

הֲלָכָהhalakhahnoun
Jewish law

The way one walks — law as a path rather than a code.

הֲלִיכָהhalikhahnoun
walking, a walk
מַהֲלָךְmahalakhnoun
a move, a course, a process
הִתְהַלֵּךְhithalekhHitpa'el
walked about, walked with

In the text

Genesis 5:24

וַיִּתְהַלֵּךְ חֲנוֹךְ אֶת־הָאֱלֹהִים

Va-yithalekh Chanokh et ha-Elohim

And Enoch walked with God.

Hitpa'el, which here carries a sense of ongoing, back-and-forth walking rather than a single journey.

What I tell students about this root

Learners get frustrated that halakh loses its first letter in the future tense, and it does look arbitrary. The consolation is that this is one of a very small number of genuinely irregular Hebrew verbs, and it is so common that you will have it memorised long before you understand why.

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These are written by Yaacov, a native Jerusalemite who teaches Hebrew, Yiddish, Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic one-to-one.

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Related roots

ש.מ.רsh-m-r
to guard, to keep, to observe
ל.מ.דl-m-d
to learn; (intensive) to teach
ז.כ.רz-kh-r
to remember