Wake Up! Your Butterfly is Burning!

Observe the colorful mess of a tattoo below. Oh yeah, it's another spiritual-wannabe Hebrew tattoo - the best kind out there!


According to the victim, this Hebrew tattoo is supposed to refer to a biblical story about Jesus. In this story (Mark 5:41), Jesus resurrects a dead little girl, by saying to her "Little Girl, Wake Up". Jesus, of course, spoke Aramaic, and in it the expression is "Talitha Cumi".

Our victim here, decided for some reason to get "Talitha Cumi" in Hebrew. However, instead of getting her words from a Hebrew bible, which can be easily found online, she transliterated them to Hebrew herself. Need I say that she got it wrong? The resulting Hebrew tattoo is written backwards and misspelled, not to mention that it has no real meaning in Hebrew, being an Aramaic expression.

If you're very set on "Talitha Cumi" for your Hebrew tattoo, this is how you should write it:


And to wrap things up, I have to mention that burning butterfly. I mean, what's up with that? I can get a burning bush reference, but don't you find burning butterflies a bit sadistic?

If Only Dogs Could Read

Another day, another victim of the spiritual ink. Today's victim, he wanted something unusual. A Hebrew tattoo that was supposed to say "Facedown":


I don't know why he chose that particular expression. Maybe he thought the slave theme was overused, and was looking for some other way to humble himself before the Lord...

In any case, this guy was close, but he only made it half way. Got himself half the expression - the "down" part, forgetting all about the "face". The resulting word, "Artza", literally means "to the ground" and is commonly used to tell a dog to lie down. You know, the Hebrew version of "Down, boy!"

Now if you wanted an actual "Facedown" in Hebrew, it would be "Apaim Artza", which you would write like this:



You Shall Not Tattoo - For Real?

On the website where this picture was originally posted, it was labeled as "Honor thy Father and Mother":


In reality, it says no such thing. This Hebrew tattoo in fact says: "You shall not tattoo", and it's written in Rashi Script of all things - an old Hebrew script used to write comments in religious texts.

Mind, the tattoo was not posted online by the owner, but by someone who just took a picture. It might well have been a novelty tattoo done on purpose, then regretted - leaving the owner lying about what it really says.

If it is genuine, though, and the owner is clueless, then someone really pulled one over on him.

This is why you should be vary of the advice that's often given online - to go consult with the nearest Rabbi about your Hebrew tattoo. I can totally see a pissed off Rabbi giving out this translation.

Right. Now if you actually wanted "Honor thy Father and Mother", it translates to Hebrew like this:


This is NOT how King Solomon Wrote it!

Today's victim got himself the oh-so-common Hebrew tattoo, "I'm my beloved's and my beloved is mine" from Songs of Solomon, which as determined earlier, has no place on a male.


However, this guy isn't not here because he got an overused and inappropriate tattoo, he's here because the tattoo also happens to be misspelled. Take a closer look, see those long line-like letters that stick out to the right? Those are Nun-sofit letters and they just shouldn't be there.

This is what went wrong here:


The Hebrew letter Vav (which appears many times in this verse and carries a sound of V, O or U) was mistakenly replaced with Nun-sofit, a letter which is read as N and can only appear as the last letter in a word.

It might be interesting for the Hebrew non-speakers to know, that not only do these two very differently sounding letters look similar, but they are also placed right next to each other on the Hebrew keyboard. Therefore, the mistake this tattoo sports is one that happens all the time in hastily typed Hebrew texts.

And this is how you properly write "I'm my beloved's and my beloved is mine" in Hebrew. Can you tell the difference now?



Tattoo of Permanent Regrets

Behold this prime example of why you shouldn't use an online automatic translator to get the translation for your long and complex Hebrew tattoo:


This Hebrew tattoo reads something along the lines of: "Regretting. Not in love. No excuses. With to live". Also, it's written entirely in male form.

I don't really know what all that is supposed to mean, but I could think up a story... The story would involve a vindictive Tattoo Artist boyfriend who decides to ditch his girl, but not before leaving a nice goodbye note inked on her back. In Hebrew, of course.

Yeah. That's the best explanation I can offer to explain that.

Chronology of Tattoo Disaster

Today's victim owns a very special piece of jewelry. It's a necklace, and it features her name written in Hebrew. The victim probably likes it a lot, as she decided to base her permanent tattoo on the little trinket:


What is the girl's name, anyway? Honestly, I don't know.

Unless She is actually named "Dabima", as her necklace suggests, it would be safe to assume that the necklace is misspelled. If I had to guess, I'd say "Rebecca", though a terribly misspelled one.

Now look at the tattoo., see how much worse than the necklace it turned out. Every single letter is misshapen somehow. Several even morphed into entirely different letters.

Using your jewelry as a template for a Hebrew tattoo - bad idea. Using misspelled jewelry - even worse! Don't do it kids, it's just not worth the grief!

The Faithless Verse

Today we have yet another spiritual Hebrew tattoo. A biblical verse. Whatever could it say?


What, you don't recognize this verse? Might be because it's total gibberish.

Yes, our poor victim went in for a verse, the ever popular Hebrews 11:1, which speaks of faith and its definition. In this case, her faith was misplaced as this Hebrew tattoo has nothing to do with anything, it's simply comprised of some randomly jumbled Hebrew letters.

Even if you don't know Hebrew at all, you can see that all the words in this tattoo are three lettered and differ by the middle letter only.


The verse Hebrews 11:1, says: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen", and this is how you can write it in Hebrew:


When considering this verse for your tattoo, you should keep in mind that the New Testament wasn't originally written in Hebrew, so this is just a translation. For authenticity's sake, wouldn't it be better to just get it in its original Greek?

Where's Her Future?

Not one to dwell on the past, today's victim wanted her Hebrew tattoo to spell an optimistic message: "The Future"...


Fate (or a malicious friend), however, ruined her plans thoroughly.

I don't know where this girl got her translation for "The Future" from, but she could hardly manage something further from the original intent. Her tattoo, in fact, says "Backward" or "To the Back", in Hebrew.

Many backward Hebrew tattoos made their appearance on this blog, but none of them actually spelled out the word. This is something brand new!


If, for whatever reason, you feel like tattooing "The Future" on your skin, this is how it correctly translates to Hebrew:



Weaklings Get Tattoos Too

Some people know their weaknesses and are not afraid to show them. Or, you know, tattoo them in a big bold Hebrew font on their arm...


Don't know what other weaknesses this victim has, but bad knowledge of the Hebrew language is certainly one of them.

His tattoo has three totally random words in Hebrew. The first word, "Hulsha", means weakness. The second word, "Mkubal", means accepted or popular. The third word - that one is just an incorrectly formed nonsense word that has no meaning.

How can this even happen? I would have blamed some automatic translation service, except I don't know how to explain that last gibberish word. Very strange indeed.

God's Name, All Messed Up

Today's victim is walking around with a particularly ridiculous Hebrew tattoo on his wrist:


All this guy wanted is a spiritual tattoo saying "The Lord's" in Hebrew. I bet those of you who know Hebrew are scratching your heads in confusion, as this bad Hebrew tattoo spells out a nonsense word.

Somehow, whoever attempted this sad translation couldn't distinguish "The Lord's" from "The Lords" - and so he took God's most sacred name, YHWH, and attempted to turn it into multiple form. You just don't do that! Especially not to a God who is all about oneness.

Also, the Nikkud (vowel dots) on this tattoo is totally random. And it's ugly too. If any Hebrew tattoo deserves the title of Epic Fail - this is the one.

How would you write "The Lord's" in Hebrew? Something like this:


This basically says "Belong to my master", I think it conveys the original meaning best, while avoiding the offensiveness of tattooing God's sacred name. Good for BDSM purposes too.