ʿAlma means both the inhabited world and an age, a long stretch of time. The Qala says world or age as each verse requires. In Matthew 13 the field is the world and the harvest is the completion of the age, and one Aramaic word stands behind both.
| Form | Pattern | Transliteration | Script | Standard | Qala rendering |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Noun | ʿalm- + -a | ʿalma | עלמא ܥܳܠܡܳܐ | world | world · age · this present world |
| Adverbial | l- prefix, no ending | l-ʿalam | — | forever | forever, never (with a negative): "to the age" |
| With prepositions | b-, d- prefixes | b-ʿalma, d-ʿalma | — | in / of the world | in this age; of the age |
In the Gospels this root has no verb forms and appears only as the noun ʿalma.
Stand at a window and look at the street and the people in it. Say ʿalma aloud twice, once for the world you see and once for the age you live in.
The Hebrew cognate is ʿolam (עוֹלָם), as in l'olam va'ed, "forever and ever," in the Psalms, and Biblical Aramaic uses ʿalma the same way in Daniel. The word appears 166 times, and a translator has to keep choosing whether to show the place or the time.