Biblical Hebrew Dictionary

This series of web pages provides free lessons about the different types of Hebrew Dictionary.

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In the lesson What Types Of Hebrew Dictionary Are There? we saw that there were several different types of Hebrew Dictionary for different purposes. If your interest is in Biblical Hebrew, buying a Hebrew Dictionary specializing in Biblical Hebrew is probably your best choice.

A Biblical Hebrew Dictionary generally differs from a Modern Hebrew Dictionary in several important ways:

Obviously, the vocabulary will include all the words of the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible (typically including both the Hebrew and Aramaic words).
The derivations and associated words will generally come from cognate languages which are related to Hebrew, plus related literature such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Again, this means that the vocabulary contained in a specialist Biblical Hebrew Dictionary is likely to be more relevant to the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible.

However, it would be a mistake to assume that, if you are interested in Biblical Hebrew, that only a Biblical Hebrew Dictionary should be considered. A typical Biblical Hebrew Dictionary restricts itself only to Biblical Hebrew, and therefore ignores the wider Hebrew vocabulary that comes from more than two thousand years of spoken and written Hebrew such as the Mishnah and other Jewish writings. As we saw in our lesson on Modern Hebrew, Modern Hebrew incorporated countless words down through many centuries of Hebrew usage. These words were all carefully and meticulously researched by Eliezer ben Yehuda. It was a full-time task which he spend his entire life achieving.

Therefore, using a Modern Hebrew Dictionary to look up Biblical Hebrew words makes good sense. You will probably get a more balanced idea of what the word means. In particular, where uncommon words are used in the Tanakh, a Hebrew Dictionary that restricts itself solely to Biblical Hebrew will probably be handicapping itself. As the Tanakh contains many hundreds of rare words that are only used once or twice, using a Modern Hebrew Dictionary can be extraordinarily helpful. It will give you an insight into the meaning of words that you will not get any other way.

As an alternative to a Biblical Hebrew Dictionary, you may want to consider Bible software such as the excellent BibleWorks or Logos Original Languages. These contain grammatical parsings for every word in the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, along with multiple Hebrew dictionaries and Hebrew lexicons. They are an excellent way to understand the Hebrew Bible in the context of a passage.

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