Product Description

This volume lists alphabetically every Hebrew word as it appears in the Old Testament. The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon offers grammatical analysis and a meaning according to a word's derivation. An analytical lexicon helps the beginning and intermediate student of Hebrew identify the root words of difficult Hebrew forms.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #358060 in Books
• Published on: 1981-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 896 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780913573037
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• Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

From the Back Cover
Originally published in 1848, the Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon has become a standard reference tool. The various forms of all the Hebrew and Aramaic (formerly referred to as Chaldee) words in the Old Testament are listed in alphabetical order with a full grammatical analysis of each form and an indication of its root and meaning. Definitions are for the most part based on Gesenius' Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament. A complete set of noun and verb charts with explanatory comments is included, providing the reader with a concise but complete summary of both the Hebrew and the Aramaic grammatical systems.

About the Author
Benjamin Davidson was a nineteenth-century master of Ancient Near Eastern Languages. In addition to this volume he also edited A Concordance of Hebrew and Chaldee Scriptures and Syriac reading Lessons.

Customer Reviews

It has its place but can be too much of a crutch
This is indeed a good lexicon and has its place in the study of Biblical Hebrew (BH). When I was taking BH classes in college, I was told that this volume is a no no. We were encouraged to use Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) exclusively and discouraged to work with lexicons of this type. The reason given at the time was that Davidson's lexicon is too much of a crutch for students and that using it you never truly learn BH.

As an aside, this lexicon lists all the words in the Hebrew Bible alphabetically, regardless of the lexical root so it's easy to find any word one is having trouble with. It then tells you the root and the form of the word so it's essentially trouble free. With BDB, you have to know the lexical root of the word you're trying to analyze and then look under the root and look/dig further to identify the correct form.

There was a time when I used Davidson quite a bit and I can honestly say that it did not improve my Hebrew. Then I got smart and listened to my professors' counsel and started using BDB almost exclusively. It was much harder at first and much slower, but in the end it did for my Hebrew exactly what I was told it would. It got much better. It forced me to learn the forms and to think much harder about each word, its meaning and function and thus my ability to read has gotten much better. So I use this only on an occasion as a tool of last resort and I'd say that for such a use it's good. Otherwise it's too much of a crutch and will do you no good. After all, if you want to read fast without thinking about the forms and function, you might as well read in English or whatever language you know and not bother with Hebrew at all. For reading with a lexicon like this, one really does not need to know Hebrew at all. If you just know the alphabet you can look up any word and there you have it.

The Best and easy to use Lexicon I have seen
When it comes to Lexicons this is the only one I will use, or suggest to others. This text makes it so easy to first find a word, then investigate the shoresh. The style of having the word on the left and having the shoresh on the right, which the reader can go and look up works perfectly for me. I learned most of my Biblical Hebrew from using this Lexicon alone. The areas of the book that may be a little hard to read are the grammer elements. I used other books for the grammer of Biblical Hebrew, but that did not take away from the value of this Lexicon. I will say that this Lexicon is for a somewhat seasoned veteran of the Hebrew language, but once you get the hang of how it works it is perfect.

A Must Have if You're Hebrew Isn't Perfect
This is a top-notch biblical reference and a must-have for your language shelf. Obviously, you don't want to become too dependent on it; but it can certainly get you out of a bind when you are stuck in a corner.