Vines Expositary Dictionary

1602 Pages·2009·7.28 MB·English

VINE’S

COMPLETE

EXPOSITORY

DICTIONARY

OF OLD AND NEW

TESTAMENT WORDS

W.E. VINE,

MERRILL F. UNGER, WILLIAM WHITE, JR.

W.E. Vine's “Complete Expository Dictionary of Old
& New Testament Words” published in 1940 and without copyright.

Vines Expository Dictionary

of the

Old Testament

Edited by
Merrill F. Unger, Th.M., Th.D., Ph.D.

William White, Jr., Th.M., Ph.D.
CONTRIBUTORS

Gleason Archer
E. Clark Copeland
Leonard Coppes
Louis Goldberg
R. K. Harrison
Horace Hummel
George Kufeldt
Eugene H. Merrill
Walter Roehrs
Raymond Surburg
Willem van Gemeren
Donald Wold

FOREWORD

The Expository Dictionary of the Old Testament will be a useful tool in the hands of the
student who has little or no formal training in the Hebrew language. It will open up the
treasures of truth that often lie buried in the original language of the Old Testament,
sometimes close to the surface and sometimes deeply imbedded far beneath the surface.
The student trained in Hebrew will find the Expository Dictionary to be a handy
reference source. But the student without Hebrew training will experience a special thrill
in being able to use this study tool in digging out truths from the Hebrew Bible not
otherwise accessible to him.
It is, of course, possible to be a serious student of the Old Testament without having a
knowledge of the Hebrew language. English translations and commentaries are of
inestimable value and have their proper place. but a reference book that opens up the
language in which the Scriptures were originally revealed and recorded, and which makes
them available to readers unacquainted with the original tongue, has a value that at once
becomes apparent.
As the language divinely chosen to record the prophecies of Christ, Hebrew possesses
admirable qualities for the task assigned it. The language has a singularly rhythmic and
musical quality. In poetic form, it especially has a noble dignity of style, combined with a
vividness that makes it an effective vehicle for expression of sacred truth. The ideas
behind its vocabulary give Hebrew a lively, picturesque nature.
Most Hebrew words are built upon verbal roots consisting of three consonants called
radicals. There are approximately 1850 such roots in the Old Testament, from which
various nouns and other parts of speech have been derived. many of these roots represent
theological, moral, and ceremonial concepts that have been obscured by the passage of
time; recent archaeological and linguistic research is shedding new light on many of these
concepts. Old Testament scholars find that biblical Hebrew can be compared with other
Semitic languages such as Arabic, Assyrian, Ugaritic, Ethiopic, and Aramaic to discover
the basic meaning of many heretofore obscure terms.
But is is not enough merely to have clarified the meaning of each root word. Each
word can take on different shades of meaning as it is employed in various contexts, so
one must study the various biblical occurrences of the word to arrive at an accurate
understanding of its intended use.
This type of research has introduced students of Hebrew to a new world of
understanding the Old Testament. But how can this material be made available to those
who do not know Hebrew? That is the purpose of the present work.
now the lay student can have before him or her the Hebrew root, or a Hebrew word
based on that root, and can trace its development to its use in the passage before him.
Moreover, he can acquire some appreciation of the richness and variety of the Hebrew
vocabulary. For example, Hebrew synonyms often have pivotal doctrinal repercussions,
as with the word virgin in Isaiah 7:14, compared with similar words meaning “young
woman.” In some cases, a play on words is virtually impossible to reflect in the English
translation (e.g., Zeph 2:4–7). Some Hebrew words can have quite different—sometimes
exactly opposite—meanings in different contexts; thus the word (cid:1)(cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:4)(cid:5) can mean “to
bless” or “to curse,”and (cid:6)(cid:2)(cid:7)(cid:4)(cid:8) can mean “to redeem” or “to pollute.”
The lay student, of course, will suffer some disadvantage in not knowing Hebrew. yet
is is fair to say that an up-to-date expository dictionary that makes a happy selection of
the more meaningful Hebrew words of the Old Testament will open up a treasure house
of truth contained in the Hebrew Bible. It can offer a tremendous boon to the meaningful
study of Scripture. It cannot fail to become an essential reference work for all serious
students of the Bible.
MERRILL F. UNGER

INTRODUCTION

The writings of the New Testament are based in a large measure on God’s revelation
in the Old Testament. To understand the New Testament themes of Creation, Fall, and
Restoration, it is necessary to read of their origin in the Old Testament.
The New Testament was written in a popular dialect of an Indo-European language,
Greek. The Old Testament was written in the Semitic languages of Hebrew and Aramaic.
For centuries, lay students of the Bible have found it very difficult to understand the
structure of biblical Hebrew. Study guides to biblical Hebrew are designed for people
who can read Hebrew-and many of them are written in German, which only compounds
the difficulty.
This Expository Dictionary seeks to present about 500 significant terms of the Old
Testament for lay readers who are not familiar with Hebrew. It describes the frequency,
usage, and meaning of these terms as fully as possible. No source has been ignored in
seeking to bring the latest Hebrew scholarship to the student who seeks it. It is hoped that
this small reference book will enlighten Bible students to the riches of God’s truth in the
Old Testament.
A. The Place of Hebrew in History. Hebrew language and literature hold a unique
place in the course of Western civilization. It emerged sometime after 1500 B.C. in the
area of Palestine, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The Jewish people
have used Hebrew continuously in one location or another to the present day. A
modernized dialect of Hebrew (with spelling modifications) is the official language of the
State of Israel.
When Alexander the Great came to power, he united the Greek city-states under the
influence of Macedonia from about 330 B.C. to 323 B.C. Alexander and his generals
virtually annihilated the social structures and languages of the ancient societies that their
empire had absorbed. The Babylonians, Aramaeans, Persians, and Egyptians ceased to
exist as distinct civilizations; only the Greek (Hellenistic) culture remained. Judaism was
the only ancient religion and Hebrew the only ancient language that survived this
onslaught.
The Hebrew Bible contains the continuous history of civilization from Creation to
Roman times. It is the only record of God’s dealings with humanity through His prophets,
priests, and kings. In addition, it is the only ancient religious document that has survived
completely intact.
Hebrew is related to Aramaic, Syriac, and such modern languages as Amharic and
Arabic (both ancient and modern). It belongs to a group of languages known as the
Semitic languages (so called because Scripture says that they were spoken by the
descendants of Noah’s son, Shem). The oldest known Semitic language is Akkadian,
which was written in the "wedge-shaped" or cuneiform system of signs. The earliest
Akkadian texts were written on clay tablets in about 2400 B.C. Babylonian and Assyrian
are later dialects of Akkadian; both influenced the development of Hebrew. Because the
Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian languages were all used in Mesopotamia, they are
classified as "East Semitic" languages.
The earliest evidence for the origins of "West Semitic" languages appears to be an
inscription from the ancient city of Ebla. This was a little-known capital of a Semitic state
in what is now Northern Syria. The tablets of Ebla are bilingual, written in both Sumerian
and Eblaite. The team of Italian archaeologists excavating Ebla have reported that these
tablets contain a number of personal and place names mentioned in the Book of Genesis.
Some of the tablets have been dated as early as 2400 B.C. Since Hebrew was also a West
Semitic language, the publication of Ebla’s texts may cast new light on many older
Hebrew words and phrases.
The earliest complete series of pre-Hebrew texts comes from the ancient Canaanite
city of Ugarit. Located on a cluster of hills in southern Lebanon, Ugarit has yielded texts
that contain detailed information about the religion, poetry, and trade of the Canaanite
people. The texts are dated between 1800 and 1200 B.C. These tablets contain many
words and phrases that are almost identical to words found in the Hebrew Bible. The
Ugaritic dialect illuminates the development of Old Hebrew (or Paleo-Hebrew). The
poetic structure of the Ugaritic language is mirrored in many passages of the Old
Testament, such as the "Song of Deborah" in Judges 5. The scribes of Ugarit wrote in a
modified cuneiform script that was virtually alphabetic; this script prepared the way for
using the simpler Phoenician writing system.
A number of texts from various parts of the Near East contain West Semitic words
and phrases. The most important of these are the tablets from the ancient Egyptian city of
Amarna. These tablets were written by the petty rulers of the Egyptian colonies of Syria-
Palestine and by their overlord, the pharaoh. The tablets from the minor princes were
written in Babylonian; but when the correspondent’s scribe did not know the proper
Babylonian word to express a certain idea, he substituted a Canaanite "gloss." These
glosses tell us much about the words and spellings that were used in Palestine during the
time when Paleo-Hebrew emerged as a distinct language.
The Hebrew language probably came into existence during the patriarchal period,
about 2000 B.C. The language was reduced to writing in about 1250 B.C., and the earliest
extant Hebrew inscription dates from about 1000 B. C. These early inscriptions were
carved on stone; the oldest known Hebrew scrolls were found in the Qumran caves near
the Dead Sea, and they date from the third century B.C. While some secular Hebrew texts
have survived, the primary source for our knowledge of classical Hebrew is the Old
Testament itself.
B. The Origin of the Hebrew Writing System. Greek tradition claims that
Phoenicians invented the alphabet. Actually, this is only partially true, since the
Phoenician writing system was not an alphabet as we know it today. It was a simplified
syllabary system-in other words, its various symbols represent syllables rather than
separate vocal components. The Hebrew writing system grew out of the Phoenician
system.
The Hebrew writing system gradually changed over the centuries. From 1000 to 200
B.C., a rounded script (Old Phoenician style) was used. This script was last used for
copying the biblical text and may be seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls. But after the Jews
returned from their Babylonian Captivity, they began to use the square script of the
Aramaic language, which was the official language of the Persian Empire. Jewish scribes
adopted the Aramaic book hand, a more precise form of the script. When Jesus
mentioned the "jot" and "little" of the Mosaic Law, He was referring to manuscripts in
the square script. The book hand is used in all printed editions of the Hebrew Bible.
C. A Concise History of the Hebrew Bible. Undoubtedly the text of the Hebrew
Bible was updated and revised several times in antiquity, and there was more than one
textual tradition. Many archaic words in the Pentateuch suggest that Moses used early
cuneiform documents in compiling his account of history. Scribes of the royal court
under David and Solomon probably revised the text and updated obscure expressions.
Apparently certain historical books, such as First and Second Kings and First and Second
Chronicles, represent the official annals of the kingdom. These books represent the
historical tradition of the priestly class.
The message of the prophets was probably written down sometime after the prophets
delivered their message. There is a variety of writing styles among the prophetic books;
and several, such as Amos and Hosea, seem to be closer to colloquial speech.
The text of the Old Testament was probably revised again during the time of King
Josiah after the Book of Law was rediscovered (Second Kings 22-27; Second Chronicles
24-35). This would have taken place about 620 B.C. The next two centuries, which
brought the Babylonian Captivity, were the most momentous times in the history of
Israel. When the Jews began to rebuild Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah in 450 B.C.,
their common speech was the Aramaic language of the Persian court. This language
became more popular among the Jews until it displaced Hebrew as the dominant
language of Judaism in the Christian era. There is evidence that the Old Testament text
was revised again at that time.
After the Greeks came to power under Alexander the Great, the preservation of
Hebrew became a political issue; the conservative Jewish parties wanted to retain it. But
the Jews of the Diaspora-those living outside of Palestine-depended upon versions of the
biblical text in Aramaic (called the Targums) or Greek (called the Septuagint).
Both the Targums and Septuagint were translated from Hebrew manuscripts. There
were substantial differences between these versions, and the Jewish rabbis went to great
efforts to explain these differences.
After Jerusalem fell to the armies of the Roman general Titus, Jewish biblical
scholars were scattered throughout the ancient world and the knowledge of Hebrew
began to decline. From A.D. 200 to nearly A.D. 900, groups of scholars attempted to
devise systems of vowel markings (later called points) to aid Jewish readers who no
longer spoke Hebrew. The scholars who did this work are called Masoretes, and their
markings are called the Masora. The Masoretic text that they produced represents the
consonants that had been preserved from about 100 B.C. (as proven by the Dead Sea
scrolls); but the vowel markings reflect the understanding of the Hebrew language in
about A.D. 300. The Masoretic text dominated Old Testament studies in the Middle
Ages, and it has served as the basis for virtually all printed versions of the Hebrew Bible.
Unfortunately, we have no complete text of the Hebrew Bible older than the tenth
century A.D. The earliest complete segment of the Old Testament (the Prophets) is a
copy dating from A.D. 895. While the Dead Sea scrolls yield entire books such as Isaiah,
they do not contain a complete copy of the Old Testament text. Therefore, we must still
depend upon the long tradition of Hebrew scholarship used in the printed editions of the
Hebrew Bible.
The first complete printed edition of the Hebrew Bible was prepared by Felix
Pratensis and published by Daniel Bomberg in Venice in 1516. A more extensive edition
of the Hebrew Bible was edited by the Jewish-Christian scholar Jacob teen Chayyim in
1524. Some scholars continue to use the teen Chayyim text as the basic printed Hebrew
Bible.
D. The Hebrew of the Old Testament. The Hebrew of the Old Testament does not
have one neat and concise structure; the Old Testament was written over such a long span
of time that we cannot expect to have one uniform linguistic tradition. In fact, the Hebrew
of the three major sections of the Old Testament varies considerably. These three sections
are known as the Torah (The Law), Nebi’im (The Prophets), and Ketubim (The Writings).
In addition to the linguistic differences between the major sections, certain books of the
Old Testament have their own peculiarities. For example, Job and Psalms have very
ancient words and phrases similar to Ugaritic; Ruth preserves some archaic forms of
Moabite speech; and First and Second Samuel reveal the rough, warlike nature of the
colloquial idiom of the era of Solomon and David.
As Israel changed from being a confederation of tribes to a dynastic kingdom, the
language changed from the speech of herdsmen and caravan traders to the literary
language of a settled population. While the books of the New Testament reflect a Greek
dialect as it was used over a span of about 75 years, the Old Testament draws upon
various forms of the Hebrew language as it evolved over nearly 2,000 years. Therefore,
certain texts-such as the early narrative of the Book of Exodus and the last of the Psalms-
are virtually written in two different dialects and should be studied with this in mind.
E. Characteristics of the Hebrew Language. Because Hebrew is a Semitic
language, its structure and function are quite different from Indo-European languages
such as French, German, Spanish, and English. A number of Hebrew consonants cannot
be transformed exactly into English letters. Therefore, our English transliterations of
Hebrew words suggest that the language sounded very harsh and rough, but it probably
was very melodious and beautiful.
Most Hebrew words are built upon a three-consonant root. The same root may appear
in a noun, a verb, an adjective, and an adverb-all with the same basic meaning. For
example, ketab, is a Hebrew noun meaning "book." A verbal form, katab, means to
"write." There is also the Hebrew noun ketobeth, which means "decoration" or "tattoo."
Each of these words repeats the basic set of three consonants, giving them a similarity of
sound that would seem awkward in English. It would seem ludicrous for an English
writer to compose a sentence like, "The writer wrote the written writing of the writ." But
this kind of repetition would be very common in biblical Hebrew. Many Old Testament
texts, such as Genesis 49 and Numbers 23, use this type of repetition to play upon the
meaning of words.
Hebrew also differs from English and other Indo-European languages in varying the
form of a single part of speech. English has only one form of a particular noun or verb,
while Hebrew may have two or more forms of the same basic part of speech. Scholars
have studied these less common forms of Hebrew words for many centuries, and they
have developed a vast literature about these words. Any study of the more important
theological terms of the Old Testament must take these studies into consideration.
F. The Form of Words (Morphology). In principle, the basic Hebrew word consists
of a three-consonant root and three vowels-two internal and one final (though the final
vowel is often not pronounced). We might diagram the typical Hebrew word in this
manner:
C1+V1+C2+V2+C3+V3
Using the word katab as an example, the diagram would look like this:
K + A + T + A + B + _
The different forms of Hebrew words always keep the three consonants in the same
relative positions, but they change the vowels inserted between the consonants. For
example, koteb is the participle of katab, while katob is the infinitive.
By extending the verbal forms of their words, Hebrew writers were able to develop
very extensive and complex meanings. For example, they could do this by adding
syllables at the beginning of the three-consonant root, like this:
Root = KTB
yi + ketob-"let him write"
we + katab-"and he will write"
Sometimes, a writer would double a consonant while keeping the three basic
consonants in the same position. For example, he could take the root of KTB and make
the word wayyiketob, meaning "and he caused to write."
The Hebrew writer could also add several different endings or suffixes to a basic verb
to produce an entire clause. For example, using the verb qatal (meaning "to kill"), he
could develop the word qetaltihu (meaning "I have killed him"). These examples
emphasize the fact that Hebrew is a syllabic language. There are no unique consonantal
combinations such as diphthongs (or glides) like cl, gr, bl, as in English.
G. Hebrew Word Order. The normal word order of a verbal sentence in a Hebrew
narrative or prose passage is:
Verb-Object-Indirect Object or
Pronoun-Subject
However, it is interesting to note that the Hebrew word order for a nominal sentence
may parallel that of English:
Subject-Verb-Predicate
Nominative/Adjective
Hebrew writers frequently departed from the verbal arrangement for the sake of
emphasis. Yet a Hebrew sentence can seldom be translated into English word-for-word,
because the result would be meaningless. Over the centuries, translators have developed
standard ways to express these peculiar Semitic thought forms in IndoEuropean speech.
H. Foreign Words in Hebrew. The Old Testament uses foreign words in various
ways, depending upon the context. Akkadian proper names often appear in the patriarchal
narratives of Genesis. Here are some examples:
(Sumero-Akkadian) Sumer= Shinar (Hebrew)
(Akkadian) Sharrukin = Nimrod (Hebrew)
Several Egyptian terms appear in the narrative of Joseph, just as Babylonian terms
appear in the writings of Isaiah Jeremiah, and Persian words in the Book of Daniel. None
of these words have theological significance, however. There is little linguistic evidence
that the religious concepts of Israel were borrowed from foreign sources.
The greatest inroad of a foreign idiom is the case of the Aramaic language, which
appears in several isolated verses and some entire chapters of the Book of Daniel. As we
have already noted, Aramaic became the primary religious language of the Jews living
outside of Palestine after the Babylonian Captivity.
I. The Written Text of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew text of the Old Testament
offers two immediate problems to the uninitiated reader. First is the fact that Hebrew is
read from right to left, unlike Indo-European languages; each character of the text and its
attendant symbols are read from top to bottom, as well as from right to left. Second is the
fact that written Hebrew is a complicated system of syllable symbols, each of which has
three components.
The first component is the sign for the consonant itself. Some of the less frequent
consonantal signs stand for vowel sounds. (These letters are Arch [indicating the long a
sound], waw [to indicate the long u sound], and yod [to indicate the "ee" sound-as in
"see"].) The second component is the pattern of vowel points. The third component is the
pattern of cantellations, which were added during the Middle Ages to aid cantors in
singing the text. Some practice is required before a person is able to read the Hebrew text
using all of the three components. The accompanying illustration shows the direction and
sequence for reading the text. (Cantellations are omitted).
ENGLISH TRANSLITERATION: (cid:7)(cid:4)(cid:9)(cid:10)(cid:11)(cid:3)(cid:12)(cid:13)(cid:10)(cid:2)(cid:7)(cid:14)(cid:15)(cid:9)(cid:10)(cid:13)(cid:7)(cid:4)(cid:16)(cid:10)(cid:17)(cid:3)
The specific vowel points and their sequence within the word indicate the weight or
accentuation to be given to each syllable of the word. Different traditions within Judaism
indicate different ways of pronouncing the same Hebrew word, and the vowel points of a
particular manuscript will reflect the pronunciation used by the scribes who copied the
manuscript. Many Slavic and Spanish speech patterns crept into the medieval Hebrew
manuscripts, due to the Jews’ association with Slavic and Spanish cultures during the
Middle Ages. However, the use of Hebrew speech in modern Israel is tending to
standardize the pronunciation of Hebrew.
The accompanying table indicates the transliterations accepted for Hebrew font by
most biblical scholars today. It is the standard system, developed by the Journal of
Biblical Literature, for use in writing and language instruction.
Consonants Name Transliteration
(cid:1) (cid:1)(cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:4) (cid:5)
(cid:2) (cid:6)(cid:3)(cid:7) (cid:8)
(cid:3) (cid:9)(cid:10)(cid:11)(cid:3)(cid:2) (cid:12)
(cid:4) (cid:13)(cid:14)(cid:2)(cid:3)(cid:7) (cid:15)
(cid:5) (cid:16)(cid:3) (cid:17)
(cid:6) (cid:18)(cid:14)(cid:19) (cid:19)
(cid:7) (cid:20)(cid:14)(cid:21)(cid:10)(cid:22) (cid:23)
(cid:8) (cid:24)(cid:3)(cid:7) (cid:17)
(cid:9) (cid:25)(cid:3)(cid:7) (cid:7)
(cid:10) (cid:26)(cid:27)(cid:15) (cid:21)
(cid:11) (cid:28)(cid:14)(cid:4) (cid:29)
(cid:12) (cid:30)(cid:14)(cid:11)(cid:3)(cid:15) (cid:31)
(cid:13) (cid:3)(cid:11) (cid:11)
(cid:14) !"(cid:22) (cid:22)
(cid:15) #(cid:14)(cid:11)(cid:3)(cid:29) $
(cid:16) (cid:1)(cid:21)(cid:10)(cid:22) %
(cid:17) &(cid:3) (cid:4)
(cid:18) ’(cid:14)(cid:15)(cid:3) (
(cid:19) )(cid:27)(cid:4) *
(cid:20) +(cid:3), -
(cid:22)(cid:21) (cid:23) .(cid:10)(cid:22)/01(cid:10)(cid:22) 2/0,
(cid:24) 3(cid:14)(cid:19) (cid:7)
Vowels Name Transliteration
(cid:25) (cid:4)(cid:14)(cid:7)(cid:14)4 5