Customer Reviews

Index To Brown Driver and Briggs Hebrew Lexicon

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This index is so very helpful that it verges on cheating. Anyone who has translated Torah knows how very difficult it can be to strip out the grammatical parts of the word to get to the right root. BDB is useful and interesting, but my havurah still sometimes had difficulty getting to the right entry. I found this Index to BDB at a used book store, and it has really speeded up our translation! It lists each BDB reference in chapter-verse order. You can instantly see which words in the passage you are translating are defined in BDB, including page number and definition number. There are still difficult words that are not indexed (because they are not referred to in BDB), so we still get some practice in figuring out the roots! But the Index to BDB (along with the BDB, of course) is very useful in getting the surface translation so that we can start looking at the meaning of the text.

Ancient Hebrew is not an easy language to master, and so it is often useful to have a BDB Hebrew Lexicon at hand. But that too can be difficult to use (especially if you are relatively new to Hebrew). This Index is the link between the text you are working on, and the detailed knowledge "hidden" in the Lexicon. The trouble is, the Index is so helpful I feel almost guilty using it. (Hebrew shouldn't be easy!) Just one provision, if you are over 45 you will probably want to go out and buy a magnifying glass, the print is extremely small, and can be difficult to see.

Brown Driver & Briggs (BDB) contains a lot of information, but its arrangement can cause a person to tear one's hair out in clumps, especially for those of us who do not use our Hebrew every day. Einspahr helps you find the listing and discussion on a particular vocable quickly and easily. Unfortunately, this volume list only words used ten times or more. I found myself making notes for words used less often. There are errors in the volume and I also found myself writing to the publisher to make them aware of the mistakes I found. On balance, this volume makes Hebrew less frustrating. I wish it had been available when I took my first year Hebrew course.

If you are studying a Hebrew passage using BDB then you need this book. This book makes it a lot easier and faster to locate a particular word in BDB.

The print is on the small side, but if you are using BDB, you are dealing with that already.

Some use this book without BDB, because they are attempting to make a rough translation. This will work well, but there are times when the English equivalent given is more appropriate the Hebrew word in general rather than the particular usage.

While there are some mistakes in this book, this is not much of a problem when you consider the scope of this book.

Very useful tool for looking up the meaning of each word in the Torah.

Much easier to use than a dictionary.

But be prepared with reading glasses nearby as print is small to squeeze everything in.

Con esta herramienta usted podrá hallar con facilidad la palabra hebrea que anda buscando, e ir directamente a la página del Lexicon Hebrew and English de Brown, Driver, and Briggs en donde está. Este libro le guiará versículo a versículo a travéz de la biblia con las palabras originales de la Biblia. Es un libro barato para la prestación que ofrece. Inseparable e indispensable para usar con el Hebrew and English Lexicon de Brown, Driver and Briggs.