About the Frequency Dictionary of the Hebrew Bible

Introduction

The Frequency Dictionary of the Hebrew Bible is an indispensable resource for students, researchers, and scholars. It is comprehensive in the way that it presents the entire corpus of words of the Hebrew Bible and yet it is easy to use. The Frequency Dictionary is composed of two important parts (simply click on the tab), with each part consisting of multi-functional elements. The Frequency Dictionary presents substantial, statistical information that is vital for users as they seek to comprehend the Hebrew Bible.

Tab 1. Lemmas

Lemmas (or “headwords” in the lexicon) provide significant comprehensive, statistical information for all the lemmas (both Hebrew and Aramaic) in the Hebrew Bible. The frequency dictionary features all 9,375 headwords together with more than 400,000+ inflected forms. The lemmas are ranked numerically, starting with the most frequent word in the Hebrew Bible and continuing to infrequent words (hapax legomena). Each lemma contains its numerical rank, frequency (rate of occurrence), English definition, part of speech (adjective, conjunction, noun, verb, and so forth), and cumulative percentage. Additionally, many of the words include a “Hint,” or a mnemonic device to assist learners as they seek to memorize the Hebrew word together with its English meaning. For example, the statistical information for the top six words in the Hebrew Bible, in terms of frequency, is as follows:

The lemmas can be sorted by frequency or alphabetically. The lemmas can also be filtered to show the frequencies of any parts of speech (adjective, conjunction, noun, verb, and so forth). For example, the statistical information for the top six verbs in the Hebrew Bible, in terms of frequency, is as follows:

Beginning students may want to focus on the most frequently attested words (e.g., the top 400–600 words), while advanced students may desire to study less frequently attested words. It is significant that the top twenty-eight Hebrew words (and verbal roots) in the Frequency Dictionary constitute about 50% of all words in the Hebrew Bible! In our view, students who learn the most frequently attested vocabulary words will have a much greater capacity to translate the Hebrew Bible—more quickly and more accurately.

Tab 2. Forms

The Forms tab features comprehensive, statistical information regarding the frequencies of each lemma together with a morphological analysis of all grammatical forms, e.g., adjective, adverb, conjunction, demonstrative, interjection, interrogative, noun, numbers, particle (definite article, negative, object marker, relative), preposition, and verb.

For example, the statistical information for the top six words in the Hebrew Bible, in terms of frequency, is as follows:

Column 1 presents the number of forms, in order of frequency, from numbers 1 to 44,010 (only the first six entries are shown).

Column 2 sets forth the frequencies of each form. For example, the form וְ (entry 1) occurs 24,196 times; the form הַ (entry 2) occurs 16,927 times, and so forth.

Column 3 puts forward the forms (note, there are 44,010 different forms in the Hebrew Bible).

Column 4 displays the lemma.

Column 5 exhibits the part of speech—the part of speech for entry 1 is Particle conjunction; for entry 2, Particle definite-article, and so forth.

Another example. A frequency list of the lemma אמר־1 provides the following results—there are a total of 99 different inflected forms of אמר־1. The following table presents the first six of the 99.

Column 1 puts forward the numbers of the different inflected forms, from the most frequent (number 1) to the least frequent (number 99—not shown);

Column 2 displays the frequencies of each inflected form, e.g., entry number 1 (יֹאמֶר) occurs 1,952 times in the Hebrew Bible; entry number 2 (אֱמֹר) occurs 936 times, and so on.

Column 3 sets forth the inflected form, entry number 1 (יֹאמֶר), entry number 2 (אֱמֹר), and so forth.

Column 4 exhibits the lemma (אמר־1), which is the same for all 99 forms.

Column 5 presents the Part of Speech (in this case, Verb) together with the inflectional attributes of each verb—entry number 1, qal imperfect vav-consecutive 3 ms; entry number 2, qal infinitive construct, and so forth.

Forms can also be filtered to show selected grammatical forms, A simple click of the button and users can access any of the grammatical forms! Users can filter the list to see only Hebrew or Aramaic words. Forms can be sorted alphabetically or by frequency.

The statistical information for the top six entries of nouns in the Hebrew Bible, are as follows:

In total, there are 18,186 entries for nouns in the Frequency Dictionary.

The statistical information for the top six entries of adjectives in the Hebrew Bible, are as follows:

In total, there are 1226 entries for adjectives in the Frequency Dictionary.

Notes to help you navigate the Frequency Dictionary of the Hebrew Bible:

1. The Frequency Dictionary features several icons, set forth in the left-hand column, shown below; the significance of each icon is provided in the right-hand column:
•  - Settings
•  - Show
•  - Hide
•  - Information
•  - Filter
•  - Sort Ascending/Descending
2. In the column that is labeled “Lemma,” some entries have a number next to it, e.g., entry number 5 reads 1-אֵת. The number 1 indicates that this is the first definition of the word אֵת. The second definition, which is labeled 2-אֵת, is located further down the list of words.
3. In the column that is labeled “Lemma,” some entries have the symbol @- next to it, which indicates that the word is Aramaic.
4. In the column that is labeled “Lemma,” verbs do not have vowels, e.g., the verb “to be” appears as היה.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank many individuals for their work on the Frequency Dictionary of the Hebrew Bible, including Jason W. Dzubak, Director; Lauryn M. Wilde, Project Manager; Spencer Young, Programmer; Jesse Vincent, former Project Manager; and Dr. Monte F. Shelley, emeritus director—the WordCruncher Team in the Office of Digital Humanities at Brigham Young University; also, Emily Mehr, a graduate student at Brigham Young University. Indeed, their contributions are significant! We note that the Frequency Dictionary was created by a WordCruncher analysis of the Westminster Hebrew Morphology (2020, Version 4.22). Jason Dzubak converted the Westminster data to Unicode. At some point in the near future, the WordCruncher team will also create a WordCruncher version of the Westminster data for those who want to search, study, and analyze the Hebrew Bible.