Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard3 AT earthlink.net>]

michaelabernat9001 AT sbcglobal.net wrote:
>           I am somewhat confused by the discussion of chalal. It appears 
> that some argue there are two roots with similar but not identical spelling. 
> One meaning to profane and the other having a meaning which includes wound, 
> pain, pierce, etc. My resources are limited so I  looked this up in a couple 
> of modern Hebrew/English dictionaries and some of the more classical 
> lexicons.
>
>           The modern dictionaries treated this word as one entry, presumably 
> they only saw one root which included both the ideas of profane and wounding 
> or killing.
>   

HH: The standard lexicon for biblical Hebrew is, in English, HALOT. It 
lists these words as two homonymous roots. BDB is a standard older but 
more affordable biblical lexicon, and it also treats the words as two 
homonymous roots. BDB was done in 1906 but has hundreds of minor 
corrections inserted in 1951.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard