The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew Revised. IV. Yodh–Lamedh.

The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew Revised (DCHR) (2018–2028) is a complete revision in nine volumes, with over 100,000 improvements, of the original Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH) (1993–2016). When completed, DCHR will be 5 million words in length (equivalent to 50 standard-size books), 25% longer than DCH, and 4 times the length of BDB and HALOT.

The fourth Volume of The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew Revised, Yodh–Lamedh, arrives 27 [28 if 2026] years after the publication of the corresponding volume in the first edition (DCH) in 1998.  It has taken 2 years particularly because of the publication of The Shorter Dictionary of Classical Hebrew Revised (SDCHR) in 2025, which was always planned by David J.A. Clines (1938–2022)  to appear in print before all nine volumes were produced, so that scholars might have access to the most essential elements of DCHR as soon as possible.

The present volume, DCHR IV, contains some 1557 words (lemmas), of which 573 are ‘new words’ (i.e. not in BDB); DCHR IV thus adds c. 60.4% to the number of words for Yodh–Lamedh that are to be found in BDB and other Hebrew dictionaries. DCHR IV also has some 40% more material than DCH IV, which consists of many thousands of additions and corrections, references to the multitude of Dead Sea Scrolls texts and inscriptions published since 1998, and a much expanded Bibliography.  It is anticipated that the subsequent volumes of DCHR will be published at a somewhat swifter pace, with Volumes V to IX arriving by 2028, as well as The Concise Dictionary of Classical Hebrew Revised in 2026.

Volumes IV to IX were all planned by David J.A. Clines in his editorial role for DCHR together with David M. Stec as the Research Associate of the project. Now the work of collating the present and forthcoming volumes sits entirely with David Stec.

DCHR as a whole makes approximately 100,000 improvements to DCH, it is about 25% longer than DCH, and has about 2,700 more ‘new words’ (i.e. words not in BDB) than were in DCH. The distinctive features of DCHR as compared with DCH, most notably its indication of byforms, synonyms, verbal nouns, denominative verbs, loanwords and semantic fields, have already been introduced in the preceding volumes of DCHR.

DCHR, when completed, will contain more than 6,420 Hebrew words not in BDB, and will refer to many newly published texts, including 540 Dead Sea Scrolls and 4,000 ancient Hebrew inscriptions. New features in DCHR include: a notation of 4,285 byforms (words with the same meaning and similar form) identified for the first time; 717 verbal nouns (nouns derived from a verb) with their own articles (not previously shown in Hebrew lexica), 345 denominative verbs (verbs derived from a noun), and the semantic field to which every word belongs (a totally new feature for Hebrew dictionaries).

This is the first volume of DCHR to make use of the final version of the sets of synonyms, which was first published in full in SDCHR. The compilation of the sets of synonyms was an ongoing process, which began with work on the first volume of DCHR and was brought to completion only with the production of SDCHR.

Articles on personal names show (for the first time) all short forms, long forms, and alternative forms of each name, the Bibliography has been updated and expanded. Every occurrence of each word in Classical Hebrew is noted. All the subjects and objects of verbs are listed, and the verbs used with each noun, as well as all nouns used in a construct (genitive) relation with another noun. As with DCH, every Hebrew word in the revised Dictionary (except for the variant forms of a word, the byforms and the sections on synonyms) is followed immediately by an English translation, so that the Dictionary can be easily understood by a person with little or no Hebrew.

There is a special discount price for customers subscribing to the DCHR set, and an easy payment plan (details from phoenix.bibs@sheffield.ac.uk).