The Vocabulary of the Old Testament

The student of the Bible often wants to know what vocabulary occurs where. If the word is rare, the answer is easy to find in a concordance or lexicon. If the word occurs frequently, the student has to do more work to sort out the facts. When one asks what vocabulary is found in, or characteristic of, or unique to, a given book, one consults the few lists available or the handful of works which concordance the vocabularies of single books or small sets of books. The authors contributions to The Computer Bible are specialized linguistic concordances of this sort - volume 9: A linguistic Concordance to Ruth and Jonah (1976); Volume 10: Eight Minor Prophets: A Linguistic Concordance (1976); Volume 14/14A: A Linguistic Concordance of Jeremiah (1978). These arrange the vocabulary by parts of speech. A specially designed reference work is needed to provide easy and accurate access to vocabulary distribution. The introduction describes as concisely as possible the structure of VOT. In part I, the vocabulary is broken down into parts of speech and other grammatical categories for sections, books, and sources of the OT. Part I thus gives a broad, comprehensive picture. Part II and III present individual vocabulary entries, showing where they occur, via biblical references and summary counts.