A trio of eminent Old Testament scholars—Francis Brown, R. Driver, and Charles Briggs—spent over twenty years researching, writing, and preparing The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Since it first appeared in the early part of the twentieth century, BDB has been considered the finest and most comprehensive Hebrew lexicon available to the English-speaking student. Based upon the classic work of Wilhelm Gesenius, the "father of modern Hebrew lexicography," BDB gives not only dictionary definitions for each word, but relates each word to its Old Testament usage and categorizes its nuances of meaning. BDB's exhaustive coverage of Old Testament Hebrew words, as well as its unparalleled usage of cognate languages and the wealth of background sources consulted and quoted, render BDB and invaluable resource for all students of the Bible.

Joshua Villines
If you pulled up this title you probably have some interest in studying Bibilical Hebrew. If you plan on buying only one reference tool for those studies, this should be it. The contextual references and translations (although somewhat dated) are extensive and detailed. The The lexicography is the standard used or referenced by all of the other works in the field. The historical information is extremely useful if you plan on doing comparative work or focused eymologies.

This is the single masterwork reference for Biblical Hebrew; and, if you are a seminary student, you will probably have to buy it anyway.

Ryan LeBlanc
I've found it difficult to find a good quality Hebrew and English Lexicon that doesn't require previous knowledge of Hebrew. This user friendly lexicon makes it easy to look up any biblical Hebrew word and get the meaning behind the word.

When I first picked this book up I was intimidated because it was full of Hebrew letters and looked more advanced than it really was. This lexicon can be used by novices like me who don't know Hebrew, but can be useful to those who do know it too. This book uses Strong's numbers so it maximizes what Strong's can do.

I am glad that I purchased this lexicon. It has served me very well in my study of the Hebrew language and how it is used in the Old Testament. This book can be useful to any bible student or anybody who studies the Old Testament.

TiZ
The Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) Hebrew and English Lexicon is a very special dictionary for Biblical Hebrew (and there's a little section at the end for Biblical Aramaic). This is how it works, or at least how I use it. When there is a (Hebrew) word in the Tanakh you don't know or you're not clear about, you page through to it in the BDB. The BDB tells you what type of word it is, whether it's a proper name, noun, verb, etc; it may give you the root in cognate languages such as Akkadian, Arabic, Ethiopic, etc.; and it gives you the various meanings of the word in some of the contexts it is used (with sources and biblical references; it often gives you all the references for the word so that you can use it as a sort-of concordance).

The book was first published in 1906 so it is a classic. It seems that there are more modern lexicons available. If I'm not mistaken (and I stand to be corrected), one modern version I considered seemed very expensive. But the BDB is great value for money. It has about 1200 pages, (mine) is hard-cover (and the cover is nice-looking). It is detailed and clear, and I find it very easy to use. It is also coded with Strong's Concordance Numbers (which I don't use).

It's a pity that the great scholars that gave us this Lexicon devoted so much of their keen minds to the unfortunate documentary hypothesis of higher criticism, whose J's, E's, D's, and P's show their ugly faces now in this book, albeit rarely; fortunately, they also gave us BDB, and it is no surprise that it has come to be an essential book for the study of the Tanakh for so many.

djdjdjdjdjdj9
This is one of the foremost English-Hebrew lexicons available, but has come under scrutiny in recent years because it is quite dated (about 100 years old). It has been updated to include Strong's concordance numbers, which is quite silly to me because if one is utilizing the BDB regularly, then one's skills are probably far beyond the need for Strong's reference numbers. Despite updates like the inclusion of Strong's reference numbers, BDB, because of its advanced age, does not take into consideration insights which scholars have gleaned from Ugaritic findings and other extra-biblical texts (like the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.). One example is the lack of a "Hishtaphel" stem in the BDB, but which has been attested in Ugaritic literature-scholarship now believes the stem to exist in the Hebrew OT. Another problem beginners may have with this book is that each entry is arranged by its triumvirate root-a skill most beginners won't have until they reach the intermediate reading level. Again, a useful lexicon for age-old comprehensive analysis, but certain compunctions should be considered when in use.

I would recommend the 2-volume "student edition" of HALOT (Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament) instead of BDB.

J. E. S. Leake
Without a doubt Brown Driver and Briggs (BDB) is a phenomonally useful lexicon, and once one works how to work round the root-order, is more useful than alphabetically-ordered books. The price of this edition too is unbeatable. BUT BDB is a hundred years old, and scholarship has moved on. The current standard reference in English is the 3rd ed. of Koehler and Baumgartner's 'Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament' (HALOT). I would recommend students to start with BDB but to check contentious words with Koehler and Baumgartner, and get a copy when they can afford to (it does cost $150-$180 in the 'economical' 2-volume study edition). Clines 'Dictionary of Classical Hebrew' at over $700 so far, with 3 or 4 volumes to be published, is for libraries only.

I have to say that I use the Oxford edition more than the Hendrickson edition, but recently I ordered the latter from Amazon for use in Italy where I was living (due to its amazing price, it was cheaper to order it from America than to get my own copy out of store in England), and was very pleased with the quality. Though it has Strong's reference numbers in the margins which are of no interest to me, those margins are slightly larger than the OUP edition, and so one has a little more space to scribble (both editions could do with more margin, tho'). On djdjdjdjdjdj9's allusion to the hishtaph'el interpretation of hishtaHawe, I must point out that by no means the whole of scholarly opinion holds with it. I do, as it happens, but there's not a concensus.

jason_a_miller
Every student of Tanakh (the Jewish Bible) must have this lexicon on their desk (the bookshelf is too far away). Like other concordances, the BDB (as it is commonly known) lists all words from the Torah with it's grammatical makeup and where it can be found in context.

It is coded with Strong's concordance numbers. You don't have to be a Bible scholar to appreciate this resource.