These days, it almost goes without saying that I’m using digital versions of these resources. For each round, I’ll provide a verse in English with the word in bold that we can check against HALOT and BDB. I’m a general user-just a pastor who wants a good Hebrew lexicon for sermon and teaching prep. And, as a disclaimer, don’t expect to find any black-belt lexicology here. But, in order to offer a small measure of help to those faced with the same decision I was, I thought it might be helpful to share my conclusions from my low-level lexical soundings in Haggai I performed. So by way of analogy, comparing these two Hebrew lexicons is kind of like comparing the two Greek lexicons BDAG and Thayer. The backstory is a little complicated, but HALOT is an updated translation of a lexicon originally published in 1953. This lexicon was published over the course of 1994–2000. HALOT is the acronym for the Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Some of the glosses are outdated, the bibliographic data is outdated, and its treatment of Semitic cognates is outdated (Chisholm, 14).
This lexicon is older (published in 1907) and cheaper ($25.99 on Amazon). BDB is short for Brown-Driver-Briggs, the editors of The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon.
I’ve been studying the book of Haggai for a Sunday school series I’m teaching, and I’ve used it as an opportunity to help answer a common question among pastors, If I already have BDB, should I get HALOT? This is a question about Hebrew lexicons.