Excerpt from A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Including the Biblical Translated From the Latin
To Gesenius unquestionably belongs the high merit, of havin an impulse and interest to the cultivation of Hebrew Literature, far any thing which has been felt since the days of the Buxtorfs. Commencement of his labours, Hebrew learning in Germany, where, was at a very low ebb. In the autumn of 1829, the wri present at the opening of his course of Lectures on the Book of He then stated, as illustrating the progress of this branch of lit that he was now about to lecture on that book for the tenth course that when twenty years before he had commenced his 0 Halle with the same course, the number of his hearers was but fo and that he had then felt gratified, because his colleague, the cel Vater, had lectured on the same book the preceding year to a seven. This statement was made to a class of more than five l hearers. But among the thousands who had been his pupils, r whom were now devoting their lives to Hebrew and Oriental le and also among others who had been led on by his example and by his labours; it would have been strange indeed, bad than none to penetrate further than he into some of the various depa and recesses of Hebrew philology. And it is perhaps, at the day, a singular merit in Gesenius, that he was among the first t and adopt, with full acknowledgment, every valuable suggestim whatever quarter it might come; and also every result which won examination, however contrary it might be to his own previou The following sentence is doubtless a fair and candid exposition creed and practice on this Unwearied personal observat an impartial examination of the researches of others the grateful at and adeption of every real advance and illustration of science bt manly foresight and caution, which does not with eager levity ado; novelty thrown out in haste and from the love of innovation t must go hand in hand, wherever scientific truth is to be successft To the sincerity of this language the following pa.
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What I like about this lexicon is the comparative information from other Semitic languages. In general it is useful and straightforward.
The groupings of definitions into senses is very well done in my opinion, as far as my knowledge of biblical Hebrew goes. I frequently find that it covers all extant senses of each word quite thoroughly.
It is always really strange, though, to realize that the creator firmly believed that Indo-European and Semitic languages were related. In the linguistics world that is an obvious mistake and one that causes semantic aberrations in many of the definitions. For instance, under the demonstrative pronoun זה (Strongs 2090), the Sanskrit, Latin and Greek pronouns are given for comparison, when there is no etymological relation between these words and the Hebrew words.
In comparison to other Semitic lexica, I like that, unlike Arabic lexica (Hans Wehr, etc.), this lexicon lists words by lexeme and not by root. The grouping of words by root is semantically misleading to the uninitiated (i.e. it leads to etymological fallacy) and makes finding words a challenging exercise for scholars doing comparative work without language-specific training (because they cannot always quickly identify citation forms).