Strata: How Many?

How many words occur only once in the Hebrew Bible?

Answer: Between 300 and 400

Within the Hebrew Bible a significant number of words occur only once. Identified in medieval Jewish manuscripts as layt (Aramaic for “there is no other”) and termed hapax legomena (Greek for “once said”) by scholars, these words have long intrigued students of the Bible, both for their uniqueness and their sometimes uncertain meanings. Indeed, since the meanings and nuances of words are typically derived from the contexts in which they are used, hapax legomena are exceptional in that their meaning must be inferred from a single occurrence.

As Biblical scholar Frederick Greenspahn has pointed out, however, determining the meaning of such words is not as troublesome as it first appears.^a In some cases, the context in which the word occurs provides sufficient information to determine its meaning. The verb nbḫ, for example, occurs only in Isaiah 56:10: “They are all dumb dogs that cannot nbḫ.” The word’s context, together with similar words known from Ugaritic and Akkadian, suggests nbḫ should be translated as “bark.” Many of these unique words also have cognates in languages that are much better known, such as rabbinic Hebrew and medieval Arabic, which has traditionally made their translation relatively straightforward.