Hebrew grammar books can be divided in two groups:
- Student Grammars or Introductory Grammars present the basics of Biblical Hebrew in a manner the course creator sees fit. They are intended for the use in the classroom with a teacher.
- Reference Grammars are intended for the study of Hebrew outside of the classroom. They are more systematic in nature and provide more complete explanations and examples.
The Hebrew grammar books on this page are the leading works in the field among the available reference grammars.
Unfortunately, they have the tendency to be elusive and highly technical in terms of linguistic terminology. Their study presupposes a good knowledge of grammar terms in general and of linguistic concepts in biblical Hebrew in particular. (This is unfortunate, but true! Don’t worry, though, just scroll down to the end of this page for the indispensable book that answers your questions on language and linguistic terminology, like “What is a … nominal sentence/ predicate/ attribute?” – first in English, then you get examples in Hebrew )
- very comprehensive
- covers all aspects of the language
- authoritative reference grammar
- includes an index of Hebrew words, index of subjects, index of biblical passages, and a large number of paradigms
It is in the public domain (1910 edition).
- The advantages of the Wikisource are the site’s many hyperlinks, which makes the navigation fairly easy (as long as you know what you are looking for exactly).
- This website (archive.com) offers a scanned version of the grammar book. You can choose to Read online or download in a number of different file formats
GK is a resource for more advanced students and translators and one of the best reference grammars for Biblical Hebrew.
Slightly more expensive and not in the public domain is Joüon/ Muraoka’s grammar book:
- most complete Hebrew grammar book available in English
- takes scholarship from recent years into consideration.
- worth every penny and very comprehensive
JM is another highly technical resource for the more advanced student of Biblical Hebrew. Unlike GK, it takes more recent scholarly findings into account.
This new and fully revised edition of the A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar serves as a user-friendly and up-to-date source of information on the morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics of Biblical Hebrew verbs, nouns and other word classes (prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, modal words, negatives, focus particles, discourse markers, interrogatives and interjections). It also contains one of the most elaborate treatments of Biblical Hebrew word order yet published in a grammar.
In their own words: “The aim of this grammar is to serve as a reference work at an intermediate level for exegetes and translators of the Hebrew Bible who have a basic of BH, but would like to use and broaden the knowledge they have acquired in an introductory course.”
How to understand the technical terms used in a grammar book?
Reference grammars are especially valuable to students who have acquired a fundamental understanding of biblical Hebrew through a beginner’s or intermediate course/ seminar/ tutorial that covered the nominal system, verbal system (strong and weak verbs), sentence types and semantics of Hebrew. If you are not quite there yet and even if you are…understanding the technical terms of a grammar book tends to be difficult.
Grammatical Concepts 101 for Biblical Hebrew
“… provides a readable, linguistically savvy guide to navigating basic grammatical concepts. Designed to complement any standard Hebrew grammar, the book revisits English grammar in order to teach concepts that are especially relevant to Hebrew. Each chapter focuses on an individual concept, first explaining how it works in English, then illustrating it in biblical Hebrew. Abundant English and Hebrew examples illustrate each concept, most of them visually analyzed. The book’s clear design and attractive layout will appeal to visual learners.”
In one word: INDISPENSABLE