Bible Word Study Problem? Confusion

A friend of mine and I were studying Genesis 38, and each came across a word where we had different meanings for the Hebrew Word.

When I right click and do the Bible Word Study on the Lemma on "Shua" (Genesis 38:2), with the root meaning "a cry for help." He uses the Blue Letter Study Bible which allows the Strongs definition, and he saw "wealth, riches" which is in the Gesenius Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament.

This also happened with the words/names Er, Onan, and Shelah.

We both had some interesting thoughts based on the definitions, but because we are seeing different ones we're not sure which is correct since it's people's name (proper nouns).

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Graham Criddle

Hi Mark

Sorry but I'm not sure what the issue is that you are describing.

Could you expand / clarify please?

When I right click and do the Bible Word Study on the Lemma on "Shua" (Genesis 38:2), with the root meaning "a cry for help." He uses the Blue Letter Study Bible which allows the Strongs definition,

If it's relevant you can use the Strongs number from the context menu as well assuming the Bible you are using is tagged with it.

Graham

Mark Bishop

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/992206#Comment_992206

I guess I'm wondering why Logos Bible Word Study definition is different than the Strongs.

Graham Criddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/992210#Comment_992210

I guess I'm wondering why Logos Bible Word Study definition is different than the Strongs.

My guess is that it's a tagging issue. As you can see from the screenshot below the ESV has Shua tagged with Strongs number 7770 (black arrow) whereas Strongs number 7769 (red arrow) is about wealth and riches. I assume that the Blue Letter Bible is using the 7769 number.

Does this explain what you are seeing?

Mark Bishop

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/992212#Comment_992212

See at top where it says beside GHCLOT (wealth, riches; cry for help) and where it gives the root definition "cry for help", but the Strongs saying just wealth and riches

Mark Bishop

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/992214#Comment_992214

So if you were to define Shua, would you give all three definitions since it's technically the person's name and not really given a context in this passage?

Graham Criddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/992214#Comment_992214

See at top where it says beside GHCLOT (wealth, riches; cry for help) and where it gives the root definition "cry for help", but the Strongs saying just wealth and riches

I'm not sure that it's a Strongs thing but a lexicon tagging issue.

In your screenshot the entry for GHCLOT is - as you point out - "wealth, riches; cry for help". Looking at the entry in the lexicon these are actually two different homographs (same spelling but different meaning) identified as meaning 1 and 2.

The word is tagged in the text as meaning 2 - and you can see that at the top of the BWS Guide. So GHCLOT is actually indicating that the meaning of this word in Gen 38:2 is "cry for help" - which suggests that there is a problem as it has this as homograph 3.

If you compare with with another lexicon - DBL - you see that the ordering of the homographs is different.

GHCLOT has:

wealth, riches
cry for help
Shua - personal name

DBL has:

cry for help
Shua - personal name
wealth, riches

So DBL is consistent with the tagging in the ESV text (and this matches the Lexham Hebrew Bible)

So I think the issue is with the GHCLOT tagging of the homographs and this is simply being reported in the BWS.