Verbum Tip 5e: Bible Search -- limit text searched

MJ. Smith · January 2021

Docx files for personal book: Verbum 9 part 1; Verbum 9 part 2; Verbum 9 part 3; How to use the Verbum Lectionary and Missal; Verbum 8 tips 1-30; Verbum 8 tips 31-49

Please be generous with your additional details, corrections, suggestions, and other feedback. This is being built in a .docx file for a PBB which will be shared periodically.

Previous post: Verbum Tip 5d Next post: Verbum Tip 5f

Answer: Homework: Search 6

{Label Theophany WHERE Beholder ~ <Person Abraham>}

Note that this includes references to the theophanies as well as the narration of the events themselves. You can limit the search to Genesis to resolve this problem.

Bible Search – limit text searched

Search 7: Find all occurrences of hesed in the Songs of Ascent

From Hahn, Scott, ed. Catholic Bible Dictionary. New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 2009.

[quote]Scholars have long noted the different types of Psalms that make up the canonical collection. Many of the Psalms were intended for public worship; others were meant for private devotion or piety. Broadly, the Psalms can be divided into several main categories—Thanksgiving and Praise, as well as Laments—and smaller categories, including Royal and Messianic Prayers, Pleas and Supplications, Wisdom, Alphabetic or Acrostic, “Songs of Ascent” (Ps 120–134, which were probably pilgrim songs or processional songs), and Imprecatory Psalms.^{^[1]}

To limit the Search to the Songs of Ascent:

Click on the range element of the Search (currently “Genesis”)
Type the range you wish to search (1)
Select the correction option when it is offered (2)
You may save ranges (3) that you know you will reuse multiple times

Enter your search argument “h:hesed”. But there is a problem – which of the three hesed lemmas was intended by the original statement of the search criteria?

Because of the answer in Search for a Particular Word in a Particular Passage which inspired this search, I know that the 2 hesed is the desired entry. The provides as results:

Search 8: Find all occurrences of hesed in the psalms of lament

As shown in the Psalm explorer, there are 59 psalms of lament and they are not consecutive.

To refresh your memory on how the label for a lament is built,

chose a lament psalm in your Bible
select a portion of the psalm text
right-click to open the context menu
on the tab (left) side, select the label Psalm
on the right side, select copy reference – search.

This provides something similar to:

{Label Psalm WHERE Attribution ~ "David" AND Genre ~ "Lament" AND Structure ~ "Strophe" AND Tag ~ "Mizmor (Psalm)" AND Tag ~ "Selah" AND Tag ~ "Superscription" AND Tag ~ "To the Choirmaster"}

To identify laments, only the genre attribute is needed giving:

{Label Psalm WHERE Genre ~ "Lament"}

To build the search:

Take the answer from Search 7
Change the range to consider all psalms (or even the entire Bible)
Add “INTERSECT {Label Psalm WHERE Genre ~ "Lament"}” to the search argument
Run

Homework: Find all occurrences of hesed in the toldot of Terah

Remember: Ge 11:27 begins the toldot of Terah and Ge 25:12 begins the toldot of Ishmael

^{^[1]} Scott Hahn, ed., Catholic Bible Dictionary (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 2009), 742.