1The Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH) word ס ֵ פ ֶ ר ‘letter, written document’ and its Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH) counterparts ִ א ִ גּ ִֶֶ תר and כ ִ ת ְָ ב are well-known chapters in the historical study of the Hebrew language: the CBH term was partially replaced by new terms, due to the interference of Aramaic, but continued in the usage ‘book, scroll, writing’.2

2Examination of the Ugaritic corpus shows that the ancient Northwest Semitic (NWS) lexeme *spr was not always the default term for a written document:3 it gained its position gradually, contending with other terms for ‘writing’, the word *lwḥ ‘tablet, letter’ the most important among them. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of the Ugaritic data for the historical study of Hebrew—particularly of Hebrew lexical items—and to trace the semantic development of the noun *lwḥ from Ugarit to Qumran Hebrew (QH), comparing when necessary with the master-term *spr and other terms for writing.4

1.0. Ugaritic spr and lḥt

3The Ugaritic lexicon (DULAT) distinguishes between the nouns spr III ‘counting, number’, explicitly related to the root s-p-r ‘count; tell’ (see ex. 1), and spr II ‘message, writing’, presumably borrowed from Akkadian šipru ‘message, matter’:5

4In my view, there is no need to draw such a distinction, since the spr II used about ‘writing’ also has many usages connected to ‘counting, registering, and listing’, as in (2a)– (2b), clearly motivated by the root s-p-r, commonly for the sake of ‘accounting’, e.g., (2c):

5Apparently, due to interference of the Akkadian lexeme šipru/ šipirtu ‘message, instruction’,9 spr acquired the meanings ‘document, instruction’, e.g., (3a)– (3b), ‘matter, document’, e.g., (3c), and ‘warrant, license’, e.g., (3d):

6Ugaritic had only one substantive spr: in poetry it is used twice for ‘number, inventory’; in prose it is used in administrative and procedural discourse dozens of times (approx. 80 occurrences), meaning both ‘list, record, register, account, document, inventory’ and ‘matter, instruction’.

7The lexeme that intersects semantically with spr ‘written document’ is lḥt ‘tablet-letter, message’.11 On the surface, lḥt and spr demonstrate different distributions: if spr is used in administrative and procedural texts, lḥt is attested in correspondence; see ex. (4). I have counted up to 19 cases of lḥt referring to the content of a letter, i.e., ‘message from / about’, as in (4a), or to the ‘tablet-letter’ itself, i.e., ‘letter concerning’, as in (4b). In poetry there is one usage of lḥt ‘tablet (s)’, phrased with mlảk ‘message’ (4c):

8Although most usages of spr ‘written record’ are in procedural, economic, and administrative texts, occasionally (five times) spr occurs in correspondence with the meaning ‘writing’ (5a), occasionally overlapping with lḥt in the meaning ‘message’, as in (5b)– (5c), although the lexeme lḥt ‘message’ also overlaps with mlảk (t); cf. exs. (5c)– (5d). In one case both words are grouped together as the phrase lḥt spr ‘the tablet-letter of a message’, an equivalent of the poetic lḥt mlảk; compare (5e) with (4c) above:

9Ugaritic spr also corresponds to Akkadian ṭuppu in the meaning of ‘register, writing’; cf. (6a)– (6b) for parallel cases in Ugaritic and in the Akkadian of Ugarit:

10The summary chart shows that Ugaritic lḥt is a technical word for ‘tablet-letter, message’, used once in poetry and many times in correspondence (18 times), while spr is a term for ‘counting’ in poetry (twice) and for both ‘list, inventory’ and ‘instruction, document’ in administrative and procedural discourse (about 80 times). The lexeme spr makes its first steps into the genre of correspondence in the meaning ‘writing; letter-message’ (five cases are attested), extending its functions at the expense of lḥt. Seen within the broader NWS context, Ugaritic attests the very beginning of the process:

Table 1

2.0 ל ַּ ו ַ ח ַ . in Biblical Hebrew

11In BH there are 191 cases of ס ֵ פ ֶ ר , referring to some kind of written document—‘inscription, letter, written document, record, book’;15 in CBH it is a default term for ‘letter, message’, in clear contrast to Ugaritic:

12In Hebrew epigraphy there are up to 19 cases of ס ֵ פ ֶ ר ‘letter’ in the correspondence from Lachish; cf. example (7b);16 the word ַ ל ּ חו does not seem to be attested at all in Hebrew epigraphy.17

13ַ ל ּ חו ‘tablet, plank’ is used 43 times in the Bible—among them, just once in an explicit LBH composition, parallel to a classical usage: ex. (8a); cf. also another time in the poetic Song 8.9 in the meaning ‘plank’. The rest of the cases are in CBH, particularly in the Pentateuch and in poetry; this is an explicitly classical literary usage. Most of cases in Pentateuch (plus one in 1 Kgs 8.9) refer to the two ל ֻ ח ֹ ת ה ָ א ֶ ב ֶַ ן ‘stone tablets’, called ל ֻ ח ֹ ת ה ָ ע ֵ ד ֻ ת ‘tablets of testimony’ in Exodus and ל ּ חו ֹ ת ַ ה ַ בּ ִַ תיר in Deuteronomy ‘tablets of covenant’, embodying ‘ten sayings’ ( ע ַ שׂ ֶֶ תר ַ ה ַ בדּ ִָ םיר ), written on both sides ( מ ִַ נשּׁ ֵ י ַַ ע ֶ ב ֵ היר ֶ ם ) by God, sent, smashed, and rewritten by Moses; see ex. (8b). Several times ַ ל ּ חו refers to a concrete wooden piece of an altar, temple, or other construction (8c):

14The fossilised use of ִ חוּל for ‘tablet of covenant’ generated a metaphoric use חוּל ִַ ל ִ בּ ְָ ם ‘tablet of their heart’, referring to an internally incorporated moral demand or memory; see ex. (9a).20 Twice the word is used in prophecy (in Isa. 30.8 parallel to ס ֵ פ ֶ ר ) to denote a medium for engraving the record of a law or vision (9b):21

15In sum, although referring to different writing mediums— stone versus clay—Hebrew ל ֻ תח for ‘stone-tablets’ semantically correlates with the Ugaritic lḥt ‘clay-tablet, letter, message’:22 just as the way Ugaritic tablet-letters can refer to messages sent by gods to each other, or by the Sun (= Hittite king) to his vassal Ugaritic king, encompassing demands and conditions, so the biblical ‘tablets of covenant’ are a message sent by God to his vassal-people that embodies identification formula, statements, and requirements.23 However, the Ugaritic usage is much more mundane and flexible, referring to any kind of letter or message, while the Hebrew usage is fossilised and literary: it mainly refers to the covenant tablets and, partly metaphorically, to a medium for writing inner moral demand and visions.

3.0 חול . in Qumran Non-biblical Manuscripts

16The lexeme ַ ל ּ חו practically disappeared from the LBH lexicon, only to reappear in the Qumran corpus. I have counted up to 24 cases of רפס ( חול is attested about 98 times) in non-biblical manuscripts, mostly in quotations or paraphrases of biblical texts, e.g., in Reworked Pentateuch and in Jubilees; many of these readings are reconstructed, as in ex. (10a):

17In some cases, the quotation or its context are modified, so that the expression acquires a new meaning. For example, the author of the Hodayot uses the expression חול ַ יבל ‘tablet of my heart’ rather than חול ִ םבל ‘tablet of their heart’ (10b), while ראב ַ לע ַ תוחולה ‘write plainly on tablets’ in Pesher Habakkuk no longer refers to the prophetic vision, but to secret eternal knowledge (10c).

18Apparently, the main lexical innovation of QH, comparing to the classical exemplars, is תוחול referring to a medium for writing eternal heavenly law, secret knowledge, and primordial historical order;25 the expressions תוחול ַ םלועה ‘tablets of eternity’ and תוחול ַ םיימשה ‘tablets of heaven’, unknown in classical sources, are typical in this respect (attested in Jubilees, the Temple Scroll, etc.); see ex. (11a):26

19We are also informed of writing on a new medium: ‘a copper tablet’ (11b).

4.0. From *lwḥ to *spr and Back: Conclusions

20The distribution and functional scope of *lwḥ in the Ugaritic, CBH, LBH, and QH corpora, particularly in correlation with the item *spr as a default term for ‘written document’, demonstrates that the Ugaritic data are indeed relevant for the historical analysis of the BH lexicon. In absolute numbers the following picture emerges (the percentage in parentheses represents the share of usages of lwḥ out of the combined occurrences of lwḥ and spr in the designated corpora):

Table 2

21These numbers show that in Ugaritic, CBH (here including Iron Age epigraphy) and QH, the proportion of *lwḥ and *spr is about the same, while in TBH and particularly in LBH the share of *lwḥ is considerably smaller.

22The semantic distributional factor is equally important. In Ugaritic these words refer to the same medium for writing (a clay-tablet), but they show functional complementary distribution: lḥt is for letters; spr is for other types of documents, such as lists, accounts, registers, and exhibits just the initial signs of expanding into the sphere of correspondence. In CBH, by contrast, this process is at its very end, and ס ֵ פ ִֶ ר denotes any kind of written documents, including letters, while the function of ִ חוּל is limited, mainly in the Pentateuch, to a fixed literary idiom referring to the Tablets of the Covenant, and, by analogy in poetic language, to a medium for prophetic writing or, metaphorically, for human thoughts; the CBH usage ‘wooden plank’ does not have a parallel in Ugaritic. LBH practically abandons the lexeme. QH revives the classical idiom and enriches its metaphorical and symbolic meaning,28 turning חול into a medium for eternal, primordial knowledge and law, innovating the phrases תוחול ַ םלועה ‘tablets of eternity’ and תוחול ַ םיימשה ‘tablets of heaven’, attesting also ַ תשחנ חול ‘tablet of copper’.

23To a certain extent the ‘sacred’ sphere shows the most typical evolution of *lḥt: from the message-tablet that gods send to each other (in poetic usage), exactly like human communication in Ugarit; to the divinely written tablets that are transmitted to people in the classical biblical usage; to the heavenly pre-existent eternal tablets with the law, commandments, and historical order in Qumran.