• 1A member of an ancient people living in what is now Israel and Palestine and, according to biblical tradition, descended from the patriarch Jacob, grandson of Abraham. After the Exodus (c.1300 BC) they established the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and their scriptures and traditions form the basis of the Jewish religion.

  Example sentencesExamples

  • Paul describes himself as a Hebrew born of Hebrews, one who excelled in all things Jewish.
  • How did the ancient Hebrews survive without Chinese food?
  • The Exodus of the Hebrews was a collective experience, still commemorated by the Jewish Passover festival.
  • So what you had was, a rewriting by conquerors, of the religious doctrines of the Hebrews and Jews, successively.
  • For the Hebrews there is always a legal obligation to rescue.
  • With these goals in mind, the reader can meet the ancient Hebrews anew, appreciating their unique voice as members of their own world.
  • Abraham, a Hebrew, is considered the father of Judaism.
  • He had dreamed what seemed to be the unimaginable: He saw a time when the Hebrews were free!
  • Like their cousins back in England, these American Puritans strongly identified with both the historical traditions and customs of the ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament.
  • It explains that the Hebrews are descendants from Abraham, who, with God, formed the covenant.
  • All are Hebrews, but only the descendants of Judah are Jews.
  • The Hebrews of ancient legend were a nomadic people who could not even imagine such a thing as a ‘good city.’
  • By about 1000 B.C.E. the Hebrews had established the kingdom of Israel, which later split into two kingdoms, Judah and Israel.
  • We must not forget that the writer of Hebrews uses Israel's failure to enter the Promised Land to warn us.
  • Since, however, the rules of his religion were harsh and demanding, the Hebrews killed him.
  • It's not clear whether this debt is owed to all Egyptians, or just the descendants of the slave-owners from whom the biblical Hebrews presumably expropriated this bounty.
  • For example, the struggle of the ancient Hebrews against the wicked Pharaoh came to embody the struggle of the colonists against English tyranny.
  • Many early travellers in Sinai were both enchanted and challenged by the inscriptions, some attributing them to the Hebrews of the Exodus.
  • The first great escape is the story of the first Hebrew, Abraham.
  • For Paul, and for the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, Abraham is the great example of faith.

  1. 1.1offensive, dated
     old-fashioned and sometimes offensive term for Jew

• 2The Semitic language of the Hebrews, in its ancient or modern form.

  Example sentencesExamples

  • Although hardly a matter of political significance, this is nonetheless false and, like his statement on modern Hebrew, asserted without evidence.
  • The Hebrew in which Genesis is written is ancient, but we cannot infer that Hebrew was the original language.
  • Another example of a resuscitated language is modern Hebrew.
  • Israelis, although held together by the common language of Hebrew, speak a variety of quite unexpected languages.
  • Bare in mind that modern Hebrew and ancient Hebrew have their differences, and that a lot of texts are by those that don't have a firm grasp on the language.
  • And some of them they're speaking very good Hebrew, not Russian.
  • ‘I hate serving these smug ladies,’ she muttered, and noted that she spoke in Hebrew instead of Egyptian.
  • In addition, the books contained therein were written in three different languages: Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.
  • She was the same and she didn't speak Hebrew or Sanskrit did she?
  • He was particularly committed to the revitalization of Hebrew as a modern, spoken language.
  • Briefly she spared a thought for the other customers around them, and was grateful they were speaking in Hebrew instead of English.
  • Here it's handled lightly - or so it seems to someone who doesn't speak Hebrew - a lingering echo of a bright, tight-knit family's former life.
  • As I don't speak Hebrew, I'm bound to the choppy English translations.
  • This forced them to create many new words, and modern Hebrew was born.
  • I share the frustration felt by those around the world who speak Arabic and Hebrew.
  • For some reason it occurred to me that a stuttered yet polite ‘Excuse me, I do not speak Hebrew, please repeat what you just said in English.’
  • Arabic is a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Aramaic.
  • In this period, Hebrew was spoken, and Hebrew is a Semitic language, just like Arabic.
  • We spoke Hebrew, a language which I barely knew, but somehow I understood everything she said.
  • Unfortunately, despite its recent translation into languages as diverse as Hebrew and Icelandic, there are currently no plans to translate the book into Indonesian.

Hebrew is written from right to left in a characteristic alphabet of twenty-two consonants, the vowels sometimes being marked by additional signs. From about AD 500 it was almost entirely restricted to Jewish religious use, but it was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century and, with a vocabulary extended by borrowing from contemporary languages, is now the official language of the state of Israel

• 1Of the Hebrews or the Jews.

  Example sentencesExamples

  • But the writers aren't merely parroting what they learned in Hebrew school - they're analyzing it as a parable of corporate politics as well as piety.
  • But this sparked numerous complaints, most notably from practising Jews who said it interfered with Hebrew festivals, and was scrapped.
  • The ‘professor,’ it turned out, had once taught Hebrew school at elementary level, but soon got fired.
  • This movie scene shows sacred rites and chants corresponding accurately to the mystical Hebrew folklore of 16th-century Prague.
  • Early Hebrew law prohibited any form of infanticide, and the young were brought along to Jewish synagogues and included in services.
  • And on Sunday we celebrated Lucy's Hebrew naming ceremony.
  • He could not be expected to respond to Hebrew music, but his comment on the Queens' service testifies to his attentive and critical ear.
  • The story of the Hebrew people is, after all, my story too.
  • It is a scene of human depravity, worthy of description by the Hebrew prophets.

• 2Of or in Hebrew.

  Example sentencesExamples

  • Yesterday the front entrance to the Paradise Hotel was blocked off by yellow tape with Hebrew lettering.
  • As for the Hebrew letters, they all mean something.
  • It is now surrounded by shops, travel agencies, and even juice carts equipped with Hebrew signage.
  • However, the event is normally called ‘The Night of the Broken Glass’ in English, and the Hebrew word for the outrage is unconnected to crystal.
  • Each new title of his sells in excess of 50,000 copies in the Hebrew editions alone, ahead of being translated into more than a dozen other languages, including Arabic.
  • And I wanted to complete an advanced Hebrew program, so that I could fully immerse myself in the literature of Jews across the globe.
  • Yet if modern Hebrew is the reincarnation of Yiddish, he must show a relationship rather than what the Hebrew pioneers claim to have achieved, a rupture.
  • The rabbi mumbled a bunch of Hebrew prayers, providing no explanation whatsoever of the significance of the prayers, nor any eulogy for the deceased.
  • Well the Hebrew word is a word that means messenger.
  • And it's just a song of all the Hebrew names of God.
  • The Hebrew blogging scene was then quite dormant.
  • The sexy star, who became involved in the mystical faith after being introduced to it by close friend Madonna, revealed that she has had a Hebrew symbol inscribed onto the back of her neck..
  • ‘They wanted a systematic book that compared with the already existent Greek and Hebrew versions,’ says Shaw.
  • Many scholars say ‘the beast’ is really a coded reference, using Hebrew letters for numbers, for the despotic Roman emperor Nero.
  • Here, the Hebrew letters spelling ‘David Thomas’ run from bottom to top.

Hebrew is written from right to left in a characteristic alphabet of twenty-two consonants, the vowels sometimes being marked by additional signs. From about AD 500 it was almost entirely restricted to Jewish religious use, but it was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century and, with a vocabulary extended by borrowing from contemporary languages, is now the official language of the state of Israel