Skip to content

לֹבֶן loben – whiteness

Semantic Fields: Colours   
Author(s): John E. Hartley
First published: 2026-05-20
Citation: John E. Hartley, לֹבֶן loben – whiteness,
               Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database (sahd-online.com), 2026

Introduction

Grammatical type: noun masculine.1
Occurrences: 0x HB; 1x Sir; 0x Qum; 0x Inscr. (Total: 1x).

  • Sira: 43:18Mas

A.1 In 43:18 SirB reads תואר לבנה; לבנה is a substantivised fem. adj. SirMas reads תור לבנו; לבן is a noun. Yadin, however, interprets לבנה as equalling לבנֹה (Yadin 1965:32a).

7. Conclusion

A.1 לֹבֶן is a noun for ‘whiteness’ as is evident in its serving as a metonymy for ‘snowflakes’.

For this entry, see further John E. Hartley, The Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Colour Lexemes (2010), 96-97 (Printed publications).

Bibliography

For the abbreviations see the List of Abbreviations.

Yadin 1965

  1. DCH, vol. 4, p. 515a. This position is supported by LXX’s gloss λευκότης. KB3 lists it under the adj. לבן. ↩

Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database