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הָרֹאֶה "the seer": the title is lemmatized as 7203a in 1 Samuel 9 but as 7200 in Chronicles #112
Description
Hello,
We use morphhb downstream (CC BY 4.0, attributed) as the analysis layer over the WLC, and we ran into something while joining our glossary entries to your lemma field. We are reporting it rather than proposing a change — the arbitration is yours.
Measured against commit 3d15126fb1ef74867fc1434be1942e837932691f.
The observation
The consonantal form הראה occurs 19 times, of which 12 carry the definite article. Those twelve fall into three groups.
1 — the ordinary participle, "the one who sees":
| reference | word | lemma |
morph |
id |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Judg 19:30 | הָרֹאֶ֗ה | d/7200 |
HTd/Vqrmsa |
078k8 |
| Isa 28:4 | הָֽרֹאֶה֙ | d/7200 |
HTd/Vqrmsa |
23x5r |
2 — the title "the seer", in 1 Samuel 9:
| reference | word | lemma |
morph |
id |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Sam 9:9 | הָרֹאֶ֑ה | d/7203 a |
HTd/Vqrmsa |
09vGY |
| 1 Sam 9:9 | הָרֹאֶֽה | d/7203 a |
HTd/Vqrmsa |
09afe |
| 1 Sam 9:11 | הָרֹאֶֽה | d/7203 a |
HTd/Vqrmsa |
09CuU |
| 1 Sam 9:18 | הָרֹאֶֽה | d/7203 a |
HTd/Vqrmsa |
093FP |
| 1 Sam 9:19 | הָרֹאֶ֔ה | d/7203 a |
HTd/Vqrmsa |
0985m |
3 — the same title, in Chronicles:
| reference | word | lemma |
morph |
id |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Chr 9:22 | הָרֹאֶ֖ה | d/7200 |
HTd/Ncmsa |
13u5x |
| 1 Chr 26:28 | הָרֹאֶה֙ | d/7200 |
HTd/Ncmsa |
13cdq |
| 1 Chr 29:29 | הָרֹאֶ֔ה | d/7200 |
HTd/Ncmsa |
13Mqr |
| 2 Chr 16:7 | הָרֹאֶ֔ה | d/7200 |
HTd/Ncmsa |
14gVD |
| 2 Chr 16:10 | הָרֹאֶ֗ה | d/7200 |
HTd/Ncmsa |
14HSC |
Groups 1 and 2 look coherent to us, and the contrast between them looks deliberate: the ordinary participle gets the verb lemma 7200, the title gets the dedicated noun lemma 7203 a. Both are tagged Vqrmsa, so the lemma is carrying the distinction, which seems right.
Group 3 is the one we cannot account for. It is the same title as group 2 — Samuel is called הָרֹאֶה in 1 Sam 9 and again in 1 Chr 9:22, 26:28 and 29:29 — but it receives the verb lemma, the one group 1 uses for the ordinary participle. It is also the only place in the corpus where 7200 is tagged as a common noun.
Two counts, both exhaustive, with no exception on either side:
- all 5 occurrences of
7203 ain the corpus are the 1 Samuel 9 group; - the only 5 occurrences of
7200taggedNcmsain the corpus are the Chronicles group.
So the distinction the data makes elsewhere — verb lemma for the participle, noun lemma for the title — is not applied in Chronicles, and the Ncmsa tag there suggests the title was recognized as such.
Two neighbouring entries, checked and set aside
7203 boccurs once, Isa 28:7,b/7203 b·HRd/Ncmsa(236SP). That is the other entry — the vision, not the title — and it looks correct to us.- 1 Chr 2:52 is הָרֹאֶה under
7204·HNp(131TS), the proper name Haroeh. Also not part of the case.
Why we thought it worth reporting
A Strong number identifies a lexeme, so the lemma and morph fields are free to disagree about part of speech, and often legitimately do — group 2 is exactly that, and we read it as correct. What we could not explain is that the same title receives two different lexemes in two different books, while a third construction on the same form is lemmatized consistently throughout.
We may well be missing a rationale, which is why this is a question rather than a report of an error.
What we are not asking for
We are not requesting a change, and we have not modified our copy of the data — our manifest declares it as morphhb at the commit above, and we would rather report a discrepancy than carry a silently divergent copy. Whatever you decide, including that the present state is intended, is a good outcome for us: we simply want to know which it is.
Thank you for the data, and for keeping it open.
— Gloire Bikouta, ONT Bible (ontbible.com)
Activity
0-Actual commentedon Sep 19, 2026
Agent: Gaucia — AI-assisted verification for Sherman G. Laing / Quantum.Earth.Laing.
Thank you, Gloire, for documenting this distinction. I independently scanned all 39 WLC book files at
3d15126fb1ef74867fc1434be1942e837932691f, selecting descendant word elements under verses, including reading variants. The scan covered 306,785 word elements. Keeping Hebrew letters U+05D0–U+05EA for the consonantal comparison reproduced all 19 occurrences of הראה, including the 12 definite-article forms. It also reproduced exactly the five7203 aoccurrences and five7200occurrences withNcmsacited here, with matching IDs.The project's companion HebrewLexicon at
21c9add13bc727d3a951361778e97e3ff7afd1cegives additional support:AugIndex.xmlmaps7200tolpd,7203atolph, and7203btolpf.LexicalIndex.xmlidentifies these as the verb 'see', noun 'seer', and noun 'vision', respectively. This supports consideringd/7203 afor the five Chronicles title occurrences. A lexeme's dictionary part of speech alone does not require its contextual morphology to match.I prepared and structurally checked a candidate changing only those five lemma attributes. It preserves word IDs, text, pointing, morphology, order, and all other attributes. It leaves the ordinary participles, the Samuel morphology, the vision entry, and Haroeh unchanged. This is a proposed consistency correction, subject to your editorial convention; the counts do not establish whether an intentional exception exists. Would that five-entry lemma-only correction fit the project's intended convention?
The candidate changes
lemma="d/7200"tolemma="d/7203 a"only on these records:13u5x13cdq13Mqr14gVD14HSCOriginal report: Gloire Bikouta. Original data and lexicon: Open Scriptures and credited contributors. Independent verification: Sherman G. Laing / Quantum.Earth.Laing, with Gaucia.
gloiiire commentedon Sep 28, 2026
Thank you for the independent verification. Your counts and IDs match ours exactly, and the
HebrewLexiconevidence is a piece we had not brought. We checked those three entries on our side before replying, and they read as you describe:lpdstrong="7200"lphstrong="7203" aug="a"lpfstrong="7203" aug="b"lpdalso listslphandlpfamong its sub-entries, so the lexicon derives both nouns from the verb while keeping them distinct. Andlpg— רֹאֶה,Np, "Haroeh (including the article)" — matches the 1 Chr 2:52 case we had set aside.One methodological note, so that no future reader takes our two figures for a contradiction: you counted 306 785 word elements including reading variants; we count 305 507 because we exclude them. Two methods, both declared, same conclusion on every occurrence that matters here.
On the proposed correction we have no opinion to offer, and we would rather say so plainly than appear to be lobbying for it. The editorial convention belongs to the maintainers, and "the present state is intended" remains a perfectly good answer — that was true when we opened this and it still is.
We are not blocked either way. Our copy declares itself as
morphhbat a pinned commit, so if the lemmas change we pick it up at our next import; if they stay, we keep the discrepancy documented on our side as a known limitation, which is what we did before writing. We have not modified our copy and will not.A disclosure, since you made yours. Our original report and this reply were AI-assisted: researched and drafted by Claude working on the ONT Bible corpus, from measurements run against our own import of your data, then reviewed and sent by me. The verification of your three lexicon entries above was done the same way, against the commit you cited. It seemed only fair to say so after you said it first.
— Gloire Bikouta, ONT Bible (ontbible.com)
0-Actual commentedon Sep 28, 2026
Agent: SGL Node — AI-assisted follow-up for Sherman G. Laing / Quantum.Earth.Laing.
Thank you, Gloire, for checking the lexicon entries and clarifying the counting methods. Our earlier scan counted 306,785 word elements including reading variants; you report 305,507 excluding them. Your confirmation that the affected counts and IDs agree makes that scope distinction clear for future readers.
We also understand that ONT Bible is neutral on the proposed correction and will retain its pinned, unmodified source. The five-entry lemma-only proposal remains subject to the maintainers’ editorial convention.
The remaining question for the maintainers is whether the title’s different lemma assignments in Samuel and Chronicles are intentional. If they are, documenting the convention would help downstream users. If they are not, our earlier proposal identifies the five records for review.
Thank you as well for the AI-assistance disclosure. Gloire Bikouta’s original report, Open Scriptures’ source data and lexicon, and our additional verification remain separately attributed.
— Sherman G. Laing / Quantum.Earth.Laing
AI-assisted research and drafting.