It is not uncommon for students in a first-year Hebrew course to successfully learn their paradigms and vocabulary lists and think they have gained a good grasp on the language. However, first-year Hebrew rightly focuses on the terms that occur most frequently in the Hebrew Bible as a whole. This means that first-year students will know a significant portion of the Hebrew lexicon, but when they open their Bibles to a section of Hebrew poetry, to the Prophets, or to an unfamiliar narrative