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Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Volumes I–XV is unavailable, but you can change that!

The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) is one of the most extensive and important works on the Old Testament ever produced. A requirement for sound scholarship on the Hebrew Bible, it remains as fundamental to Old Testament studies as its New Testament counterpart Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT), does to New Testament studies. Beginning with ’ābh (’āb),...

The noun rēʾšîṯ (cf. Akk. rēšru[m]1) is a derivative of → ראשׁ rōʾš, “head”; it is an abstract noun with the suf. -îṯ.2 Its various meanings—“beginning,” “best,” “firstfruits”—are all extensions of the meaning “head, extremity”: “beginning” is the temporal extreme, “best” the qualitative extreme; “firstfruits” combines both notions, since they are the earliest and/or the best part of the harvest. As synonyms we find teḥillâ, “beginning”; ḥēleḇ, “fat, best portion”; and bikkûrîm,
Volume 13, Page 269