Behold (הִנֵּה) – The Biblical Hebrew meaning (It’s not at all what I thought)

“For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”

Moses 1:39

I need to start with a clarification. In this post I’ll be referring to the word behold only when it functions as a conjunction (a linking word) or an interjection, a part of speech that’s set apart from the main sentence to express intense emotion or focused emphasis. The other usage as a verb, meaning “to look/gaze upon, see, regard, consider,” is already well-understood and doesn’t need clarification or further exploration. The form I’ll comment on is easy to identify since it’s usually set apart by a comma. (As examples, see the verse at the beginning of my post and Isaiah 48:10, “Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” (Click on the link below to see the Hebrew text.)

 Isaiah link

Behold is one of those words that appears so frequently in scripture and seems so self-explanatory that in forty plus years of reading, I’ve come to view beholds the same way I do telephone poles alongside the road – I pass them all the time while driving without ever noticing them. I hate to admit that because I strongly believe that the Lord never chooses words lightly when expressing Himself. But in all honesty, over the years I came to consider behold nothing more than a filler word or, at best, an effect-pause/break that provides creative emphasis in sacred speech.

All that changed a few days ago. While flying home from a business trip, I was studying Barron’s “Mastering Hebrew” when I came across the explanation section for one of the dialogues I hadn’t read before. Seemingly out of nowhere the author commented on the significance of the Hebrew equivalent of the word behold when used as a conjunction or interjection. After reading his explanation and looking up various examples in the scriptures, I’ll never be able to casually dismiss the word again. It turns out that behold is anything but a clichéd filler word. Instead, it functions as a neon-red flag that shouts, “Pay very close attention to what comes next, because it’s especially important!” In Biblical Hebrew the word is expressed in varying forms that stem from the most common root, הִנֵּה (hee-NEH), with הֵן (hen) being one example of a variant. (See Genesis 3:22, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.”)

Genesis link

The especially exciting thing for me about this personal discovery is that the usage I described above can be found throughout the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price, as well as in the Bible. There are far too many examples to document here – they occur on almost every page when the Lord is speaking or where a prophet is speaking prophetically – so the following ones only represent the tip of the iceberg. Alma 34:32, 3 Nephi 11:10, 3 Nephi 27:13, and Doctrine and Covenants 58:26. (I’ll insert more as I continue to find other examples during my scripture study.) It’s interesting to note that in the most recent revelations that make up the LDS Standard Works, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord chose to continue using behold to call extra attention to His most important sayings and the revelation of key doctrines, in effect showing how valuable this Hebraism has been to Him throughout the ages in His communications with mankind.