Hophal — OT Distribution by Book¶
The Hophal stem is the passive of the Hiphil (causative-passive). With only ~408 tokens across the entire Hebrew OT, it is one of the rarest verbal stems — roughly 1 Hophal for every 750 Hebrew words.
The table below shows the token count, total word count, and frequency (Hophal tokens per 1,000 words) for every OT book, sorted in canonical order. The density bar gives a quick visual sense of relative concentration.
| Book | Hophal | Words | per 1,000 | Density |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genesis | 21 | 20,614 | 1.02 | ████ |
| Exodus | 54 | 16,713 | 3.23 | ████████████████ |
| Leviticus | 41 | 11,950 | 3.43 | █████████████████ |
| Numbers | 20 | 16,413 | 1.22 | ██████ |
| Deuteronomy | 9 | 14,300 | 0.63 | ███ |
| Joshua | 4 | 10,051 | 0.40 | ██ |
| Judges | 6 | 9,901 | 0.61 | ███ |
| Ruth | 2 | 1,294 | 1.55 | ███████ |
| 1 Samuel | 12 | 13,323 | 0.90 | ████ |
| 2 Samuel | 14 | 11,054 | 1.27 | ██████ |
| 1 Kings | 16 | 13,140 | 1.22 | ██████ |
| 2 Kings | 21 | 12,282 | 1.71 | ████████ |
| 1 Chronicles | 3 | 10,774 | 0.28 | █ |
| 2 Chronicles | 16 | 13,314 | 1.20 | ██████ |
| Ezra | 3 | 3,755 | 0.80 | ████ |
| Nehemiah | 0 | 5,319 | 0.00 | — |
| Esther | 3 | 3,052 | 0.98 | ████ |
| Job | 18 | 8,343 | 2.16 | ██████████ |
| Psalms | 9 | 19,595 | 0.46 | ██ |
| Proverbs | 6 | 6,915 | 0.87 | ████ |
| Ecclesiastes | 0 | 2,988 | 0.00 | — |
| Song of Songs | 1 | 1,249 | 0.80 | ████ |
| Isaiah | 37 | 16,931 | 2.19 | ██████████ |
| Jeremiah | 29 | 21,835 | 1.33 | ██████ |
| Lamentations | 2 | 1,542 | 1.30 | ██████ |
| Ezekiel | 35 | 18,730 | 1.87 | █████████ |
| Daniel | 9 | 5,920 | 1.52 | ███████ |
| Hosea | 4 | 2,381 | 1.68 | ████████ |
| Joel | 1 | 957 | 1.04 | █████ |
| Amos | 1 | 2,042 | 0.49 | ██ |
| Obadiah | 0 | 291 | 0.00 | — |
| Jonah | 0 | 688 | 0.00 | — |
| Micah | 2 | 1,396 | 1.43 | ███████ |
| Nahum | — | — | — | — |
| Habakkuk | 0 | 671 | 0.00 | — |
| Zephaniah | 0 | 767 | 0.00 | — |
| Haggai | 0 | 600 | 0.00 | — |
| Zechariah | 6 | 3,128 | 1.92 | █████████ |
| Malachi | 3 | 876 | 3.42 | █████████████████ |
| OT Total | 408 | 305,094 | 1.34 |
Nahum is not yet indexed in the database. The remaining counts come from the Berean Bible Bots morphological database (sourced from MACULA Hebrew).
Key Observations¶
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Torah dominates — but unevenly. Exodus (3.23/1k) and Leviticus (3.43/1k) are the highest in the entire OT. Legal-causal vocabulary is dense there: tabernacle construction, sacrificial procedure, and purity laws generate many causative → passive Hophal forms. Deuteronomy is strikingly lower (0.63/1k) — it retells the same legal material but as direct address, so the passive framing drops sharply.
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Major Prophets cluster around 2/1k. Isaiah (2.19), Ezekiel (1.87), and Jeremiah (1.33) all use the Hophal regularly, reflecting the prophetic rhetoric of divine judgment carried out on passive objects (nations, cities, peoples).
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Malachi is surprisingly high (3.42/1k). A tiny book of only 876 words, but three Hophal tokens — mostly in the covenant-lawsuit passages where sacrificial and priestly concepts appear.
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1 Chronicles is the lowest non-zero book (0.28/1k). Chronicles tends to narrate the same events as Samuel–Kings but through a priestly, genealogical lens; it favors direct narration over passive constructions.
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Eight books have zero attested Hophal (Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes, Obadiah, Jonah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, plus Nahum pending indexing). These tend to be shorter books with wisdom, prophetic, or narrative genres that do not require the causative-passive frame.
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OT average: 1.34 per 1,000 words. As a rough benchmark: any book above ~2/1k is genuinely Hophal-rich; below ~0.5/1k is essentially Hophal-sparse.