חֲלִי
cha.li
ornament
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# ח ל י (Chalí): A Rare Hebrew Term for Ornament Based on the lexical data provided, chalí is a Hebrew noun meaning "ornament"—a decorative object or adornment. The word appears only twice in the biblical text, making it a relatively uncommon term in the Hebrew scriptures. This limited attestation suggests it may have been a specialized or poetic term rather than everyday vocabulary for discussing adornment. The rarity of chalí's occurrence (just 2 instances) indicates that biblical writers typically used other Hebrew words to describe ornamental objects. This narrow distribution prevents us from determining whether the word had a specific type of ornament in view—such as jewelry, clothing decoration, or architectural embellishment—or whether it functioned as a general term. Without access to the specific passages where chalí appears, we cannot determine its contextual range or whether it carried particular connotations about status, aesthetic value, or religious significance. For readers of biblical translation, understanding that chalí is a marginal vocabulary item is itself meaningful: it reflects how biblical Hebrew, like any language, contained words of varying frequency and specificity. The word's scarcity in the surviving texts prevents further analysis of its usage patterns or semantic nuances.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
2 total occurrences across the text