Semantic Analysis

Several Spanish terms in this Language Package carry a narrower, broader, or differently-connotated range than the underlying Hebrew, affecting how consistently they can be used.

Narrower-than-source terms

• Pacto (covenant): the underlying Hebrew berit denotes a relational, often unilateral divine commitment; “pacto” in ordinary Spanish usage skews toward a negotiated bilateral bargain (including, in folk-religious contexts, a bargain with a spiritual power). This is narrower and riskier than the source concept, not simply equivalent.
• Profeta (prophet): must be understood narrowly as one who speaks God’s actual, authoritative word, not broadly as any spiritually intuitive or gifted person — a broader popular usage exists in some Spanish-speaking folk-religious contexts (videntes, curanderos) that this term must resist.

Broader-than-source terms

• Templo (temple): covers both the specific Solomonic Temple in Jerusalem and, in everyday Catholic-background usage, any church building. This broader everyday range must be narrowed by context every time it refers to the biblical Temple.
• Altar (altar): covers biblical altars to the LORD, biblical altars to false gods, Catholic church altars, and in some communities folk/ancestor altars — an unusually wide semantic range requiring careful contextual anchoring throughout.

Implication

Where a Spanish term’s semantic range diverges from the underlying Hebrew, the glossary’s notes field exists specifically to flag the mismatch, so a term isn’t applied mechanically in a context its actual everyday Spanish meaning doesn’t support.