Biblical Hebrew is a member of the West-Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It is attested from the 10th-2nd century BC. Its main literary source is Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.

Biblical Hebrew is a fusional language with a basic VSO word order. The word order in a noun phrase is S-A with rare exceptions. Its adjectives attest two basic functions, as noun phrase modifiers and as copula complements.

Biblical Hebrew does not employ case distinction. Grammarians often speak about an accusative to refer to a direct object in a sentence, or about a genitive as in genitive construction. However, these are common designations of syntactic constructions rather than of cases, which were already lost before the the Hebrew Bible period. Therefore, distinction of adjective valence structures is not based on case.

The dependents of adjectives construe with its head in following ways: 1) via a preposition, 2) as a genitive construction.

Prepositions are generally the most common way; especially several basic prepositions with a wide semantic field: bə “in”, lə “to”, min “from”. These can govern a noun or a construct infinitive (which is a verbal noun), the latter occurring mostly with the preposition lə (similarly as in English, where infinitives take on the preposition to when joining to another word). Verbal nouns can be identified with infinitives. Nevertheless, absolute infinitives rarely occur otherwise than in a so called figura etymologica, stressing a finite verbal form. Since they cannot be joined by a preposition, they do not attest this type of adjective valency.