Lamed

'Lamed' is considered to be unique in the Hebrew alphabet as the tallest and also central character:

Making the 'l' sound as in 'lion', it is the only character to rise above the baseline and as the 12th letter is right in the middle of the alephbet.

Another thing to understand about Hebrew characters is that each one has a numerical value which in the case of Lamed is 30.

Whilst the numerical value has little relevance when reading Hebrew, it does have a significance in terms of the meaning of the letter.

For instance, as with many of the Hebrew letters, Lamed is made from a combination of other characters. In this case, the letter is made up of a Vav sitting atop a Kaf which between them gives a numerical value of 26 (Vav is 6, Kaf is 20).

This equates to YHVH, one of the names that is widely recognized as representing God. For this reason, Lamed is said to represent the 'melek hamelakim' the 'King of kings'.

As with all Hebrew characters, there are different forms of 'Lamed' that you might come across in your reading.

Whilst the character that is highlighted above is the most common Lamed form you will come across, there are other forms of the letter that you might encounter in manually written documents, documents that use cursive script and so on:

When used as a prefix, Lamed often suggests a grammatical object similar to 'for' or 'to'. For instance, whilst 'melek' means king, 'l'melek' would be translated as 'for a king' or 'to a king'.

Introduction to Reading Hebrew
The first basics
The Hebrew AlephBet
The Letters of the AlephBet
Aleph
Bet (Beyt)
Gimmel
Dalet
Hey
Vav
Zayin
Chet
Tet
Yod
Kaf
Lamed
Mem
Nun
Samekh
Ayin
Pey (Fey)
Tsade (Tsadik)
Qof
Resh
Shin
Tav
The Significance of the Alephbet
The Basics of Hebrew Verbs
The Hebrew Verb Subject
The Hebrew Verb Object
Hebrew Verb Tenses
Hebrew Verb Voices and Moods
Hebrew Verb Participles
The Infinite Verb Version
Hebrew Nouns
Hebrew Noun Constructs
Using Prefixes With Nouns
Hebrew Pronouns
Hebrew Plural Nouns
Hebrew Adjectives
Identifying Hebrew Questions
Adverbs, Prepositions and Conjunctions
Hebrew Reading Conclusion