שנה

'seneh' refers to a period of time, ostensibly, a year.

Some doubt exists regarding the actual meaning, due to the fact that interpreting 'seneh' as a year results in incredible ages of characters reported within the text. It is quite likely that 'seneh' actually refers to a shorter period of time, perhaps a season. It is unlikely that 'seneh' means “month”, because that is already covered by hedes, and the two are sometimes used within the same passage, clearly referring to different things.

It has been traditionally quite difficult to asses 'seneh' contextually, due to the fact that most instances occur without and other time units for comparison.

Nevertheless, there are a few instances that do appear to combine years and months, using 'seneh' and hedes

2 Samuel 2:11, 2 Samuel 5:5, and 1 Chronicles 3:4 all indicate that David ruled in Hebron seven years and six months.

It should be noted that although 1 Samuel 27:7 is traditionally translated as “one year and four months”, the addition of the year is not supported in the text, and this passage should be interpreted as indicating that David stayed in the hills for only four months.

see also senehim

see time