From The Hebrew Alphabet...

The Hebrew Alphabet Letter Lamed

The twelfth letter in many of the Semitic alphabets including Hebrew is Lamed or Lamedh. It is believed tha lamed comes from a pictogram of a cattle prod or an ox goad. Some have even suggested that it has the appearance of a shepherd’s staff. The letter lamed has the sound of "l" as you would hear it pronounced in "look".

Lamed represents the sound of /l/ or an alveolar lateral approximant. This is a kind of consonantal sound that is used in some spoken languages. The manner of articulation is approximant. This means that the sound is produced by bringing more than one articulator close together. The vocal tract is narrowed but not to the extent that it squelches the turbulent airstream that is produced. The sound is articulated with either the blade or the tip of the tongue.

When you are speaking in terms of gematria, lamed represents the number 30.

When the letter lamed is used as an abbreviation, it usually stands for the word litre. If you see a sign of a car that has a lamed on it, it usually means that there is a student driver in the car. Lomed actually means learner.

As a prefix, the lamed can have two purposes:

- When the lamed is attached to verb roots, it designates the infinitive "to speak".
- The letter lamed can also have the function of acting like a preposition meaning "for" or "to".

The word Yisrael begins with the letter yod which is the smallest letter and ends with lamed which is the largest letter. Thus this suggests Israel’s dependence on the Lord.

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