"It really means..."

It happened again. I was reading a blog post, where some commentary was given that says, in essence "this word really means..." and then proceeded to build on that statement to the conclusion. I offer to you the blog post, and a lexical reference for the word in question. As I don't know Hebrew, I am ill-equipped to weigh the technical arguments for or against this reading. My general test, when a word is in common usage, is to try substituting the proposed reading into other instances where the word is used to see if it makes sense. Fortunately, the lexical tool allows us to do that here.

The question I'm looking to answer in such an exercise is "Is there a reason for me to prefer the suggested reading of the word to the translated reading?" For me, the burden of proof is on the alternate reading, because it claims to be a better or more proper understanding of the word.