So you want to learn Biblical Hebrew?
Good for you. Great idea! What now? Well, I don't really have all the answers but I do have some resources and a rough plan to follow. If you want it.
Overall Method
The big picture plan is to get familiar enough with the language that you can start reading the Hebrew bible. There are some great tools out there now which don't have to cost you any money if you can't afford it. Where resources cost a bit of money I will flag this up. There is no right or wrong way to learn Biblical Hebrew and it might be worth dotting about the different methods a bit to keep it interesting and fresh.
There actually is a number of words you can memorise which will mean you can read 90% of the Hebrew bible and that number is a little over 650, which depending on your perspective isn't all that bad...
Not sure where to start? Then start with Aleph with Beth.
Aleph with Beth (free)
https://freehebrew.online/how-it-works/
This is the absolute beginners guide to Biblical Hebrew. They are essentially a series of YouTube videos that you watch in order, repeatedly watching each section so that it sinks in. They are following the Comprehensive Input method which means you will only hear Hebrew in their lessons. Their website has many more resources to support their videos including schedules which you can use to watch their content. Through this you will pick up vocab, grammar and how to follow narratives.
Anki with Deck (free)
While Aleph with Beth does teach you vocab, it can be a little slow going. Anki is a digital flashcard program. The digital equivalent of those little cards with the question on one side and the answer on the other. A system where you can test your knowledge retention. Anki is this but with algorithmic maths ... or something. It will show you the cards you know less well more often and the cards you know well, less often. You can add your own cards but there is a lot of pre made decks available to download. Get Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary (Schwartz-Groves WHV). From their introduction :
This deck currently contains 686 Hebrew words, sorted by descending order of frequency, excluding proper names. This is all the Hebrew words that occur 47 or more times in the Hebrew Bible. The cutoff of 47+ frequency was chosen because, according to the calculations behind this list, it enables 90% recognition of the words in the Hebrew Bible.
The trick to start with is finding the right number of new words that you can cope with in a day. You can change this in the deck options. Once you have watched a few Aleph with Beth videos to get the feel for the language, it might be worth starting to ingest the vocab starting with the most frequently used words. Maybe 3-5 new words a day, don't get too confident, the reviews can add up and it can be frustrating struggling to tuck new words back into your long term memory.
Reading apps/bibles (free/paid)
One day you will have enough vocab under your belt and enough grammar to read anything. Until then you have a bible reading app. This one in particular is very good. It will tell you what the word means with a tap, a long press will pull up more details about the word as well as roots, definition and most importantly it will help parse what you can see. Prefixes, suffixes and stems. It is really helpful for when you want to practice what you have learnt so far but don't have the vocab to sail through.
So far we have seen a lot on a backlit screen which isn't ideal. They have all been resources you can get without money but access to a computer. A readers Hebrew bible is a physical book which is a bit spenny. The key feature of this Hebrew bible is that less common words are translated in the foot notes so in theory with enough of a base in vocab, you can start sailing through the texts with nothing but this book. This is for later though, not the early game, you need to put in the work first.
Textbooks (paid)
Textbooks can also be expensive. There are two which I have been recommended and which have been interesting but most importantly complement some other resources on the internet. Video lectures for example.
Learning Biblical Hebrew: A New Approach Using Discourse Analysis by Rocine Logos Digital Version or Paperback. I have both as I originally couldn't get hold of the physical copy. It was listed for thousands of pounds due to the robots trying to outdo each other. With Logos, you don't actually own the book, you can access it in your account but not anywhere else, which makes me feel a bit uneasy. With the physical book, the publisher can't take that back from you.
Introducing Biblical Hebrew by Allen Ross is another good option as there is an in depth video course that goes along side it (see below)
Online Courses (free)
https://www.animatedhebrew.com/ is a bit of a treasure trove of resources and information. It has been around for a very long time and maintained by a nice man in Canada. They were super helpful to me getting started and publish all their resources up for free. The Ross lectures are a little old now but are still great at walking you through the grammar.