On second thought, Wheeler McIntosh Thackston's Introduction to Syriac doesn't seem to be that good. For example, he translates pe'al ܣܠܩ סלק as 'he went forth, he went out', even though it means 'he went up'.
It can mean either, as Drink points out, so Thackston is not wrong
per se, but ‘to go up’ is the more basic meaning of ܣܠܩ in Syriac, so, in the absence of context, it would have been preferable to give that as the definition.
One problem with Thackston, especially in the later lessons, is that the chapter vocabulary lists are keyed to the exercises, so he gives the gloss that suits the context of the exercise, even if that does not represent the most basic or most common meaning of the word.
And, very often, you can guess what the exercises are from the vocabulary list. For instance, among the nouns to be learnt in Lesson 18 are
virgin,
marriage,
bridegroom,
bride,
lamp,
vessel and
oil, from which you can easily surmise that the reading exercise will be the parable of the wise and foolish virgins from
Matt 25.