StrongerBible

aviv

אָבִיב

HebrewH0024“Abib, green ears, ...”

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Exo 9:31Exo 13:4Exo 23:15Exo 34:18 (2×)Lev 2:14Deu 16:1 (2×)
Root family
Names & words formed with this
Word studyah-VEEVnoun

What aviv means

barley heads that have formed but are still green and soft, and the spring month named after that stage of the crop

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

The word fixes one moment in the life of a barley field. The heads have formed and filled out, but the kernels are still soft and green, a few weeks short of a dry harvest. Everything else the word does grows out of that picture.

Two verses use it plainly. When hail fell on Egypt it wrecked the flax and the barley, because the barley had reached this stage and could be beaten down, while the wheat and the spelt were still late in coming up and escaped (Exodus 9:31). Grain at this same stage, roasted over a fire and crushed, could be brought to God as the first of a harvest (Leviticus 2:14). A more general word for a head of grain (שִׁבֹּלֶת) covers ears at any stage; this one names the green and tender stage in particular.

Because barley reaches that stage at one fairly predictable point in the year, the word became the name of the month it happens in. Four of the six times it appears, it sits inside a phrase that literally reads "the month of the ripening ears", and that month carries a great deal of weight:

  • it is the first month of Israel's year
  • it is the month Israel came out of Egypt (Exodus 13:4; Deuteronomy 16:1)
  • it is when Passover and the week of unleavened bread fall (Exodus 23:15; Exodus 34:18)

It is one of only four old Israelite month names preserved in the Bible, alongside Ziv, Ethanim and Bul. Books written after the exile call the same month by its Babylonian name, Nisan (נִיסָן). The older name kept the calendar tied to the fields rather than to a fixed count of days: the year turned when the crop said it should.

Nuances

1abarley in the green ear: heads that have formed while the kernels are still soft
Exo 9:31Lev 2:14
1bAbib: the first month of Israel's year, the spring month named for the ripening barley
TranslatabilityUntranslatable
Exo 13:4Exo 23:15Exo 34:18 (2×)Deu 16:1 (2×)

Disputed

Whether the recurring phrase for the first month uses this word as a fixed proper name, or still as a plain description of the season, "the month of the ripening ears".

  • majorityIt functions as a proper name, one of the four surviving pre-exilic Israelite month names alongside Ziv, Ethanim and Bul, which is why most English versions simply transliterate it as Abib.; Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (McGraw-Hill, 1961), 182-183; Mark E. Cohen, The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East (CDL Press, 1993), 380-385
  • minorityThe expression is still descriptive in these texts, the month of ear-forming, with the word keeping its agricultural sense rather than having hardened into a calendar name.; Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1907), s.v. אָבִיב

What scholars say about aviv

The lexica agree on the referent. BDB glosses the word as the fresh, young ears of barley and renders the calendar phrase descriptively as the month of ear-forming; HALOT gives the ripening stage of barley ears plus the derived month name; DCH lists the same two uses without positing a homonym. On Exodus 9:31 Propp treats the notice as an agricultural datum for dating the hail plague, since barley at this stage in Egypt points to roughly late January or February, while the wheat and spelt were still too undeveloped to be beaten down. On Leviticus 2:14 Milgrom reads the fresh ears parched in fire and the crushed fresh grain named beside them as one new-grain offering described in two steps rather than as two separate commodities, a reading not every commentator shares. For the calendar, de Vaux sets Abib with Ziv, Ethanim and Bul as the four pre-exilic Israelite month names preserved in the Hebrew Bible, all agricultural or seasonal in derivation and all displaced in postexilic books by the Babylonian series, in which this month is Nisan (Nehemiah 2:1; Esther 3:7); Cohen places that series in its wider West Semitic and Mesopotamian setting. Tigay notes that Deuteronomy 16:1 anchors Passover to this month rather than to a fixed day count, which is the textual basis for the later practice of adjusting the year to the ripeness of the barley.

Sources

  • Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1907), 1lexicon
  • Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. 1 (Brill, 1994), 4lexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 1 (Sheffield, 1993), 100-101lexicon
  • William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1-18, Anchor Bible 2 (Doubleday, 1999), 349-350commentary
  • Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, Anchor Bible 3 (Doubleday, 1991), 194-195commentary
  • Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 152-153commentary
  • Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (McGraw-Hill, 1961), 182-186monograph
  • Mark E. Cohen, The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East (CDL Press, 1993), 380-385monograph

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of אָבִיב

c s absolute

אָבִיב

Exo 9:31, Exo 13:4, Exo 23:15, Exo 34:18, Exo 34:18, Lev 2:14, Deu 16:1, Deu 16:1