evel

The standard lexica agree that the noun אֵבֶל denotes mourning and classify its uses along four lines (BDB): mourning for the dead, mourning over calamity, the mourning garb (בגדי אבל), and the fixed mourning period. HALOT and the Gesenius tradition treat it under a single root אבל to mourn, with secure Northwest Semitic cognates in Aramaic and Syriac. The much-debated question of a second root אבל to dry up or wither (proposed via Akkadian abalu II, lemmatized in Clines' DCH, and argued by Hillers and G. R. Driver) attaches to the VERB in prophetic land passages such as Amos 1:2 and Hosea 4:3, not to this noun; Baumann (TDOT) and Katherine Hayes read those as personification with deliberate drought resonance, and James Barr's methodological caution weighs against multiplying roots on a single Akkadian parallel. The noun itself is undisputed in sense. Anderson and Olyan describe mourning as a bounded ritual complex set antithetically against joy (שמחה), which is what allows the prophetic reversal formula, God turning mourning into joy (Amos 8:10 inverted at Jeremiah 31:13, Isaiah 61:3, and Esther 9:22). The Septuagint renders אבל with πένθος almost without exception, carrying the term into the New Testament at Matthew 5:4.