a tribal chief: the head of a clan or people, especially one of the ruling chieftains of Edom
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is the most common use of the word by far, and almost all of it is concentrated in one place: the lists of the chiefs of Edom in Genesis 36 and its echo in 1 Chronicles 1. A chief here is the head of a clan, a leader who stands at the top of a family group within a larger people.
The same title spreads beyond Edom to name the heads of other peoples. The song at the sea pictures the chiefs of Edom seized with terror as Israel passes by, and Zechariah twice calls the leading families of Judah by this name, picturing them as a blazing torch among sheaves.
The word ties leadership to kinship rather than to a throne. A chief leads because he heads a clan, not because he holds a crown, which is why these figures appear in genealogies, grouped by family and place.
Nuances
1aa ruling chieftain of Edom, listed by clan in the genealogies
1bthe head of a leading family or clan of another people, such as Judah
Zec 9:7*Zec 12:5*Zec 12:6*
2
a close friend: a trusted, intimate companion bound to someone by long familiarity
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
Outside the Edom lists, the word names a person rather than a rank: someone you know intimately and have trusted for a long time. The friendship in view is not casual acquaintance but the deep familiarity of a marriage, a lifelong bond, or a confidant who has shared your secrets.
Because the bond is so close, the wisdom writers and the prophets keep returning to its betrayal. A gossip splits the closest friends apart; the wife who deserts her husband forsakes the friend of her youth; the psalmist's bitterest grief is that his attacker was his own trusted companion. The word's warmth is exactly what makes its breaking so painful.
The title can also be stretched to the partners and allies a nation leans on. When Jeremiah warns Jerusalem about the foreign powers she once cultivated as her intimates, he uses this same word for those former friends who will turn and rule over her.
Nuances
2aa trusted companion or confidant, especially a spouse or lifelong friend
2ba close ally or partner of a nation, who may turn into a ruler over it
Jer 13:21*
3
a tame ox or other domestic animal: a docile, well-fed beast accustomed to people
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintyStrong
In a handful of places the word names not a person but an animal: a docile, domesticated beast, an ox or similar creature that is used to people and easy to handle. The picture is of livestock that is well cared for and gives no trouble.
This sense and the sense of a close friend grow from the same idea of being familiar and tamed. An animal that has grown used to people, and a person you have grown close to, are both described by the same root notion of familiarity, which is why the dictionaries link these uses even while keeping them apart from the chief of a clan.
Nuances
3aa tame, well-fed ox or head of cattle
Psa 144:14
3ba docile, domesticated animal led unsuspecting to slaughter
Jer 11:19*
Disputed
Whether the chieftain sense and the friend / tame-animal senses are one word or two unrelated homonyms.
majorityThe friend and tame-animal uses form one word built on the idea of familiarity, kept distinct from a separate word for a clan chief.; HALOT, s.v. אַלּוּף
minorityAll the uses are senses of a single word, the chief being the leading or familiar head of a clan.; BDB, s.v. אַלּוּף
The closeness sits inside the word itself: it names someone already trusted with what you would tell no one else, which is why the psalmist can set it beside "my familiar friend" and add nothing further about the bond.Psa 55:13Pro 2:17
The wisdom writers treat it as the bond loose talk destroys: a troublemaker, or anyone who keeps repeating a matter, is said to split apart exactly this closest of friendships, which is the worst damage gossip can do.Pro 16:28Pro 17:9
It can become a way of addressing God, since Israel is charged with calling him "my father" and the trusted companion of her youth even while going her own way.Jer 3:4
It stretches to the foreign powers a nation has cultivated as its intimates, the partners Jerusalem herself taught to be close to her and who end up set over her as rulers.Jer 13:21
The same spelling also carries senses with nothing to do with friendship, naming the clan chiefs of Edom in the genealogies and well fed cattle in a psalm, so only the setting shows when a trusted companion is meant. Everything else compared here belongs to that companion sense.Gen 36:15Psa 144:14
Both
Micah stacks the two together in one warning, telling his hearers not to trust a friend and not to put confidence in a close friend, because both words name someone whose loyalty would normally be taken for granted.Mic 7:5
Both are reached for when trust breaks and the wound comes from inside the circle: the psalmist's attacker turns out to be his own trusted companion, and Jeremiah tells his hearers to beware of everyone near them because each one deals in slander.Psa 55:13Jer 9:4
Both can name a marriage partner: the wayward wife of Proverbs abandons the companion of her youth, and Jeremiah pictures Israel as a wife who has betrayed the husband she belonged to.Pro 2:17Jer 3:20
It fixes no warmth at all and can thin out to nothing more than "the other one": the brickmakers at Babel and the sailors on Jonah's ship each speak to the next man with no relationship implied.Gen 11:3Jon 1:7
It is the law's word for the fellow member of the community whose life, marriage and property are protected: do not testify falsely against him, do not covet his house or his wife, love him as yourself.Exo 20:16Exo 20:17Lev 19:18
It names the other party in a dispute or a business dealing, a man you may hardly know: whoever left goods in your keeping, or the debtor whose loan you have to let go.Exo 22:7Deu 15:2
It can be an official title at court, the position Hushai held as the king's Friend, listed in the roll of David's officers next to his adviser.1Ch 27:33
נָשִׂיאa chief or prince who leads by rank or office; aluf as a leader heads a clan by kinship and appears mainly in the genealogies of Edom.
This word is not always about friendship at all. Most of its appearances are a leadership title: the chiefs of Edom listed clan by clan, the chiefs who melt with fear as Israel passes, the leading families of Judah. The other word never names a leader.Gen 36:15Exo 15:15Zec 12:6
When it does mean a friend, the bond is the deep familiarity of a shared life, close enough to cover a husband and to be the one person you tell what you would tell nobody else. That is why a gossip can break these two apart and why the woman who leaves her marriage is said to abandon the friend of her youth.Pro 2:17Pro 16:28Pro 17:9
It stretches past individual people to whole nations. Jeremiah uses it for the foreign powers Jerusalem cultivated as her intimates, who are now set over her as rulers, and Israel uses it to address God himself.Jer 13:21Jer 3:4
It can leave people behind entirely and name a docile farm animal: well-fed cattle in a picture of national wellbeing, and a trusting beast led off to be killed.Psa 144:14Jer 11:19
Both
Both words name a friend attached to one particular person rather than a neighbor in general: the word arrives as his friend, hers, or mine, with two people and a bond between them.Psa 55:13Pro 2:172Sa 3:8Jdg 14:20
Both surface at the moment the friendship fails, and in both the closeness is exactly what makes the failure sting: one warns you not to trust the man nearest you, the other watches a poor man's friends keep their distance.Mic 7:5Psa 55:13Pro 19:7
This word names the companion who has a place in an event rather than a share in your secrets. Thirty of them are brought in to keep the bridegroom company at his wedding feast, and the wife is later handed to the one who had stood closest to him there.Jdg 14:11Jdg 14:20Jdg 15:2Jdg 15:6
It can describe a man's standing in a ruler's company. Ahuzzath is named between the king who brought him and the commander of the army, which reads more like a place in the royal household than a private friendship.Gen 26:26
Twice it sits right next to "brothers," marking off the friends a man chose from the family he was born into, as the second circle whose loyalty he could count on.2Sa 3:8Pro 19:7
alluph in the other biblical languages
φίλοςGreek“friendly/friend”the common Greek word for a friend; aluf names a closer, more trusted intimate, and unlike the Greek word it can also mean a clan chief or a tame animal.
What scholars say about alluph
Standard lexica connect the word to the root meaning of being familiar or tamed (cf. the verb meaning to learn or be accustomed). HALOT distinguishes a noun meaning confidant or familiar friend, extended to tame cattle, from a separate noun for a tribal chieftain, the latter heavily concentrated in the Edomite king-and-chief lists of Genesis 36 and 1 Chronicles 1. BDB treats the chief sense as the leading or familiar one within a single entry. The geographical and clan-based character of the chief lists has drawn comment in studies of Edomite history; the friend sense is well attested in Proverbs and the laments of Jeremiah and the Psalms.