StrongerBible

oni

אֳנִי

HebrewH0590fleet, navy, ...

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

1Ki 9:261Ki 9:271Ki 10:111Ki 10:22 (3×)Isa 33:21
Root family
Word studyoh-NEEnoun

What oni means

shipping: seagoing vessels named together as one body rather than one at a time

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Hebrew has a separate word for ships taken as a group. Where אֳנִיָּה names one vessel, the ship a traveler boards or a merchant loads, this word names the ships together, close to how English uses "shipping" or "a fleet." That grouping is why a king stands behind almost every use of it: ships in numbers meant money, organization, and a crown able to pay for both.

Four of its five verses sit inside one story, the sea trade King Solomon ran out of Ezion-geber on the Red Sea. He builds the ships, Hiram of Tyre supplies sailors who actually know the water, and the vessels come back from Ophir carrying gold, silver, ivory, rare wood, apes, and peacocks. What the writer describes is commerce on a royal scale, a voyage that came home once every three years, and not a war fleet.

The fifth verse turns the picture inside out. Isaiah imagines Zion as a place of broad rivers and wide streams where no rowed ship can travel and no proud vessel (צִי) can pass. The very thing that carried wealth into Solomon's kingdom becomes, in the prophet's vision, the thing that cannot reach God's city at all. Ships are power and reach, and the point of the promise is that none of that power gets in.

Nuances

1aa fleet: the trading ships of a royal sea venture, counted as one operation
TranslatabilityDirect
1Ki 9:261Ki 9:271Ki 10:111Ki 10:22 (3×)
1ba rowed ship: a vessel driven by oars rather than sail
Isa 33:21

What scholars say about oni

BDB, HALOT, and DCH all treat אֳנִי as a collective noun, "ships, fleet," formally distinct from the feminine singular אֳנִיָּה, "ship," with which it shares a root. All seven attestations fall in two settings: the account of Solomon's Red Sea trade with Hiram of Tyre (1 Kings 9:26 through 10:22), and Isaiah 33:21, where BDB parses אֳנִי־שַׁיִט as "ship(s) of rowing," that is, a rowing galley, and where the noun stands in parallel with צִי. Commentary on 1 Kings (Cogan) reads the Ezion-geber venture as a joint Israelite and Phoenician commercial operation, and takes the recurring designation אֳנִי תַרְשִׁישׁ as a vessel class suited to long-haul cargo rather than a statement of destination. The semantic range is not contested; the live discussion in the literature concerns the historical geography of Ophir and Tarshish and the scale of the Solomonic enterprise, not the meaning of the noun.

Sources

  • BDB, s.v. אֳנִיlexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. אֳנִיlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. אֳנִיlexicon
  • Mordechai Cogan, I Kings (Anchor Yale Bible 10), on 1 Kings 9:26 through 10:22commentary

All attested forms of אֳנִי

c s construct

אֳנִי

1Ki 10:11, 1Ki 10:22, 1Ki 10:22, 1Ki 10:22, Isa 33:21

c s absolute

אֳנִי

1Ki 9:26, 1Ki 9:27