ephes

At its most concrete this word names the place where something stops, the edge past which it does not go. That is why it can also measure a body. When Ezekiel is led out into the temple river, the water first comes only to his ankles, the place where his legs end, before it rises to the knees, the waist, and finally a current too deep to cross.

Its most common use by far is the fixed phrase "the ends of the earth": the world stretched out to its farthest horizon in every direction. Kings in the ancient Near East liked to claim they ruled to the ends of the earth, and Israel's poets take that language back for God and for God's king. The LORD judges the ends of the earth (1 Samuel 2:10), his rule runs that far (Psalm 72:8), and every last corner of the world sees his rescue (Psalm 98:3, Isaiah 52:10). In Isaiah the phrase even turns into an invitation rather than a boast: "turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth" (Isaiah 45:22).

Scholars disagree over how literally to take that phrase. Some hear grand poetry, a sweeping way of saying "everywhere," pointing out that in Psalm 72:8 it stands beside concrete geography ("from sea to sea, and from the River") inside a poem full of hyperbole. Others hear a pointed answer to the Mesopotamian kings who styled themselves rulers of the four quarters of the world. Either way, this sense and the next one share a single idea: the end of a thing is the point at which it ceases to be. The old Greek translators reached for their own word for a boundary or farthest limit (πέρας) to carry it.

Past the end of a thing lies the place where it simply is not, and that is this word's second and largest use. Nations and their rulers count for nothing before God, the craftsmen who turn out idols amount to nothing, a people is oppressed for nothing (Isaiah 40:17, Isaiah 41:29, Isaiah 52:4). Isaiah likes to stack it beside the ordinary word for "there is not" (אַיִן) and the word for formless waste (תֹּהוּ), piling up negatives until nothing is left standing.

The sharpest edge of this meaning is the phrase "there is no one besides me." On God's lips it is the highest claim he makes about himself: "I am the LORD, and there is no other" (Isaiah 45:6, Isaiah 46:9). Isaiah then hands the identical words to Babylon, and Zephaniah to Nineveh, so that a proud city says of herself exactly what God has just said of himself (Isaiah 47:8, Zephaniah 2:15). The echo is deliberate and it is meant to sting. It also sits at the center of a long argument: does the claim mean no other god exists at all, or that none is remotely comparable?

The word does quieter work too. It names what has run out or is no longer there:

• there is no helper left for Israel, small or great (2 Kings 14:26)
• there is no one remaining from Saul's household to show kindness to (2 Samuel 9:3)
• there is no more room once the rich have bought up every field (Isaiah 5:8)

And in a set phrase it becomes the plain word "without": without wood the fire goes out, a prince without people is ruined, and Job's days run out "without hope" (Proverbs 26:20, Proverbs 14:28, Job 7:6).

The same word that can mean "nothing" hardened into a connector. Standing at the head of a clause it draws a line under what came before: there is an end of the matter, except for this. English does something similar when it takes the noun "end" and turns it into the phrase "in the end."

Sometimes it lands as "only" or "just," narrowing a statement to a single point: Balak takes Balaam to a place where he will see only the outermost part of Israel's camp (Numbers 23:13). More often it is the stronger "however," "nevertheless," "except that." The land flows with milk and honey, however the people who live there are strong (Numbers 13:28). Deborah will go with Barak, however the glory of the day will go to a woman (Judges 4:9).

It sits close to the common restricting word "only" (רַק), but keeps a shadow that word lacks: behind the connector stands the idea of a stopping point, a boundary drawn on the sentence before. Jewish readers have long noticed how much weight the single word carries in Numbers 13:28, where one small "however" turns the scouts' otherwise truthful report into the sentence that costs a generation the land.