alone: the state of standing apart from everyone else, whether that means being kept safe on one's own or being left desolate
The word names one condition, being on one's own, and the Bible puts that single condition to opposite uses. Its root idea is separation, something divided off from the rest, and from there it covers anyone who ends up standing apart: a person shut out of the camp, a nation kept safe, even God acting with no one beside him. A closely related verb (בָּדַד) is used three times for straying off on one's own, of a wild donkey wandering away, a soldier who has fallen out of formation, and a bird alone on a roof.
Three passages early in the Bible set the pattern the rest of it works with:
- The person with a serious skin disease must live alone, outside the camp (Leviticus 13:46).
- Balaam looks down on Israel and sees a people dwelling alone, not counted among the nations (Numbers 23:9).
- The LORD alone led Jacob, with no foreign god beside him (Deuteronomy 32:12).
One word carries a punishment, a privilege, and a claim about God.
Later writers press on that double edge on purpose. Deuteronomy promises that Israel will live in safety, alone; Lamentations opens with the city sitting alone, and scholars have long heard in that line the very wording used of the person put outside the camp. What was Israel's protection has become Jerusalem's exposure. Within the same short book the word turns again: sitting alone in silence becomes a discipline of hope rather than a verdict.
So the word itself never settles whether being apart is good or terrible. What settles it is the relationship. Singled out by God, a people or a person is either uniquely safe or uniquely exposed.
Nuances
Whether Balaam's line about a people dwelling alone is a blessing on Israel's covenant distinctiveness or a warning about self-imposed isolation.
- majorityA blessing: the aloneness names Israel's chosen singularity and its standing as a people not absorbed into the nations around it; Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (JPS Torah Commentary, 1990), 194-195; Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 21-36 (Anchor Bible 4A; Doubleday, 2000); Timothy R. Ashley, The Book of Numbers (NICOT; Eerdmans, 1993)
- minorityA veiled warning: since the word is negative almost everywhere else and Balaam is a hostile figure, the line cautions against Israel defining itself as a people that dwells alone; Jonathan Sacks, A People That Dwells Alone?, in Covenant and Conversation: Numbers (Maggid, 2017)
Whether the word in Psalm 4:8 describes the LORD, who alone gives safety, or the psalmist, who is made to dwell alone in safety.
- contestedIt describes the psalmist, who inherits individually the promise of Deuteronomy 33:28 that Israel would dwell in safety, alone; the near-verbatim overlap of the two phrases is the main argument; Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (Word Biblical Commentary 19; Word, 1983), ad loc.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1906), 94, s.v. בָּדָד
- contestedIt describes the LORD, who alone makes the psalmist secure; this is the reading of the ancient Greek and Latin versions and of most modern English translations; Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 1 (Hermeneia; Fortress, 2011), ad loc.; John Goldingay, Psalms Volume 1: Psalms 1-41 (Baker, 2006), 116, 118
Whether the word in Deuteronomy 32:12 describes the LORD, who led alone, or Israel, who was led while alone.
- majorityIt describes the LORD: the parallel clause denying that any foreign god was present shows that the aloneness is God's exclusive agency; Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary, 1996), ad loc.; Duane L. Christensen, Deuteronomy 21:10-34:12 (Word Biblical Commentary 6B; Nelson, 2002), ad loc.; Richard D. Nelson, Deuteronomy (Old Testament Library; Westminster John Knox, 2002), ad loc.
- minorityIt describes Israel, whom God led when Israel stood alone; a medieval Jewish reading no modern critical commentary follows; Abraham Ibn Ezra, Commentary on Deuteronomy, ad 32:12