bo

This is one of the four most common verbs in the Hebrew Bible, and its heart is simple: someone or something reaches a destination and goes in. The weight falls on the arriving, not on the journey. That is why English has to reach for so many words to render it, among them "come," "go," "enter," "arrive," and "reach." Which word fits depends on where the storyteller is standing: English "come" points the motion toward the speaker and "go" points it away, but the Hebrew makes no such choice. It only says that someone got there.

The word's niche shows up clearly next to its neighbors. The verb for walking or setting out (הָלַךְ) keeps its eye on the movement itself, while this verb marks the moment of reaching the goal. The verb for going out (יָצָא) is the exact opposite motion, leaving rather than arriving, and the two are so naturally paired that "go out and come in" becomes a single picture of a whole life lived under God's care.

Because arriving and entering are such basic actions, the verb settled into a handful of fixed pictures an English reader would never guess from the word "come":

• the sun "comes" when it sets, reaching its resting place on the horizon
• a man "comes in to" a woman, a plain-spoken way of naming sexual union
• a person who has "come into days" has reached old age
• a word, a sign, or a promised day "comes" when it proves true or finally arrives

None of these is a separate word. Each traces back to the one idea of something reaching its destination: the sun reaching the horizon, a life reaching its late years, a promise reaching its outcome. The senses below sort the plain uses from these settled figures of speech.

The same verb can be turned around to mean not arriving but making something else arrive. Now the subject does not move toward a place; the subject brings, carries, or leads someone or something there. Where the plain form of the verb says "come" or "enter," this form says "bring" or "lead in."

This is genuinely a different idea for a reader, even though it grows from the same root. "Noah came into the ark" and "God brought the animals to Noah" are the one Hebrew verb in its two shapes, but a reader needs two different English words to tell who is moving whom.

The range of what can be brought is wide, and much of the word's theological weight sits here:

• people led into the promised land, the great refrain of God bringing Israel in
• goods and possessions carried home
• gifts and offerings presented at the sanctuary
• disaster brought down on a place, in the prophets, as an act of judgment