to be after something: to search for it, or to ask the one who can give it.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
Every use of this word in the Bible sits inside the Aramaic chapters of Daniel, and within a single story it can swing from hunting to asking without changing at all. The soldiers who go looking for Daniel and his friends in order to kill them, the officials who go hunting for a charge to pin on him, Daniel putting a request to the king for more time, and Daniel on his knees three times a day asking God for help: all of that is this one word.
What holds those uses together is not searching and not speaking, but wanting. The word names a want that has gone into action. Where the want is aimed decides which English word a translator reaches for:
when it is aimed at something or someone who has to be located, English says "seek" or "look for";
when it is aimed at a person who can grant it, English says "ask" or "request";
when it is aimed at God, English says "pray" or "make petition".
That last use is the one worth pausing over. Daniel's praying is reported with the same plain word used of officials angling for a pretext. Aramaic does have a dedicated word for praying (צְלָא), and it stands one verse earlier in the story of the lions' den, but this word carries no religious tone of its own. It says only that Daniel wanted something from God and asked him for it. The matching noun (בָּעוּ) is the request itself, the petition, and in the decree that traps Daniel it is exactly what this word takes as its object.
Nuances
1ato look for someone or something, trying to track it down.
TranslatabilityDirect
Dan 2:13Dan 4:36(33)*Dan 6:4(5)
1bto ask a person for something, putting a request to someone who can grant it.
TranslatabilityDirect
Dan 2:16Dan 2:49Dan 7:16
1cto ask God for something: to pray, to bring a petition before him.
Dan 2:18Dan 2:23Dan 6:7(8)*Dan 6:11(12)Dan 6:12(13)*Dan 6:13(14)
the Aramaic word moves straight from searching to asking a person for something, so one word covers both the officials hunting for a charge and Daniel putting a request to the king.Dan 6:4Dan 2:49
Both
both name going after something you want with the aim of getting it.Dan 2:13Dan 6:4
Only seek
English "seek" has picked up a devotional ring, as in "seek the Lord," and can sound like an inward spiritual quest. The Aramaic word is plain and practical, and where it does describe prayer it means simply asking God for something.
the same word is used when the thing wanted has to be tracked down rather than requested, as when officials go looking for a charge to bring.Dan 6:4Dan 2:13
Both
both are used of putting a request to someone who is able to grant it.Dan 2:16Dan 7:16
Only ask
English "ask" covers asking questions as much as asking for things, so it can leave the impression that someone is inquiring when the Aramaic has them requesting something they want granted.
in Aramaic this is the ordinary word for wanting something and asking for it, the same one used of scheming officials, so it presents prayer as bringing a request to God rather than as a distinct religious activity.Dan 6:11Dan 2:18
Both
both describe bringing a request before God and expecting him to answer.Dan 2:18Dan 6:13
Only pray
English "pray" names a religious act and can suggest a formal or set practice. The Aramaic word carries no such tone of its own, and the decree Daniel breaks bans asking anything of anyone, not worship as such.
“request”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“make petition”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“desire”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How be'a differs from similar Aramaic words
שְׁאֵלthe Aramaic word for asking a question or making an official inquiry, as when a governor asks the returned exiles who authorized their building. It is aimed at getting an answer, while this word is aimed at getting what you want.
Used of a hunt rather than a question: going after a person to find him, or going after grounds for an accusation. The other word is never used this way.Dan 2:13Dan 6:4Dan 4:36
Covers praying. When Daniel kneels three times a day and brings his need before God, this is the plain word used for what he is doing, and the decree that traps him bans exactly this.Dan 2:18Dan 6:11Dan 6:7
Fits a favor asked from below, where the one asked is free to grant it or refuse: Daniel asks the king for more time, and later asks him to give his three friends a post.Dan 2:16Dan 2:49
Both
Both are ordinary Aramaic words for asking, both turn up only in Daniel and Ezra, and both are at work in the same crisis over the king's dream in Daniel 2.Dan 2:16Dan 2:10
Both can be used of asking someone to explain something puzzling: Daniel asks one of the attendants what his vision means, and the king asks his advisers to tell him his dream.Dan 7:16Dan 2:27
Both name the person being addressed, so each verse makes clear who is being leaned on: Daniel puts his request to the king, and the officials put their questions to the elders.Dan 2:16Ezr 5:9
What is wanted is information, so the asking is answered by words: who authorized the building, what the men are called, what the dream means.Ezr 5:9Ezr 5:10Dan 2:27
Often it is the puzzling matter itself, not a person, that the sentence says is being asked, so English can render it "the thing the king demands" or "requires".Dan 2:10Dan 2:11
Suits asking with the standing to require an answer or to require action: a governor interrogating the builders, and a royal order that whatever Ezra asks of the treasurers be done at once.Ezr 5:9Ezr 7:21
צְלָאthe dedicated Aramaic word for praying, used of Daniel kneeling at his open window and of prayers offered for the Persian king. It names the religious act itself, while this word simply means asking and takes its religious color from the one addressed.
Reaches well beyond prayer to plain searching, with nothing religious about it: the soldiers who go out to find Daniel and his friends in order to kill them, and the officials who hunt for something to charge him with, are all doing this word.Dan 2:13Dan 6:4
Can be aimed at a person rather than at God: Daniel puts a request to the king for more time, asks the king to give his friends a post, and asks one of the figures standing by in his vision what he has just seen.Dan 2:16Dan 2:49Dan 7:16
Takes the thing wanted as its object, so the text can name what is being asked for: mercy about the king's dream, or, in the decree that traps Daniel, any request at all made to a god or a man.Dan 2:18Dan 6:7
Both
Both describe a person turning to God, and Daniel 6 uses them of the very same activity one verse apart: what Daniel is doing at his window is exactly what his enemies then catch him doing.Dan 6:10Dan 6:11
Each is paired with a second word for the same moment and placed "before his God," so praying is pictured as standing in someone's presence and not merely as saying words: praying and giving thanks in the one verse, asking and pleading in the next.Dan 6:10Dan 6:11
Names the act of praying itself, so it tells you worship is happening even when nothing asked for is mentioned: Daniel kneels at his open window three times a day, praying and giving thanks, and no request is stated.Dan 6:10
Covers prayer offered for somebody else, and stands beside sacrifice as one part of formal worship: the Persian decree pays for offerings at Jerusalem and for prayer for the life of the king and his sons.Ezr 6:10
Both times it describes praying as a settled practice rather than a single approach: a daily habit at Daniel's window, and a standing arrangement written into an imperial decree.Dan 6:10Ezr 6:10
בָּעוּthe matching noun: the petition itself, the thing asked for. In the decree of Daniel 6 it is what this word takes as its object, so the word is the asking and the noun is what is asked.
be'a in the other biblical languages
בָּקַשׁHebrew“to seek”the Hebrew word that does the same double duty, covering both searching something out and requesting it; it is what the Hebrew parts of the Bible use where Daniel's Aramaic uses this word.
It is the ordinary word for a petition in an imperial court, and it treats a request made to a god and a request made to a man as the very same act. The Persian law Daniel's rivals draft forbids anyone to petition "any god or man" using this one verb, and the same verb then describes what Daniel is caught doing on his knees before his own God. Nothing in the wording separates prayer from a petition to the throne.Dan 6:7Dan 6:12Dan 6:11Dan 6:13
What is wanted can be an explanation. Daniel steps up to one of the figures standing in his vision and asks him for the truth of what he has just seen, so the word covers pressing someone for an answer, not only asking for a thing or an action.Dan 7:16
Every use of it belongs to the world of the Babylonian and Persian court, and its requests are the machinery of that court: getting an audience with the king and a decision out of him. Daniel asks the king for time to interpret the dream, and later asks him to put his three friends over the province of Babylon.Dan 2:16Dan 2:49
Both
Both are used of hunting a person down in order to harm or kill him, with the search and the deadly intent packed into the one verb. Officers go looking for Daniel and his friends to put them to death under the king's decree; Pharaoh goes after Moses to kill him, and Saul is after David day after day.Dan 2:13Exo 2:151Sa 23:14
Both are used of simply looking for someone you need to find, with nothing hostile about it. The restored king's advisers come seeking him out again, and Joseph, lost in open country, tells a stranger he is looking for his brothers.Dan 4:36Gen 37:16
Both are the word for putting a request to a human ruler and waiting on his answer. Daniel goes in to Nebuchadnezzar and asks him for more time; Artaxerxes asks Nehemiah what it is he is requesting, and Mordecai sends word for Esther to go in and make her request to the king for her people.Dan 2:16Neh 2:4Est 4:8
Both are used of asking God for something specific and urgent. Daniel and his friends ask the God of heaven for mercy about the king's dream so that they will not be executed, and David asks God for the life of his sick child, fasting and lying on the ground.Dan 2:18Dan 2:232Sa 12:16
Both cover the searching out of a charge or a pretext against someone. Daniel's rivals keep trying to find grounds for a complaint against him in his administration of the kingdom, and Samson's marriage to a Philistine woman is explained as his looking for an opening against the Philistines.Dan 6:4Jdg 14:4
It is used of hunting for lost property and straying animals, plain searching for a thing that has gone missing. Kish sends Saul out after the lost donkeys, and Ezekiel indicts shepherds because the flock is scattered over the hills with nobody out looking for it. The Aramaic word never searches for a lost object.1Sa 9:3Ezk 34:6
It carries the standing invitation to turn to God with your whole life, not to ask him for one thing. "Seek the LORD," "seek my face," is a settled expression for a people reorienting itself toward him, from exile, from ruin, from guilt, and it is the posture the promise of being found attaches to.Deu 4:29Psa 27:82Ch 7:14Hos 5:15
It covers setting your heart on things you can pursue but cannot go and fetch: knowledge, understanding, another community's good. Wisdom is to be gone after the way people dig for buried silver, and a wise person's ear is out after what it does not yet know.Pro 2:4Pro 18:15Psa 122:9
It also presses a claim rather than asking a favor: to require something of someone, to hold him answerable for it. Judah offers himself as surety and tells his father to require Benjamin at his hand, and God tells the watchman he will require the blood of the unwarned at his. The wanting here comes with authority behind it, and the Aramaic word never makes that kind of demand.Gen 43:9Ezk 3:18Ezk 33:8
שָׁאַלHebrew“to ask”the common Hebrew word for asking, whether asking a question or asking for something. It leans on the request being spoken, while this word starts from the wanting.
can mean going after someone or something with no words spoken at all, so the same word that asks a king for time also sends out men to hunt down the wise men and kill them, sets officials watching for grounds to accuse Daniel, and brings a restored king's advisers looking for him againDan 2:13Dan 6:4Dan 4:36
belongs to the world of the royal court, where asking is a risky act: every time it is used, the request either goes to the king himself or runs up against a law about who may be asked at allDan 2:16Dan 2:49Dan 6:7Dan 6:12
Both
both put a request to a person with the power to grant it, and both are at home in a royal audience: Daniel asks the Babylonian king for time to interpret the dream, and Adonijah asks for Abishag through the king's motherDan 2:161Ki 2:16
both are the ordinary word for prayer, with no special religious vocabulary involved: what makes the asking prayer is simply that God is the one asked, so Daniel and his friends ask heaven for mercy and Hannah asks the LORD for a son with the same everyday verb they would use of a neighborDan 2:18Dan 6:111Sa 1:27Psa 2:8
both can ask to be told something, treating an explanation as one more thing a person may request from someone who knows: Daniel asks an attendant in his vision for the truth of what he has seen, and Manoah asks the messenger for his nameDan 7:16Jdg 13:18
is the word for greeting someone, since Hebrew greets a person by asking after their peace and welfare, which is why one text can tell readers to ask for the peace of JerusalemGen 43:271Sa 25:5Psa 122:6
names the formal act of putting a question to God through a priest and the sacred lots, an established procedure with a yes or no answer, which Daniel's Aramaic word is never used forNum 27:211Sa 23:2
stretches to borrowing, where what is asked for is the use of a neighbor's property and must be given back or paid for, as with a borrowed animal or a borrowed axe head lost in the waterExo 22:142Ki 6:5
reaches down to begging, the asking of someone with no claim at all on what they ask for, whether a cursed man's children looking for bread or a sluggard with nothing at harvestPsa 109:10Pro 20:4
covers asking leave, that is requesting permission to be absent, from a king's table or from a governor's post1Sa 20:6Neh 13:6
αἰτέωGreek“to ask”the everyday Greek word for asking someone for something, used of requests made to people and to God alike.
covers hunting for a person or a thing that first has to be tracked down, which the Greek word never does: soldiers sent out to find the wise men, officials combing for grounds to accuse Daniel, courtiers seeking out a restored kingDan 2:13Dan 6:4Dan 4:36
one clause can treat asking a god and asking a person as a single act: the decree that traps Daniel bans asking anything of any god or any man except the kingDan 6:7Dan 6:12
can ask for an explanation rather than for a thing, as when Daniel asks one of the attendants standing by to tell him what his vision meantDan 7:16
Both
both are plain, everyday words for wanting something from someone able to give it, and both turn into the word for prayer simply because the one being asked is God, with no religious vocabulary addedDan 2:18Dan 6:11Mat 7:71Jn 5:14
both assume the asker stands below the one asked, so the same word serves for approaching a king with a request and for approaching GodDan 2:16Dan 2:49Act 12:20Mat 7:11
in both, English Bibles rotate among "ask," "request," "beg," "desire," and "pray" according to who is being addressed, so the one word behind those renderings disappears from viewDan 6:13Act 3:2
always a request put to someone who can grant it, never a search for a missing person or thing: the object asked for is right there in the sentence, whether a writing tablet, a loaf of bread, or money at the temple gateLuk 1:63Mat 7:9Act 3:2
hardens into a demand pressed on those in power, so the same word that begs a favor also names a crowd insisting on the release of one man and the death of anotherMat 27:20Luk 23:23Act 3:14Act 25:3
reaches all the way down to the beggar's request, and is the word Jesus uses when he tells his followers to give to anyone who asks themMat 5:42Luk 6:30
becomes the subject of direct teaching about how asking works, with conditions attached to it: ask in trust, ask for the right reason, ask in line with what God wantsMat 7:7Jas 1:6Jas 4:31Jn 5:14
ζητέωGreek“to seek”the Greek word for seeking or looking for something. It covers the searching side of this word but not the putting of a request.
Is the Bible's Aramaic word for praying: Daniel is found making his request and pleading before his God, and three times a day he keeps making his petition. English versions print "pray" in these places. The Greek word for seeking is not what the New Testament uses for putting a request to God.Dan 6:11Dan 6:13
Can name the request as a formal petition, official enough for a law to forbid it: the royal decree makes anyone who asks a petition of any god or man for thirty days liable to the lions' pit, and that decree is the exact charge brought against Daniel. Greek seeking never turns into a filed petition of this kind.Dan 6:7Dan 6:12
Covers asking a question in order to be told the answer: Daniel walks up to one of the figures standing by and asks him what the vision means, and he thanks God for making known what they had asked. The Greek word hunts for something; it does not put a question to a person.Dan 7:16Dan 2:23
Both
Both stand behind English "seek" when someone goes hunting for a person, and both can carry menace: officials go out to seek Daniel and his friends so they can be put to death, and Herod means to search for the child Jesus in order to destroy him. A reader who meets "seek" in Daniel and in Matthew is meeting two different words.Dan 2:13Mat 2:13
Both can report the attempt rather than the outcome, so the effort stands on record even when it fails: Daniel's rivals keep trying to find a charge against him and can find none, and the chief priests keep trying to find a way to arrest Jesus quietly.Dan 6:4Mrk 14:1
Both can be asking a person for something that person is able to grant: Daniel goes in to the king and asks him for time, and the Pharisees come to Jesus asking him for a sign from heaven.Dan 2:16Mrk 8:11
Goes looking for things that have gone missing, not only for people: a woman lights a lamp and sweeps the whole house for one lost coin, and an owner comes looking for fruit on a fig tree and finds none. In Daniel the Aramaic word is always aimed at a person or at a request, never at a mislaid thing.Luk 15:8Luk 13:6Luk 13:7
Carries the sense of a settled life aim, wanting something enough to arrange your life around it: seek the kingdom of God first, seek the things above, and love that does not seek its own. Nobody is being asked for anything in these places; the pursuit is inward and ongoing, and the Aramaic word never stretches this far.Mat 6:33Col 3:11Co 13:5
Can mean what is rightly expected of someone, so English renders it "required" rather than "sought": much is required of the servant who was given much, and faithfulness is what is required of a manager entrusted with his master's goods. The Aramaic word never becomes a standard a person has to meet.Luk 12:481Co 4:2
What scholars say about be'a
The standard reference works treat this as a single verb with a unified range. HALOT and the Biblical Aramaic lexicon in BDB give "to seek, look for" alongside "to ask, request, pray," and Vogt's lexicon of Biblical Aramaic lists the same spread, distinguishing the search for a person or object (Dan 2:13; 6:5 Aram.) from a request directed at a human superior (Dan 2:16, 49; 7:16) and from petition addressed to God (Dan 2:18, 23; 6:8, 13, 14 Aram.). It is the regular Aramaic counterpart of Hebrew בקש, is attested across Old and Middle Aramaic, and in later Jewish Aramaic becomes an ordinary word for prayer. The single intensive form, in Daniel 4:33 (Aram.), is read by most commentators as the courtiers seeking Nebuchadnezzar out at his restoration (Montgomery, Collins), while some render it as their seeking his favor. Commentators on Daniel 6 observe that the decree's formula joins the verb to its cognate noun and covers a petition addressed to "any god or man," which is what makes Daniel's ordinary practice prosecutable; the verb itself carries no cultic force, and in Daniel 6:11 (Eng.) it stands beside a separate verb of supplication.