StrongerBible

batsir

בָּצִיר

HebrewH1210vintage, grape harvest, ...

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Lev 26:5 (2×)Jdg 8:2Isa 24:13Isa 32:10Jer 48:32Mic 7:1Zec 11:2
Word studyResearch-gradebah-TSEERnoun

What batsir means

the grape harvest: the cutting of ripe grapes from the vines, the season when that is done, and the crop it brings in

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This is the ordinary Hebrew word for bringing in the grapes. It looks at one event from more than one angle: the work of cutting the ripe clusters off the vines, the stretch of the year when that work is done, and the fruit that comes in as a result. English does the same thing with the word "harvest," which can name the job, the season, or the crop, so these shifts are not a sign of different words but of one word used naturally.

Two facts about the event itself give the word its force. First, it sat at a fixed place in the farming year, late summer into early autumn, after the grain had been cut (קָצִיר) and around the time everything was gathered in (אָסִיף). Leviticus 26:5 can therefore use it as a date: threshing that runs on until the grapes are cut, and grape cutting that runs on until sowing, is a picture of harvests so heavy they overlap. Second, the law told harvesters to leave what they missed on the vine for the poor and the foreigner, so a normal grape harvest ended with a few clusters still hanging (עֹלֵלוֹת).

The prophets work that second fact hard. To say a land is like the leftovers once the grapes have been cut (Isaiah 24:13), or that a man is like a gleaner who finds no cluster at all (Micah 7:1), is to say that almost nothing remains, and to a farmer that was a shocking claim, because a real harvest always left something. Gideon puts the same vocabulary to a very different use in Judges 8:2, rating another tribe's leftovers above his own clan's whole crop in order to flatter a rival and defuse a quarrel.

The same three letters also give the verb for cutting grapes and, more surprisingly, the words for walling a city off beyond reach (בָּצַר). Many standard dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew tie all of that to one underlying idea of cutting off, while others keep the grape word and the fortifying word apart as look-alikes. Either way, the connection is a reconstruction and not something a Hebrew reader would have heard in the word for the grape harvest.

Nuances

1athe season of the grape harvest: the point in the farming year when the grapes are cut
Lev 26:5 (2×)
1bthe gathering of the grapes as an event, especially once it is finished and only leftovers remain
Isa 24:13Isa 32:10Mic 7:1
1cthe grape crop itself: the fruit brought in from the vines
Jdg 8:2Jer 48:32
1da felling of trees spoken of as though it were a grape harvest
CertaintyObscure
Zec 11:2
Zec 11:2

Whether בָּצִיר stands in Zechariah 11:2 at all. The consonantal text (Ketiv) reads בָּצוּר, a passive form of the root in its sense "inaccessible, fortified," while the Masoretic reading tradition (Qere) reads בָּצִיר "vintage."

  • majorityRead the Ketiv בָּצוּר: the line laments the felling of an impenetrable forest, and the verse is not an occurrence of the noun "vintage" at all.; BDB, s.v. בָּצִיר, noting of Zechariah 11:2 "read בצור (Kt)"
  • minorityRead the Qere בָּצִיר: the felled forest is described as a harvested one, and the verse counts as an occurrence of the noun.; Masoretic Qere at Zechariah 11:2, as printed in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia

What scholars say about batsir

BDB glosses בָּצִיר as "vintage" and cross-references the verb בָּצַר "cut off, gather grapes," listing the literal uses at Leviticus 26:5 (twice), Judges 8:2, Isaiah 32:10 and Jeremiah 48:32 and the similes at Isaiah 24:13, Micah 7:1 and Zechariah 11:2, where it prefers the Ketiv בָּצוּר. The Westminster Leningrad Codex count is 7 occurrences in 6 verses; the morphological tagging followed here counts 8 in 7 verses, the difference being Zechariah 11:2, taken from the Qere. Morphologically the noun follows the qatil pattern, which in Biblical Hebrew frequently names a period or an activity and carries passive or resultative force, fitting both "the season of grape cutting" and its product; the construct is attested at Judges 8:2 and the suffixed form at Jeremiah 48:32. On etymology, the closest cognate for the "cut" sense is Akkadian basaru "to tear, rip off" (CAD B; AHw), while Arabic bsr means "to see, perceive" (Lane) and so lends the "cut" derivation no support, a point worth stressing since older word studies reach for Arabic indiscriminately; Jewish Aramaic and Syriac use the root of the vintage, and Jastrow documents both the rabbinic vintage vocabulary and an unrelated Aramaic homonym meaning "less, diminished." BDB and the Gesenius tradition derive the vintage words, the fortification words and בֶּצֶר "ore" (Job 22:24) from a single root "cut off," treating the vintage verb as denominative from the noun; DCH, on its homonym-maximizing method, keeps בצר I and בצר II apart, and the single-root account is best described as a lexicographers' synthesis rather than a demonstrated etymology. For the realia, Borowski and Hopkins place the grape harvest in late summer to early autumn, after the grain harvest and overlapping the Feast of Ingathering, and Walsh argues that viticulture shaped the social imagination of the Hebrew Bible deeply enough that its details were routinely enlisted to describe social relations; the gleaning laws (Leviticus 19:10; Deuteronomy 24:21) and the Sabbatical and Jubilee restrictions (Leviticus 25:5, 11) are the legal background that gives the prophetic gleaning similes their force. The versions render with τρύγητος and τρυγάω (LXX), vindemia (Vulgate), and the cognate root (Targum, Peshitta); the Gezer Calendar, notably, does not use בציר, subsuming the vintage under other vocabulary. Bibliographic caution: the named authors, volumes and page numbers of the TDOT and NIDOTTE articles on בצר, a verbatim Ugaritic bsr entry in DULAT, and the presence of בציר in the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls could not be verified and are therefore not asserted here.

Where scholars disagree about batsir

Whether the root בצר behind בָּצִיר is one polysemous root meaning "cut off," from which both the vintage vocabulary and the "fortify, make inaccessible" vocabulary derive, or two homophonous roots.

  • majorityOne primitive root with the base sense "cut off": grapes are cut from the vine, a city is cut off by its walls, and ore is cut out of rock; on this analysis the vintage verb is denominative, formed from the noun בָּצִיר.; F. Brown, S. R. Driver and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB), s.v. בָּצַר; W. Gesenius, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Handworterbuch uber das Alte Testament, ed. F. Buhl, s.v. בֶּצֶר
  • minorityTwo homophonous roots, בצר I "gather grapes" and בצר II "be inaccessible, fortify," kept apart because the shared sense "cut off" is an attractive but unproven harmonization.; D. J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press), s.v. בצר I; s.v. בצר II
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • F. Brown, S. R. Driver and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB), s.v. בָּצִיר; s.v. בָּצַרlexicon
  • L. Koehler and W. Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), s.v. בָּצִיר; s.v. בצרlexicon
  • D. J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press), s.v. בצר I; s.v. בצר IIlexicon
  • W. Gesenius, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Handworterbuch uber das Alte Testament, ed. F. Buhl, s.v. בֶּצֶרlexicon
  • The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), vol. B, s.v. basarulexicon
  • W. von Soden, Akkadisches Handworterbuch (AHw), s.v. basarulexicon
  • E. W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. bsrlexicon
  • M. Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, s.v. בצר; s.v. בצירlexicon
  • G. del Olmo Lete and J. Sanmartin, A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd rev. English ed., trans. W. G. E. Watson (Leiden: Brill, 2015)lexicon
  • O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1987)monograph
  • D. C. Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1985)monograph
  • C. E. Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine: Viticulture in Ancient Israel, Harvard Semitic Monographs 60 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2000)monograph
  • P. J. King and L. E. Stager, Life in Biblical Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001)monograph
  • "Gezer Calendar," Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed.encyclopedia

All attested forms of בָּצִיר

m s absolute

בָּצִיר

Lev 26:5, Lev 26:5, Isa 24:13, Isa 32:10, Mic 7:1, Zec 11:2

m s construct

בְצִיר

Jdg 8:2

m s construct

בְּצִירֵךְ

Jer 48:32