made inaccessible: fortified, walled off, or otherwise put beyond reach
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
The central idea is being cut off from access. A city that is cut off from attackers by a high wall is a fortified city, and this is by far the most common use of the word: the spies report cities "walled up to heaven," and the histories catalog one fortified town after another. The same idea runs the other way when someone actively walls a place off to make it unreachable.
The word can leave the city wall behind and describe anything shut away from reach. When God says at Babel that nothing the builders plan will be beyond them, and when Job confesses that no purpose of God's can be blocked, it is this word: a plan that cannot be walled off or stopped. In one place it even describes knowledge itself as inaccessible, the "great and hidden things" a person could never reach on their own.
All of these are the same picture in different settings: a wall, a plan, or a secret that stands beyond someone's reach.
Nuances
1afortified, walled: (of a city or wall) built up so an enemy cannot take it
1bto fortify: to wall a place off and make it unreachable
Isa 22:10Jer 51:53
1cto be withheld or beyond reach: (of a plan) impossible to block or thwart
Gen 11:6Job 42:2
1dinaccessible, hidden: (of knowledge) too high to reach on one's own
Jer 33:3*
2
to gather grapes: to cut the ripe clusters from the vine at the vintage
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is a farming word for one specific job: cutting grape clusters off the vine when the vintage comes in. The sabbatical laws set it beside reaping (קָצַר) grain, so that the two verbs together name the whole harvest, the field and the vineyard.
Prophets turn the picture into a threat. A conquering army is told to strip a nation like grape-pickers stripping a vine, and a proverb about how even grape-pickers leave a few grapes behind is used to say that this enemy will leave nothing at all.
Lev 25:5Lev 25:11Deu 24:21Jdg 9:27Jer 6:9Jer 49:9Oba 1:5
3
to cut off, curb: to bring a proud spirit low
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
In a single verse this word steps back to its rawest picture, cutting something off. God "cuts off the spirit of princes," that is, he curbs and humbles proud rulers, snapping their high spirits the way a stalk or a cluster is cut. It is the same act of severing that lies behind fortifying a city and gathering grapes, here aimed at human pride.
Its most common use is defensive: to make a place inaccessible by walling it in, so towns are described as fortified, fenced, and unreachably high.Num 13:28Deu 1:282Ki 18:13
It can mean to hold something back or keep it out of reach, so that a plan or purpose cannot be blocked or withheld.Gen 11:6Job 42:2
When it refers to harvest it means specifically the gathering of the grape vintage off the vine, the work of the grapegatherer, never the cutting of grain.Deu 24:21Jer 6:9Oba 1:5
Both
Both are harvest-season verbs for taking in the year's produce, and they stand side by side in the sabbath-year law where one word reaps the grain and the other gathers the grapes.Lev 25:5Lev 25:11
Its core farming sense is reaping standing grain with a sickle at the grain harvest, the work of the reaper in the field.Lev 19:9Rut 2:3Psa 126:5
It carries a separate sense of being short or cut short: of the LORD's reaching hand, of a life's days, of a bed too small to stretch out on.Num 11:23Isa 59:1Isa 28:20Pro 10:27
Paired with the word for soul or spirit it means to run short of patience, to be worn down, grieved, or vexed to the breaking point.Num 21:4Jdg 16:16Zec 11:8
כָּרַתthe general verb for cutting off or severing (and for making a covenant), whereas this word narrows to fortifying, grape-cutting, or curbing a proud spirit
Walls a place off so it cannot be reached. Its most common use is a fortified city, one built up high and strong so an enemy cannot take it.Num 13:28Deu 3:52Ki 18:13
Shuts something away beyond someone's reach: a plan too strong to be blocked, or knowledge too high to grasp.Gen 11:6Job 42:2Jer 33:3
Gathers grapes at the vintage, cutting the ripe clusters from the vine. This is a set farming term the other word never carries.Lev 25:5Deu 24:21Oba 1:5
Both
Both can describe God cutting someone off in judgment, whether bringing the proud low or removing the wicked from the land.Psa 76:12Psa 37:28Psa 37:9
Is the ordinary word for physical cutting with a blade or tool: felling trees, or severing a body part or object.Deu 19:5Exo 4:251Sa 17:51
Is the fixed idiom for making a covenant, literally to cut one, from the old rite of cutting a sacrificial animal to seal the agreement.Gen 15:18Exo 24:82Sa 5:3
Names the penalty of being cut off from the covenant community, the offender removed from the people for a specific violation.Gen 17:14Exo 12:15Lev 7:20
Reaches to wiping out a whole nation, family line, or people, a scale of extermination the other word never has.1Ki 14:10Zep 1:3Mic 5:9
Its harvest work is the vintage, and only the vintage: ripe clusters cut from the vine when the grapes come in. It is never used of olives or of grain.Lev 25:5Deu 24:21Jdg 9:27
Most of the time it is not a farming word at all: it describes a town walled off so that an enemy cannot get in, or the act of walling such a place up.Num 13:28Deu 3:5Isa 22:10Isa 25:2
It stretches past walls to anything shut away beyond someone's reach: a plan nobody can block, or knowledge too high for a person to get at on their own.Gen 11:6Job 42:2Jer 33:3
Prophets turn its grape-picking into a threat of plunder, where an invading army strips a nation the way pickers strip a vineyard.Jer 6:9Oba 1:5
Both
Both are narrow farming words for getting a particular crop off the plant, and Deuteronomy sets them in back-to-back verses of one law so that between them they cover the orchard and the vineyard.Deu 24:21Deu 24:20
Both stand behind a law that stops the worker from going back over the same trees or vines a second time, leaving what is missed for the poor and the foreigner.Deu 24:21Deu 24:20
Both feed prophetic pictures in which a harvest leaves a few behind, and those few stand for the handful of people who survive and are gathered up afterward.Jer 49:9Isa 27:12
It names the tool and the motion, not just the crop: a worker swings a hand-held pole or rod so that what is wanted falls loose.Deu 24:20Isa 28:27
It covers two crops that are struck rather than cut: olives knocked down off the branches, and grain or seed tapped free of the harvested stalks.Deu 24:20Jdg 6:11Rut 2:17
The scale is small and personal, one worker with a stick handling a single day's take, which is why it fits a man hiding his grain from raiders and a gleaner working over what she picked up by hand.Jdg 6:11Rut 2:17
That gentle motion becomes a picture of God himself, beating his scattered people loose across the whole country so they can be collected one at a time.Isa 27:12
batsar in the other biblical languages
τρυγάωGreek“to harvest”the Greek verb for gathering ripe grapes and fruit, the counterpart of this word's vintage sense
By far its most common use has nothing to do with fruit: it describes making a city inaccessible, walling it up high and strong. Spies report cities that are great and walled up to heaven, and kings capture the fortified towns of Judah.Num 13:28Deu 3:52Ki 18:13Isa 2:15
It also means to shut something off so it cannot be reached or held back. God says nothing the people plan will now be withheld from them; Job confesses that no purpose of God can be restrained; and God promises to show hidden things that are otherwise beyond reach.Gen 11:6Job 42:2Jer 33:3
Both
Both name the literal act of the vintage, cutting ripe grapes off the vine at harvest time.Luk 6:44Deu 24:21Lev 25:5
Both turn the grape harvest into a picture of thorough judgment, an enemy or agent stripping a people as grape-gatherers strip a vine.Rev 14:19Jer 49:9Oba 1:5
In its apocalyptic use the grape harvest becomes the one final, total ingathering: an angel swings a sharp sickle and gathers the whole vine of the earth, throwing the clusters into the winepress of God's wrath because the grapes are fully ripe. Here ripeness signals readiness for judgment rather than a farmer's ordinary vintage.Rev 14:18Rev 14:19
ὀχύρωμαGreek“stronghold”the Greek noun for a stronghold, matching this word's picture of a place walled off and beyond reach
בצר is a verb whose range reaches well outside fortification: it commonly means to gather grapes, to bring in the vintage.Lev 25:5Jdg 9:27Jer 49:9Oba 1:5
בצר can also mean to hold back or be beyond reach, so that a thing becomes impossible or a plan cannot be thwarted.Gen 11:6Job 42:2
Both
Both belong to the world of fortification: בצר describes a city built high and walled so an enemy cannot reach it, and ὀχύρωμα is the resulting inaccessible stronghold.Num 13:282Ki 18:132Co 10:4
ὀχύρωμα names the fortress itself, a fixed walled structure, and its one New Testament use is figurative: it pictures entrenched human reasoning and pride as a stronghold to be pulled down, not a literal fort.2Co 10:4
ἀδυνατέωGreek“be impossible”the Greek verb "to be impossible," echoing this word's sense that no plan can be blocked (as at Luke 1:37, nothing will be impossible with God)
Covers the vintage, cutting or gathering the grapes off the vine at harvest, a sense the Greek word never carries.Lev 25:5Deu 24:21Jdg 9:27Jer 6:9Oba 1:5
Its most common use is walling something off so it cannot be reached, describing fortified, inaccessible cities and high defenses.Num 13:28Deu 1:282Ki 18:13Isa 2:15Isa 25:2
Can mean to cut off or humble, as when God shears away the pride of rulers.Psa 76:12
Both
Both express that a purpose cannot be blocked: the Hebrew word says nothing a person or God intends can be withheld or thwarted, and the Greek word says nothing is impossible.Gen 11:6Job 42:2Luk 1:37Mat 17:20
Names impossibility directly and abstractly, as sheer lack of power over any matter whatever, without the concrete Hebrew imagery of walls, harvest, or physical blocking.Mat 17:20Luk 1:37
What scholars say about batsar
Older lexicography (Gesenius-Tregelles; BDB, p. 130; TWOT #270) treats בצר as one root with a core sense "cut off, clip off," from which the vintage sense (Qal active בֹּצֵר; noun בָּצִיר), the fortify sense (Qal passive participle בְּצוּרָה/בְּצֻרוֹת and Piel בִּצֵּר; noun מִבְצָר), and the Niphal "be cut off from access, be withheld" (Gen 11:6;Job 42:2; substantival Jer 33:3) all derive. TDOT (Vol. II) likewise stresses semantic unity around "decisive separation," arguing the Niphal is the hinge that binds the fortify and withhold uses to the underlying "sever." The newer lexica dissent on comparative-Semitic grounds: HALOT, Gesenius18, and DCH (whose editorial method maximizes homonyms) separate I בצר "cut off, gather grapes" from II בצר "make inaccessible, fortify," and Klein splits similarly. Comparative data are genuinely mixed: Akkadian baṣāru "tear off, peel" (CAD B 131) anchors a Proto-Semitic *b-ṣ-r "sever"; Aramaic/Syriac/Ge'ez bṣr developed "diminish, be less"; Phoenician-Punic mbṣr "fortress" (Krahmalkov) and Late Bronze toponymy (Amarna EA 197 Buṣruna; Thutmose III's Buzruna; biblical Bozrah) show the "stronghold" sense as a genuine Northwest Semitic development, while no other Semitic language pairs the grape-harvest sense with the fortify sense inside one root. Commentators read the finite forms straightforwardly: Sarna, Wenham, Westermann, and Speiser on Gen 11:6 ("nothing beyond their reach"); Clines and Habel on Job 42:2 (a deliberate reverse echo of Gen 11:6); Lundbom and Holladay retaining MT at Jer 33:3 (LXX ὀχυρά supports it); Milgrom and Levine on the קצר/בצר harvest merism in Lev 25.
Where scholars disagree about batsar
Whether בצר is one polysemous root or two (or more) homonyms that fell together in Hebrew spelling, chiefly a "gather grapes" root versus a "make inaccessible / fortify" root.
contestedOne root whose core sense is "cut off, sever," from which grape-cutting, fortifying, and the Niphal "be withheld / beyond reach" all derive; the Niphal (Gen 11:6;Job 42:2; substantival Jer 33:3) is the semantic hinge showing the fortify and withhold uses are the same word.; F. Brown, S. R. Driver, C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), p. 130, s.v. בָּצַר; R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, B. K. Waltke (eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (1980), entry #270; G. J. Botterweck, H. Ringgren, H.-J. Fabry (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Vol. II, article on בָּצַר
contestedTwo (or more) originally distinct roots: I בצר "cut off, gather grapes" and II בצר "make inaccessible, fortify", separated largely on comparative-Semitic grounds since no other Semitic language pairs the grape-harvest sense with the fortify sense in one root.; L. Koehler & W. Baumgartner, rev. Stamm et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, tr. Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 1994–2000), s.vv. I בצר, II בצר; David J. A. Clines (ed.), Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. II, s.v. בצר; Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (Jerusalem: Carta, 1987), s.v. בצר
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, C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), p. 130, s.v. בָּצַרlexicon
L. Koehler & W. Baumgartner, rev. Stamm et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, tr. Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 1994–2000), s.vv. I בצר, II בצרlexicon
David J. A. Clines (ed.), Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993–2011), vol. II, s.v. בצרlexicon
R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, B. K. Waltke (eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody, 1980), entry #270theological-dictionary
G. J. Botterweck, H. Ringgren, H.-J. Fabry (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Vol. II (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), article on בָּצַרtheological-dictionary
The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD), B 131, s.v. baṣārulexicon
Charles R. Krahmalkov, Phoenician-Punic Dictionary (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), s.v. mbṣrlexicon
Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27 (Anchor Yale Bible; New York: Doubleday, 2001), on 25:5, 11commentary
Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: JPS, 1989), on 11:6commentary
David J. A. Clines, Job 38–42 (Word Biblical Commentary; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011), on 42:2commentary
Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 21–36 (Anchor Yale Bible; New York: Doubleday, 2004), on 33:3commentary