StrongerBible

berakh

בְּרַךְ

AramaicH1289“bless, praise, ...”

Appears 5 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Dan 2:19Dan 2:20Dan 3:28Dan 4:34(31)Dan 6:10(11)
Word studybeh-RAKHverb

What berakh means

1

to bless God: to answer him out loud with praise, naming him as the source of wisdom, power, and rescue

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

In the Aramaic chapters of Daniel this verb runs in one direction only: a person blesses God. No one ever blesses another person with it, and God never blesses anyone with it. Every time it appears, someone has just watched God do something and answers him out loud for it.

The speakers are worth noticing:

  • Daniel blesses the God of heaven the moment a hidden dream and its meaning are revealed to him (Daniel 2:19).
  • Nebuchadnezzar, a foreign king, calls the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego blessed after the three men walk out of the furnace (Daniel 3:28).
  • The same king blesses the Most High again when his sanity is given back to him (Daniel 4:34).

Two of the five uses are the shout itself rather than a report of it: "blessed be" the name of God forever (Daniel 2:20), "blessed be" the God of these three men (Daniel 3:28). That form is a public verdict, spoken so others hear it, not a private feeling. The other two describe the act from the outside: Daniel blessed, Nebuchadnezzar blessed.

This is the Aramaic twin of the Hebrew verb (בָּרַךְ), which ranges much wider: there God blesses people, a father blesses his son, and neighbors bless each other in greeting. In Daniel's Aramaic none of that appears. The word has narrowed to the one thing a creature can offer upward.

Nuances

1ato bless God: to praise and thank him for something he has just done
Dan 2:19Dan 4:34(31)
1b"blessed be": the spoken acclamation that declares God worthy of praise
Dan 2:20Dan 3:28
2

to kneel: to go down on the knees, the body's posture for prayer

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

One verse uses the word for the plain physical act. Three times a day Daniel went up to his room with its windows open toward Jerusalem, and there he went down on his knees and prayed (Daniel 6:10). The verb sits directly beside the word for "knees," so the line reads almost like "he knelt his knees."

Why one word covers both kneeling and blessing is an old question, and scholars do not agree on how the two are connected. What is clear is that they belong together in practice: bending the knee is what a person does before someone greater, and honoring that person in speech is the same act carried out in words. Hebrew keeps the same pairing in בָּרַךְ, where camels are made to kneel at a well and worshipers kneel before God.

Do not press the link into the other four verses. When Daniel blesses God in chapter 2, or Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 4, the text says nothing about anyone's knees.

Dan 6:10(11)

What scholars say about berakh

The standard lexica treat Biblical Aramaic ברך as the counterpart of Hebrew ברך and give it the same two-part range: peal "to kneel" (the participle of Daniel 6:11, English 6:10, with the cognate noun "knees") and pael "to bless, praise," with a peil passive participle in the acclamation of Daniel 3:28. HALOT's Aramaic material and BDB's Aramaic section both file all five occurrences under one entry, as does Vogt's Lexicon Linguae Aramaicae Veteris Testamenti. All four blessing occurrences take God as object, which matches the wider Aramaic and Hebrew pattern in which the pael with a divine object is declarative praise rather than the conferral of benefit. The doxologies of Daniel 2:20-23 and 4:34-37 pair the verb with שבח and (in 2:23) הודה/ידא, and commentators (Collins, Hermeneia; Goldingay, Word Biblical Commentary) read them as liturgical hymn fragments in the style of the Psalms. On the underlying root, the lexica divide, exactly as they do for Hebrew: BDB keeps one root with "kneel" as primary, while HALOT and NIDOTTE separate "kneel" and "bless" as homonyms; the comparative Semitic evidence (Arabic baraka, Ugaritic brk) holds both senses together in one root, which makes a clean separation difficult to defend. Nothing in the five Daniel occurrences is textually contested.

Where scholars disagree about berakh

Whether the kneeling sense and the blessing sense belong to a single root or to two homonymous roots.

  • contestedOne root, with kneeling as the primary sense and blessing developing from the homage it expresses; the comparative Semitic evidence keeps both senses together.; BDB, s.v. ברך
  • contestedTwo homonymous roots, one meaning "to kneel" and an unrelated one meaning "to bless," listed as separate entries.; HALOT, s.v. ברך I, ברך II; NIDOTTE, s.v. ברך

Sources

  • HALOT, Aramaic section, s.v. ברךlexicon
  • BDB, Aramaic section, s.v. בְּרַךְlexicon
  • Ernst Vogt, Lexicon Linguae Aramaicae Veteris Testamenti, s.v. ברךlexicon
  • TDOT, s.v. ברך (brk)theological dictionary
  • NIDOTTE, s.v. ברךtheological dictionary
  • John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia), on Daniel 2:19-23, 3:28, 4:34, 6:11commentary
  • John E. Goldingay, Daniel (Word Biblical Commentary 30), on Daniel 2:20-23 and 6:11commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of בְּרַךְ

pael participle m s absolute

מְבָרַךְ

Dan 2:20

pael perfect 1cs

בָּרְכֵת

Dan 4:34

pael perfect 3ms

בָּרִךְ

Dan 2:19

peal participle m s absolute

בָּרֵךְ

Dan 6:10

peil participle m s absolute

בְּרִיךְ

Dan 3:28