StrongerBible

gazzah

גִּזָּה

HebrewH1492fleece

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Jdg 6:37 (2×)Jdg 6:38 (2×)Jdg 6:39 (2×)Jdg 6:40
Root family
Word studygiz-ZAHnoun

What gazzah means

a fleece: the woolly coat cut off a sheep in one piece and handled as a single object.

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This word names one thing, and names it narrowly: wool that has been shorn from a sheep and stays together as a mat. It is formed from the ordinary verb for shearing (גָּזַז), so it always points to wool already off the animal, heavy enough to pick up, spread out, and wring out by hand.

Its whole use in the Bible sits inside one short scene. Gideon asks God for a sign, lays a fleece on the threshing floor overnight, and asks first for dew on the wool with dry ground all around it, then for the opposite. The word turns up seven times in those four verses and nowhere else in the Bible.

The first time it appears, the story spells it out as "a fleece of wool," pairing it with the usual word for wool as a material (צֶמֶר); after that it is simply "the fleece," an object the reader already knows. Hebrew has a second word from the same root (גֵּז) that can mean a shearing of wool but can equally mean a mowing of grass. The word here is the narrower one: it never means anything but the sheep's fleece.

Jdg 6:37 (2×)Jdg 6:38 (2×)Jdg 6:39 (2×)Jdg 6:40

What scholars say about gazzah

The lexicons are unanimous: HALOT, BDB, and DCH all give גִּזָּה as "fleece," the shorn wool of a sheep, a feminine formation from the root גזז "to shear." It is confined to Judges 6:37-40 (seven occurrences in four verses), where 6:37 has the construct גִּזַּת הַצֶּמֶר, "the fleece of wool." It is distinguished from the masculine גֵּז (H1488), whose range is wider: shorn wool in Deuteronomy 18:4 and Job 31:20, but mown grass or a mowing in Psalm 72:6 and Amos 7:1. Commentators on Judges (Boling, Soggin, Butler, Webb) discuss the doubled structure of the sign, whether the two requests are a literary pair or reflect an earlier stage of the tradition, and the physical plausibility of dew collecting on wool but not on a threshing floor; none of this bears on the sense of the noun itself, which is not in doubt.

Sources

  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. גִּזָּהlexicon
  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. גִּזָּהlexicon
  • DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. גזהlexicon
  • Robert G. Boling, Judges, Anchor Bible (1975)commentary
  • J. Alberto Soggin, Judges: A Commentary, Old Testament Library (1981)commentary
  • Trent C. Butler, Judges, Word Biblical Commentary (2009)commentary
  • Barry G. Webb, The Book of Judges, NICOT (2012)commentary

All attested forms of גִּזָּה

f s absolute

גִּזָּה

Jdg 6:37, Jdg 6:38, Jdg 6:38, Jdg 6:39, Jdg 6:39, Jdg 6:40

f s construct

גִּזַּת

Jdg 6:37