StrongerBible

dov

דֹּב

HebrewH1677“bear, she-bear”

Appears 12 times · tap a cell to see the verses

1Sa 17:341Sa 17:361Sa 17:372Sa 17:82Ki 2:24Pro 17:12Pro 28:15Isa 11:7Isa 59:11Lam 3:10Hos 13:8Amo 5:19
Root family
Word studyDOHVnoun

What dov means

bear: the brown bear of ancient Israel, the animal the Bible reaches for when it pictures raw, unreasoning fury, above all a mother robbed of her cubs

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

Bears really did live in ancient Israel. The Syrian brown bear ranged through the wooded hills and the thickets along the Jordan, heavier and faster than it looks and dangerous enough that killing one counted as proof of a shepherd's courage. The Bible treats it as an ordinary hazard of the countryside, on the same level as the lion.

Most of the time, though, the word turns up in a comparison, and it is nearly always the same comparison: a bear robbed of her cubs. Three different writers reach for that one picture, for a band of hardened soldiers, for the risk of meeting a fool in his folly, and for God's anger against his own people. What the image carries is not majesty but blind rage, an animal that will come at you and can be neither reasoned with nor outrun.

The bear rarely appears alone. It travels with the lion (אַרְיֵה), and the two together mean danger with no way out:

  • David tells Saul he killed both while guarding his father's sheep
  • the cruel ruler is a roaring lion and a prowling bear at once
  • the man who escapes the lion runs straight into the bear
  • and when the world is finally put right, the cow grazes beside the bear while the lion eats straw

The hardest turn is that the bear can be God. When the prophets picture the LORD coming against his people, he is the bear lying in wait beside the road, and the bear that meets them and tears them open. Once, and only once, the word is used for a sound rather than a threat: a people waiting in vain for justice moan like bears.

Nuances

1athe animal itself: a bear met in the wild, or one pictured grazing in peace in the world to come
1Sa 17:341Sa 17:361Sa 17:372Ki 2:24Pro 17:12Isa 11:7Amo 5:19
1bthe bear as a picture of a raging attacker: a fighting man, a cruel ruler, or God himself closing in
2Sa 17:8Pro 28:15Lam 3:10Hos 13:8
1cthe low growling of bears, borrowed as the sound of a people groaning
TranslatabilityApproximate
Isa 59:11

What scholars say about dov

The lexica are unanimous on the referent: HALOT, BDB and DCH all give simply "bear", identified with the Syrian brown bear (Ursus arctos syriacus), and the noun has clear cognates across Semitic (Akkadian dabu, Aramaic dubba, Arabic dubb). The form is epicene, so grammatical gender does not distinguish male from female; the "she-bears" of 2 Kings 2:24 is signalled by the feminine numeral and the feminine verbs, not by the noun. Twelve occurrences are unevenly distributed: three narrative (1 Samuel 17:34-37; 2 Kings 2:24), the remainder in poetry and prophecy, where the dominant collocation is the bereaved bear, dov shakkul (2 Samuel 17:8; Proverbs 17:12; Hosea 13:8), and the standard pairing is with the lion (1 Samuel 17; Proverbs 28:15; Isaiah 11:7; Lamentations 3:10; Amos 5:19). Commentators on Hosea 13:7-8 and Lamentations 3:10 note that the theriomorphic depiction of YHWH as bear and lion is among the most confronting in the prophetic corpus, and read it as an intensification of the covenant curse tradition rather than as a claim about divine character. At Isaiah 59:11 the comparison shifts from violence to vocalization, with the verb hamah; translators divide over whether the resulting sound is best rendered as growling or moaning. Zooarchaeological and iconographic surveys of the ancient Levant confirm the bear's presence in the highland and Jordan valley habitats into the historical period.

Sources

  • Koehler, L., and W. Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. דֹּבlexicon
  • Brown, F., S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. דֹּבlexicon
  • Clines, D. J. A., ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. דֹּבlexicon
  • Botterweck, G. J., H. Ringgren, and H.-J. Fabry, eds., Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, s.v. דֹּבtheological-dictionary
  • Macintosh, A. A., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), on Hosea 13:7-8commentary
  • Berlin, A., Lamentations: A Commentary, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), on Lamentations 3:10commentary
  • Paul, S. M., Amos: A Commentary on the Book of Amos, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), on Amos 5:19commentary
  • Blenkinsopp, J., Isaiah 56-66: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 19B (New York: Doubleday, 2003), on Isaiah 59:11commentary
  • Borowski, O., Every Living Thing: Daily Use of Animals in Ancient Israel (Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 1998)monograph

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

All attested forms of דֹּב

c s absolute

דֹּב, הַדּוֹב

1Sa 17:37, 2Sa 17:8, Pro 17:12, Pro 28:15, Isa 11:7, Lam 3:10, Hos 13:8, Amo 5:19

c p absolute

דֻּבִּים

2Ki 2:24, Isa 59:11