StrongerBible

divrah

דִּבְרָה

HebrewH1700“cause, order, ...”

Appears 5 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Job 5:8Psa 110:4Ecc 3:18Ecc 7:14Ecc 8:2
Word studyResearch-gradedeev-RAHnoun

What divrah means

1

a case: the matter a person lays out before someone who can settle it

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This is a rare word, and in only one place in the Hebrew Bible does it stand on its own as a plain noun. In Job's speech it names what a person brings to a hearing: the matter he sets out, the plea he wants heard and decided. English Bibles render it "cause", "case", or sometimes "plea".

It grew from the same root as the common Hebrew word for a word, a thing, or a matter (דָּבָר), and it keeps that word's everyday reach. A "matter" can be something said, something done, or something at issue between two parties. What narrows it here is the setting. Job has just been told to take his trouble to God, and the picture he answers with is a courtroom: he will gather his side of the argument and set it down in front of the judge.

Some of the ancient translators took it more flatly as "my speech", which the word could bear. Commentators on Job favor the courtroom sense because the speeches around it return again and again to the image of a lawsuit brought before God.

Job 5:8
2

in a set phrase, the ground or pattern behind something: on account of, so that, after the manner of

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

Four of this word's five appearances are locked inside a fixed phrase, always attached to the small word meaning "on" or "upon". Inside that phrase the noun has stopped naming anything of its own and has turned into a piece of grammar, close to the English "on the matter of". English then needs three different phrasings depending on what follows:

  • "concerning" or "on account of", when a person or a thing follows
  • "so that" or "in order that", when a whole clause follows and states a purpose
  • "after the manner of", when a name follows and the point is the pattern someone matches

This is a late way of speaking. The same phrase is fully at home in Biblical Aramaic (דִּבְרָה), where it is an ordinary and productive way to build a "so that" clause, and its appearance in Ecclesiastes is one of the standard reasons scholars date that book late.

Psalm 110:4 is the famous case and the odd one out. There the phrase does not mean "on account of" and is not simply a purpose marker: it says the king addressed in the psalm is a priest "after the manner of Melchizedek". Whether that asserts a resemblance to Melchizedek or a standing office he founded has been argued for centuries, and the argument runs through the Letter to the Hebrews to the present day.

Nuances

2aon account of, concerning: the reason for something, or the matter it has to do with
Ecc 3:18Ecc 8:2
2bso that, in order that: introducing the purpose something was done for
Ecc 7:14
2cafter the manner of: matching the pattern set by someone else
CertaintyContested
Psa 110:4
Psa 110:4

What the phrase rendered "after the order of Melchizedek" in Psalm 110:4 asserts about the king's priesthood, and how the final yod on the noun should be parsed.

  • majorityA comparative claim: the king is a priest after the manner or kind of Melchizedek, the final yod being an archaic connecting vowel (hireq compaginis) rather than a first-person suffix.; BDB, s.v. דִּבְרָה, 184; HALOT, s.v. דִּבְרָה, I:212; Leslie C. Allen, Psalms 101-150, WBC 21, rev. ed. (Nashville: Nelson, 2002), 81
  • minorityAn institutional claim: the king is installed into the priestly rank or order associated with Melchizedek, the sense carried by the Septuagint's kata ten taxin and presupposed by the argument of Hebrews 7:11-17.; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60-150: A Continental Commentary, trans. H. C. Oswald (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), on Ps 110; David M. Hay, Glory at the Right Hand: Psalm 110 in Early Christianity, SBLMS 18 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973), 20-26, 155-156
  • minorityA possessive claim: the final yod is a genuine first-person suffix, so the line grants the priesthood by God's own word or decree, "a rightful king by My decree".; NJPS Tanakh, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999), Ps 110:4; David Kimhi (Radak), commentary on Psalm 110 (Miqraot Gedolot)

What scholars say about divrah

The standard lexica file the noun under דבר I and give a range of "cause, reason, matter, manner" (BDB 184; HALOT I:212; Gesenius 18th ed.), with DCH adding "suit" for Job 5:8 and "account" for the Qohelet idioms. TDOT, TLOT and NIDOTTE all treat it as a subordinate item under דָּבָר, a feminine abstract of the qitl-at pattern formed in parallel to the qatal-pattern noun rather than as its gendered counterpart; the absolute is unattested, so the analysis rests on the construct דִּבְרַת and the suffixed דִּבְרָתִי. A minority line of comparative philology (Kopf, VT 8 [1958]: 161-215; Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 328-331; Klein; Tawil) derives the "manner, on account of" branch instead from a homophonous root cognate with Arabic dabara "to turn the back, follow after" and dabbara "to arrange, deliberate", which accounts for the attested senses more economically than "speech" does; Syriac dabra "leading, guidance" and Akkadian dabaru "to push back, drive off" alongside dababu "to speak, plead a case" show the same double root across Semitic. Functionally the occurrences split in two. Job 5:8 alone is a full nominal use, read as a juridical plea by Clines (WBC 17:141), Pope (AB 15:43), Habel (OTL) and Hartley (NICOT), where the LXX simply paraphrases with epikalesomai. The three Qohelet passages, together with the two Biblical Aramaic occurrences in Daniel 2:30 and 4:14 [ET 4:17], show the noun grammaticalized into the compound preposition and purpose conjunction al-dibrat (di / she-), which Rosenthal treats as a productive Aramaic subordinator of the preposition plus construct plus di type, and which Schoors and Hurvitz treat as a diagnostic Aramaism in the dating of Qohelet (Fredericks dissents, arguing for a northern dialect). Psalm 110:4 stands between the two profiles: BDB, HALOT and Allen (WBC 21:81) analyze the final yod as hireq compaginis, giving "after the manner of Melchizedek", while the LXX rendering kata ten taxin, quoted six times in Hebrews, gave the phrase an institutional coloring the Hebrew probably did not carry, a polysemy Hay argues the author of Hebrews exploits deliberately (note the shift to kata ten homoioteta in Heb 7:15).

Where scholars disagree about divrah

Whether the noun derives from the root דבר I "to speak" or from a homophonous root דבר II cognate with Arabic dabara "to turn the back, follow after" and dabbara "to arrange, deliberate".

  • majorityIt belongs to the root meaning "to speak", as a feminine abstract formed beside the ordinary noun for a word or matter; the senses "cause, matter, manner" develop from the "word, thing at issue" complex.; BDB, s.v. דִּבְרָה, 184; HALOT, s.v. דִּבְרָה, I:212; G. Gerleman, "דָּבָר," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. III, 84-125
  • minorityThe "manner, on account of, in consequence of" branch is better explained by a second root meaning "to turn the back, follow after, arrange", so that the phrase means literally "upon the following of"; the Akkadian pair dababu and dabaru shows the same near-homograph.; Lothar Kopf, "Arabische Etymologien und Parallelen zum Bibelworterbuch," Vetus Testamentum 8 (1958): 161-215; James Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), 328-331; Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (Jerusalem: Carta, 1987), 113; Hayim Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew (Jersey City: KTAV, 2009), 71
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

  • BDB, s.v. דִּבְרָה, 184 (Hebrew) and 1088 (Aramaic)lexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. דִּבְרָה, I:212lexicon
  • DCH, vol. II, s.v. דִּבְרָה, 407-408lexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Handworterbuch uber das Alte Testament, 18th ed., ed. Rudolf Meyer and Herbert Donner (Berlin: Springer, 1987-2012), s.v. דִּבְרָהlexicon
  • G. Gerleman, "דָּבָר," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. III (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 84-125theological-dictionary
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, WBC 17 (Dallas: Word, 1989), 128, 141commentary
  • Marvin H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15, 3rd ed. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1973), 43commentary
  • John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 121-122commentary
  • C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes, Anchor Bible 18C (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 165-167, 279-282commentary
  • Antoon Schoors, The Preacher Sought to Find Pleasing Words: A Study of the Language of Qoheleth, Part I: Grammar, OLA 41 (Leuven: Peeters, 1992), 145-147monograph
  • Avi Hurvitz, "The Chronological Significance of Aramaisms in Biblical Hebrew," Israel Exploration Journal 18 (1968): 234-240article
  • Franz Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, 7th ed. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), sections 85-86grammar
  • Leslie C. Allen, Psalms 101-150, WBC 21, rev. ed. (Nashville: Nelson, 2002), 81commentary
  • Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60-150: A Continental Commentary, trans. H. C. Oswald (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), on Ps 110commentary
  • James Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), 328-331monograph
  • Lothar Kopf, "Arabische Etymologien und Parallelen zum Bibelworterbuch," Vetus Testamentum 8 (1958): 161-215article
  • David M. Hay, Glory at the Right Hand: Psalm 110 in Early Christianity, SBLMS 18 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973), 20-26, 155-156monograph
  • Hayim Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew (Jersey City: KTAV, 2009), 71lexicon

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

All attested forms of דִּבְרָה

f s construct

דִּבְרַת, דִּבְרָתִי

Ecc 3:18, Ecc 7:14, Ecc 8:2, Psa 110:4

f s construct

דִּבְרָתִי

Job 5:8