StrongerBible

daḥavah

דַּחֲוָה

AramaicH1761“diversions, entertainment, ...”

Appears 1 time · tap a cell to see the verses

Dan 6:18(19)
Word studyResearch-gradedakh-uh-VAHnoun

What daḥavah means

the evening comforts a king would have had carried in to him: the exact sense is lost, and food, music, entertainment, and the women of the court have all been proposed

TranslatabilityUntranslatableCertaintyObscure

This word appears once in the whole Bible, in Daniel 6:18, and nowhere else in Aramaic. King Darius has just been trapped by his own law into sealing Daniel in the pit of lions. The narrator then follows the king home: he went to his palace, he spent the night fasting, "dakhawan" were not brought in before him, and his sleep fled from him. Three things in that sentence are plain, that he went home, that he did not eat, and that he did not sleep. The one unclear thing is what it was that nobody carried in to him.

Almost every scholar ties the word to a root meaning to push or thrust aside (דָּחָה), but pushing does not point to any particular object, so every proposal has to take a further step of guesswork. The suggestions on offer:

  • food, or a table set with food, which is how the earliest Greek, Syriac, and Latin translators took it;
  • musical instruments or music, on the guess that pushing could stretch as far as striking a string;
  • dancing girls called in to entertain the king;
  • the women of the king's household, resting on a specialized use of the same root in Arabic;
  • nothing in particular, only whatever the king normally had for his own comfort and distraction.

The agreement of those oldest translations on "food" looks like strong evidence until you notice that the verse has already said the king fasted. "No food was brought to him" then simply says the same thing twice. That is why many scholars suspect the ancient translators did not know the word either and guessed from the sentence around it, which would mean its meaning was lost more than two thousand years ago. Aramaic also had a perfectly ordinary word for food (מָזוֹן), and this is not it.

The story does not depend on solving any of this. Every proposal makes the same point about Darius: he went home and went without whatever normally consoled him, and he lay awake all night over a man he had condemned and could not save. When English versions print "no diversions" or "no entertainment," they are deliberately choosing a vague word, and that vagueness is the honest reading.

Dan 6:18(19)

What scholars say about daḥavah

דַּחֲוָה (attested only in the plural דַּחֲוָן) is a hapax legomenon in Biblical Aramaic, occurring solely in Daniel 6:19 in the Masoretic numbering (English 6:18), in the clause וְדַחֲוָן לָא הַנְעֵל קָדָמוֹהִי, and it has no secure attestation in any other Aramaic corpus. The NET Bible's note states the position bluntly, that the meaning of the word is a crux interpretum and that the suggestions (music, dancing girls, concubines, table, food) are all uncertain, citing HALOT 1849 to 1850 and Vogt as revised and translated by Fitzmyer, page 37; both of those lexica catalogue the proposals without endorsing one. BDB, page 1087, prints the headword in brackets by its convention for a doubtful form, calls the noun dubious, files it under the root דחה to thrust, and lists the instrument of music proposal (Ibn Ezra, followed by the Authorized and Revised Versions), the dancing girls proposal (Saadia Gaon, in the Revised Version margin), and the concubines proposal (Bertholet, from the obscene sense of the Arabic), adding that for the last of these one should probably read לְחֵנָן with Marti, Prince, and Driver. Gesenius, in the Tregelles translation, is the clearest older statement of the concubines position, glossing the word as concubine from דְּחָה and comparing the Arabic, while dismissing the food of Theodotion and the Syriac as an arbitrary contextual guess. S. R. Driver, in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, assembles the versional and medieval evidence (Theodotion ἐδέσματα, the Peshitta, and Jerome's cibi rendering food; Rashi a table; Ibn Ezra stringed instruments; Saadia dancing girls; many moderns concubines), judges Ibn Ezra's derivation improbable because it supposes to thrust used in the sense of to strike, warns that it is very doubtful whether it is legitimate to explain an Aramaic word from a sense peculiar to Arabic and there only secondary and derived, and grants that a very small corruption of דחון for לחנן would yield the ordinary Aramaic word for concubines, a conjecture with no manuscript support. Montgomery's ICC commentary treats the verse philologically and notes that the convergence of Theodotion, the Peshitta, and the Vulgate on food is suspect precisely because it duplicates טְוָת, the fasting already stated in the same verse, which suggests the translators lacked lexical knowledge of the term and inferred from context; on that reading the sense was already lost by the turn of the era, and the medieval Jewish glosses (Rashi a table, Ibn Ezra instruments, Saadia dancing girls) represent later independent attempts to fill the same gap. Collins, in the Hermeneia commentary, likewise registers the uncertainty and the range of proposals. Péter-Contesse and Ellington, in the UBS Handbook on Daniel (1994), observe that the word is found nowhere else in Aramaic literature known to the present and conclude that a more general word for diversion or entertainment is best, the course taken by Luther, the RSV and ESV, the NASB and NIV, and the NET. No Iranian derivation has been proposed despite the Persian court setting: the word is absent from Tavernier's Iranica in the Achaemenid Period (2007), the Iranian terms for royal women are phonologically unsuitable, and the concubines proposal rests on Arabic rather than Persian. No dedicated journal treatment of the word appears to exist in the major venues; it is handled only inside lexica and commentaries on Daniel, whose common verdict is that the referent is unrecoverable while the sense of the clause as a whole is not in doubt.

Where scholars disagree about daḥavah

What דַּחֲוָן in Daniel 6:19 (English 6:18) actually denotes. The noun is a hapax with no secure cognate attestation, so the proposals range across food, furniture, music, dancers, and the women of the court, and the standard lexica endorse none of them.

  • majorityThe specific referent is unrecoverable, so the responsible course is a deliberately general rendering along the lines of diversions or entertainment. The critical lexica catalogue the competing glosses without endorsing one, BDB marks the noun dubious, and the translation handbooks note that the word is unattested elsewhere in Aramaic; the general sense of the clause, that the king denied himself his customary evening pleasures, is secure even though the lexical detail is not.; BDB, s.v. דַּחֲוָה (p. 1087), "dubious"; HALOT, Aramaic volume, s.v. דַּחֲוָה, pp. 1849-1850; E. Vogt, rev. and trans. J. A. Fitzmyer, A Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic (2011), p. 37; R. Péter-Contesse and J. Ellington, A Handbook on Daniel (UBS Helps for Translators, 1994), on Daniel 6:18; S. R. Driver, The Book of Daniel (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges), on Daniel 6:19
  • contestedFood, or a table set with food, so that the clause amplifies the fasting already stated in the verse. This is the rendering of the Old Greek, Theodotion, the Peshitta, and the Vulgate, and of Rashi in the variant form of a table, and it is followed by the NRSV. The standing objection is that it makes the clause a redundant restatement, so the versional agreement is very likely a shared contextual guess rather than independent lexical knowledge.; Theodotion, Daniel 6:18 (ἐδέσματα); Peshitta, Daniel 6:18; Vulgate, Daniel 6:18 (cibique non sunt allati coram eo); Rashi, on Daniel 6:19 (a table set before the king)
  • minorityMusical instruments, or music generally, derived by taking the root for thrusting in the sense of striking a string. This is the traditional Jewish exegesis of Ibn Ezra, preserved by Calvin, the Authorized Version, and the NKJV. Driver judged the semantic step improbable, and no independent evidence supports the shift from thrusting to striking.; Ibn Ezra, on Daniel 6:19 (stringed instruments)
  • minorityDancing girls summoned as court entertainment, a contextual conjecture about what a Persian king would have called for. It is recorded for Saadia Gaon in the tenth century, noted in the Revised Version margin, and adopted in Moffatt's translation.; Saadia Gaon, on Daniel 6:19 (dancing girls)
  • minorityConcubines, reached by either of two routes: an Arabic cognate in which the root carries the sense of spreading out and, in a specialized use, of lying with a woman; or a conjectural emendation of דחון to לְחֵנָן, the ordinary Aramaic word for concubines that occurs three times in Daniel 5. The New Jerusalem Bible and the New English Bible follow it. Driver objected that explaining an Aramaic word from a sense peculiar to Arabic, and there only secondary and derived, is very doubtful, and the emendation has no manuscript support, which makes this the weakest of the major options.; W. Gesenius (trans. S. P. Tregelles), Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, s.v. דַּחֲוָה; A. Bertholet, Daniel und die griechische Gefahr, and his commentary on Daniel; K. Marti, Das Buch Daniel (Kurzer Hand-Commentar zum Alten Testament), on Daniel 6:19 (reading לְחֵנָן); J. D. Prince, cited in BDB p. 1087 for the reading לְחֵנָן
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. דַּחֲוָה (p. 1087), under the root דחהlexicon
  • HALOT, Aramaic volume (2000), s.v. דַּחֲוָה, pp. 1849-1850lexicon
  • E. Vogt, Lexicon Linguae Aramaicae Veteris Testamenti, rev. and trans. J. A. Fitzmyer as A Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 2011), p. 37lexicon
  • W. Gesenius (trans. S. P. Tregelles), Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, s.v. דַּחֲוָהlexicon
  • S. R. Driver, The Book of Daniel (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges), on Daniel 6:19 (Eng. 6:18)commentary
  • J. A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel (ICC; Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1927), on Daniel 6:19commentary
  • J. J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), on Daniel 6:18commentary
  • R. Péter-Contesse and J. Ellington, A Handbook on Daniel (UBS Helps for Translators; New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), on Daniel 6:18commentary
  • J. Tavernier, Iranica in the Achaemenid Period (ca. 550-330 B.C.): Lexicon of Old Iranian Proper Names and Loanwords, Attested in Non-Iranian Texts (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 158; Leuven: Peeters, 2007)monograph
  • Theodotion, Daniel 6:18 (ἐδέσματα)ancient-version
  • Peshitta, Daniel 6:18ancient-version
  • Vulgate, Daniel 6:18 (dormivit incoenatus; cibique non sunt allati coram eo)ancient-version

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

All attested forms of דַּחֲוָה

f p absolute

דַחֲוָן

Dan 6:18