StrongerBible

din

דִּין

HebrewH1777“judge, vindicate, ...”

Appears 24 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 6:3Gen 15:14Gen 30:6Gen 49:16Deu 32:361Sa 2:102Sa 19:9(10)Job 36:31Psa 7:8(9)Psa 9:8(9)Psa 50:4Psa 54:1(3)Psa 72:2Psa 96:10Psa 110:6Psa 135:14Pro 31:9Ecc 6:10Isa 3:13Jer 5:28Jer 21:12Jer 22:16Jer 30:13Zec 3:7
Names & words formed with this
Word studyResearch-gradedeenverb

What din means

1

to take up a cause and rule on it: to render and carry out a verdict, most often by securing justice for the wronged

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

At its heart this is a courtroom word: it names the decisive act of settling a case and seeing the ruling carried out. But unlike the broad everyday word for judging and governing, it leans in one direction. Far more often than not, the one whose cause is taken up is the victim, not the criminal, so the verb usually means to vindicate, to win a verdict for, to champion the cause of someone who has no other defender. The poor, the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner are its recurring beneficiaries.

The same single act has two faces, and which one shows depends on who is named. When the wronged party is in view, the ruling is rescue and the word means to vindicate. When the wrongdoer is in view, that same ruling falls as a sentence and the word means to condemn or punish. The Bible uses it the punishing way only a handful of times; the great majority of its uses are about deliverance, running roughly four to one in favor of rescue over sentence.

From that judicial core the word stretches in two further directions that the senses below lay out. Because a ruler who settles cases is also a ruler who leads, it can shade into governing or administering. And because a legal quarrel has two sides in contest, it can also mean to be at strife with someone, and, in its latest use, to go to law, to press a lawsuit in court. That litigation shade comes to the front only in the latest, Aramaic-flavored Hebrew.

This is the rarer, more elevated, and more strictly legal partner of the common word for judging. It clusters in poetry, the Song of Moses, the Psalms, the prophets, and royal wisdom, and it carries an inherited picture, old across the ancient world, of the king or God taking the side of the helpless. The same word later grew into the standard vocabulary for the courtroom, and it never lost the memory of why the court was meant to convene in the first place: to rule for the one who could not defend himself.

Nuances

1ato vindicate, to rule in favor of and rescue the wronged, to champion the cause of the helpless
Gen 30:6Deu 32:36Psa 7:8(9)Psa 9:8(9)Psa 54:1(3)Psa 72:2Psa 96:10Psa 135:14Pro 31:9Jer 5:28Jer 21:12Jer 22:16
1bto pass and carry out a verdict against the guilty: to condemn, sentence, punish
Gen 15:14Psa 50:4Psa 110:6
1cto govern, rule, or administer as the one who settles a people's affairs
Gen 49:161Sa 2:10Job 36:31Zec 3:7
1dto be locked in strife: to quarrel, to contend with one another over a grievance
2Sa 19:9(10)
1eto go to law: to bring a lawsuit and press a contest in court against a stronger opponent
Ecc 6:10
2

to remain, abide: a contested reading found only at Genesis 6:3, and probably a different word from the verb to judge above

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintyContested

In one verse, Genesis 6:3, the word appears in a form that looks like the verb for judging but does not behave like it, and the meaning that fits the sentence best is not "judge" or "contend" but "remain, abide." On this reading God says that his life-giving breath will not remain in mortal flesh forever, and the verse goes on to set human life under a limit of a hundred and twenty years.

This is how the ancient translations took it and how most scholars read it today: as a separate, look-alike word that only happens to share the spelling of the verb for judging. Several early translations point the same way, toward "remain" or "dwell" rather than "judge": the old Greek and Latin versions, an independent Hebrew copy (the Samaritan text) that actually reads "dwell," the old Syriac, and the Aramaic paraphrase that renders it "endure." That convergence, together with the form itself being the wrong shape for the judging verb, is what has tipped most modern scholars toward this reading. The older, traditional reading kept it as that verb and rendered the line "my spirit shall not always strive (or contend) with man," taking the hundred and twenty years as a stretch of patience before the Flood rather than a cap on the human lifespan. The choice between the two has real weight, because it decides what God's spirit means here (the breath of life he gave, or a moral presence pulling against human wickedness) and what the time limit measures. The line that follows, that man is also flesh, sits more easily with the lifespan reading, where flesh is simply mortal stuff that cannot hold the divine breath forever.

These are only the two live readings. Because the form is so unusual, scholars have floated several others (that it means to shield, to be brought low, or to rule), and a few would even change the spelling slightly to a plain verb for dwelling. None of these has won wide agreement, and even the leading "remain" reading is held more as the best available option than as a settled certainty: one careful commentator admits openly that scholars follow the ancient versions here out of preference, not proof. Because the standard numbering files this one verse under the same entry as "to judge," you will find it here, but it is very likely a different word, and that is the safest way to treat it. It makes a neat pair with the lawsuit verse in Ecclesiastes above: in both places the plain English "judge" is the wrong reading, for opposite reasons, one because the word is probably not this verb at all, the other because it is this verb in its narrow courtroom sense of suing rather than sentencing.

Gen 6:3

What scholars say about din

The standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH) and the TDOT article by Hamp and Botterweck agree that this verb names the decisive act of rendering and executing a verdict, with a marked bias toward vindicating the wronged rather than condemning the wicked. It is the rarer, more strictly forensic counterpart of the common verb for judging and governing (šāpaṭ), concentrated in poetry, the Song of Moses, the Psalms, the prophets, and royal wisdom. Gerhard Liedke (TLOT) argues that šāpaṭ restores disturbed community order in the broadest sense while dîn is narrowly the verdict itself; Bovati, Niehr, and Mafico reinforce the contrast. The cognate-accusative phrase pairing this verb with its noun functions as a fixed idiom for championing a legal cause (Lundbom), and its closest ancient twin is the Ugaritic Aqhat formula in which King Danel at the gate judges the cause of the widow and adjudicates the case of the orphan, the same word-pair (dn / ṯpṭ) that stands behind dîn / šāpaṭ in Psalm 72:2, Isaiah 3:13, and Jeremiah 5:28; 22:16. Of roughly two dozen occurrences, fewer than five carry clearly condemnatory force; the rest vindicate the innocent, with the recurring poor-orphan-widow formula, or denote governance, the bias toward rescue running about four to one. The root is securely Proto-Semitic, with cognates across the Semitic family (Akkadian dânu/dīnu/dayyānu, Ugaritic dn, and a dense Aramaic tradition), and through Aramaic it furnishes the later vocabulary for court and final judgment, including the courtroom scene of Daniel 7 and the rabbinic bêt dîn and yôm ha-dîn. Whether the Hebrew root is one polysemous lexeme or two early-merged sub-roots (one "judge/litigate," one "rule/govern") is a question BDB left open and TWOT still flags, though HALOT, DCH, and TDOT prefer a unitary analysis.

Two crux verses sit at the philological edges of the root, and in both the ordinary English "judge" is the wrong gloss, for opposite reasons. In Genesis 6:3 the hapax form יָדוֹן is genuinely contested, and the literature carries at least six rival derivations; the Masoretes pointed it as if from a hollow root דּוּן, but no such verb is otherwise clearly attested and the expected imperfect of דִּין would be יָדִין. BDB files it under דִּין while itself disowning the AV "strive" gloss; HALOT, DCH, and Gesenius (18th ed.) instead posit a separate near-homophonic root דּוּן II "remain," the case for which C. Rabin developed ("Etymological Miscellanea," Scripta Hierosolymitana 8 [1961]: 386-400, esp. 388-89), connecting it also to Genesis 30:6. The ancient versions converge on "abide/remain": LXX καταμένω, with the demonstrative τούτοις narrowing the threat to the Flood generation; Vulgate permanebit; the Samaritan Pentateuch's independent Hebrew ידור "dwell"; the Peshitta; and Targum Onkelos's interpretive יִתְקַיֵּם "endure." Only Symmachus and Aquila revert to a דִּין-based κρινεῖ. A live question is whether that versional convergence preserves a genuine second root or merely reflects contextual paraphrase, possibly of a source text that itself read יָדוּר "dwell". Modern commentators (Skinner, Westermann, Wenham, Hamilton, Sarna, Arnold, Alter) lean to "remain" and read the 120 years as a lifespan cap, the clause בְּשַׁגַּם הוּא בָשָׂר ("inasmuch as he is also flesh") fitting the mortal-substrate reading; Mathews defends "contend/strive" and a pre-Flood probation, in line with the 1 Peter 3:20 reception. Among further minority proposals, Speiser read a "shield/surrogate" sense from Akkadian dinānu/andunānu ("my spirit shall not shield man forever") and dismissed Cassuto's rival Akkadian etymology, Scharbert an Arabic "be humbled" (followed by the Jerusalem Bible), von Rad and Gunkel a "rule/prevail" sense, Cassuto a postulated Akkadian "be fixed, remain," and Skinner and others note an emendation to יָדוּר or יָלִין "dwell, lodge"; none commanded assent, and Hamilton candidly concedes the verdict for "remain" is one of preference, not proof. Ecclesiastes 6:10 is the opposite case: the form לָדִין is morphologically transparent (the infinitive of דִּין), but the sense is the late, forensic, Aramaic-colored "to litigate, contend at law" rather than "to render verdict." The construction with עִם ("contend with" a counterparty, as against the direct object or ל of the older "judge" sense), the Aramaism תַּקִּיף for the stronger party, the deliberate choice of this verb over the older רִיב (which Qoheleth's late Hebrew elsewhere replaces with מִשְׁפָּט for general judgment), and the versions (LXX κριθῆναι μετά, standard for going to law with someone; Vulgate in iudicio contendere; the Targum's לְמֵיקַם בְּדִינָא) all fix this reading; the lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH, Gesenius 18) concur. The stronger party is near-universally taken to be God (Seow, Fox, Longman, Murphy, Crenshaw, Krüger, Lohfink, Whybray, Gordis, Schoors, Barton, Weeks, and others; the dissents are minor, Rashi reading the Angel of Death and the UBS Handbook leaving it open), gathering the Joban lawsuit-against-God motif (Job 9:3; 40:2; Isaiah 45:9; Jeremiah 12:1) into a verse that declares the suit futile because the event has already been "named." Scholars divide on what that naming means: a decree fixed in advance (Seow), the settled identity or essence of a thing (Lohfink), or simply the fixity of the future (Fox). The wordplay on naming echoes Genesis 1-2, and the ambiguity of אָדָם (humanity generally or Adam specifically) plays into it. The opening clause nearly repeats Ecclesiastes 3:15 and the unit prepares the question of 7:13; Rudman makes the verse a keystone of a determinist reading of the book, while others (Whybray, Lohfink, Krüger, Weeks) read its determinism as moderated by acceptance and Fox as absurdism rather than determinism proper.

Where scholars disagree about din

Whether this is one word with a wide range of meaning or two early-merged roots, one meaning judge or litigate and one meaning rule or govern.

  • majorityOne ancient word whose senses (vindicate, judge, govern, contend) are contextual extensions of a single judicial core, not separate words.; Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm, HALOT, s.v. דִּין; Clines (ed.), DCH, s.v. דִּין; Hamp and Botterweck, TDOT 3:187-94
  • minorityThe question of a possible second governing root is left genuinely open and flagged for caution.; Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon, s.v. דִּין; Culver, TWOT §426

Whether the hapax form יָדוֹן in Genesis 6:3 belongs to this root דִּין at all, and what it means. The expected imperfect of דִּין would be יָדִין, not יָדוֹן, and the ancient versions support a different sense. The literature carries at least six rival derivations.

  • majorityThe form derives from a separate near-homophonic root דּוּן II "to remain, abide," not from דִּין; God's life-breath will not remain in mortal flesh, and the 120 years caps the human lifespan. Supported by the convergence of the Septuagint (καταμένω), Vulgate (permanebit), the Samaritan Pentateuch (independent Hebrew ידור "dwell"), the Peshitta, and Targum Onkelos (יִתְקַיֵּם "endure"), and now listed by HALOT, DCH, and Gesenius (18th ed.); held as the best available reading rather than a proven one, Hamilton conceding it is preference, not proof.; Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm, HALOT, s.v. דּוּן II; Rabin, "Etymological Miscellanea," Scripta Hierosolymitana 8 (1961): 386-400; Westermann, Genesis 1-11 (1984), 1:374-76; Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (WBC 1, 1987), 141-42, 146; Hamilton, The Book of Genesis 1-17 (NICOT, 1990), 265-67; Sarna, Genesis (JPS, 1989), 46-47
  • minorityThe form belongs to דִּין/דּוּן in the sense "contend, strive," so the verse promises a limited period of divine forbearance, the 120 years counting down to the Flood. Carried by the rabbinic tradition and the AV/NIV translation lineage, and aligned with the reception in 1 Peter 3:20; Symmachus and Aquila already revert to a דִּין-based κρινεῖ "shall judge."; Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26 (NAC, 1996), 334-37; Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon, s.v. דִּין
  • minorityOther derivations of the hapax that survive in the literature without commanding assent: a "shield, act as surrogate" sense from Akkadian (Speiser, "my spirit shall not shield man forever"); "be humbled, brought low" from Arabic (Scharbert, followed by the Jerusalem Bible); "rule, prevail" (von Rad and Gunkel); a postulated Akkadian "be fixed, remain" (Cassuto); and an emendation of the text to a plain verb for dwelling (יָדוּר or יָלִין).; Speiser, "YDWN, Genesis 6:3," Journal of Biblical Literature 75 (1956): 126-29; Scharbert, "Traditions- und Redaktionsgeschichte von Gen 6,1-4," Biblische Zeitschrift 11 (1967): 66-78; von Rad, Genesis (OTL, 1961), 114; Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis I: From Adam to Noah (Magnes, 1961), 295-96
In-depth research

These are research papers, so they may be hard to read without scholarly background. They are useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. דִּיןlexicon
  • Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), s.v. דִּין and דּוּן IIlexicon
  • Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH), s.v. דִּיןlexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18th ed. (eds. Meyer, Donner, Rüterswörden, 1987-2010), s.v. דִּיןlexicon
  • Hamp and Botterweck, "דִּין dîn," Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) 3:187-94theological-dictionary
  • Liedke, "דִּין dîn" and "שׁפט špṭ," Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (TLOT) 1:335-38, 3:1392-99theological-dictionary
  • Culver, "דִּין," Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT) §426theological-dictionary
  • Liedke, Gestalt und Bezeichnung alttestamentlicher Rechtssätze (WMANT 39, 1971)monograph
  • Bovati, Re-Establishing Justice (JSOTSup 105, 1994)monograph
  • Niehr, Herrschen und Richten (FzB 54, 1986)monograph
  • Lundbom, Jeremiah 21-36 (Anchor Yale Bible, 2004)commentary
  • Waltke, The Book of Proverbs 15-31 (NICOT, 2005), 506-8commentary
  • Fox, Proverbs 10-31 (Anchor Yale Bible, 2009), 887-88commentary
  • Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary, 1996), 311commentary
  • Clines, Job 21-37 (Word Biblical Commentary 18A, 2006), 833, 871-72commentary
  • Mays, Psalms (Interpretation, 1994)commentary
  • Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia, 1993)commentary
  • Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (1995), 25-44monograph
  • Day, "The Daniel of Ugarit and Ezekiel and the Hero of the Book of Daniel," Vetus Testamentum 30 (1980): 174-84article
  • Rabin, "Etymological Miscellanea," Scripta Hierosolymitana 8 (1961): 386-400article
  • Speiser, "YDWN, Genesis 6:3," Journal of Biblical Literature 75 (1956): 126-29article
  • Scharbert, "Traditions- und Redaktionsgeschichte von Gen 6,1-4," Biblische Zeitschrift 11 (1967): 66-78article
  • Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis I: From Adam to Noah (Magnes, 1961), 295-96commentary
  • von Rad, Genesis (Old Testament Library, Westminster, 1961), 114commentary
  • Westermann, Genesis 1-11 (Continental Commentary, 1984), 1:374-76commentary
  • Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (Word Biblical Commentary 1, 1987), 141-42, 146commentary
  • Hamilton, The Book of Genesis 1-17 (NICOT, 1990), 265-67commentary
  • Sarna, Genesis (JPS Torah Commentary, 1989), 46-47commentary
  • Skinner, Genesis (ICC, 2nd ed. 1930), 143-44commentary
  • Arnold, Genesis (New Cambridge Bible Commentary, 2009), 90-92commentary
  • Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26 (New American Commentary, 1996), 334-37commentary
  • Seow, Ecclesiastes (Anchor Bible 18C, 1997), 233-35commentary
  • Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up (Eerdmans, 1999), 247-50commentary
  • Longman, The Book of Ecclesiastes (NICOT, 1998), 175-78commentary
  • Murphy, Ecclesiastes (Word Biblical Commentary 23A, 1992), 56-58commentary
  • Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes (Old Testament Library, 1987), 130-33commentary
  • Krüger, Qoheleth (Hermeneia, 2004), 130-34commentary
  • Gordis, Koheleth: The Man and His World, 3rd ed. (Schocken, 1968)commentary
  • Rudman, Determinism in the Book of Ecclesiastes (JSOTSup 316, 2001), 144-72monograph
  • Gunkel, Genesis (HKAT, 3rd ed. 1910), 58-59commentary
  • Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (Norton, 2019), Genesis 6:3commentary
  • Barton, Ecclesiastes (ICC, 1908), 137-40commentary
  • Whybray, Ecclesiastes (New Century Bible Commentary, 1989)commentary
  • Lohfink, Qoheleth (Continental Commentary, 2003)commentary
  • Weeks, Ecclesiastes and Scepticism (LHBOTS 541, 2012)monograph
  • Schoors, Ecclesiastes (Historical Commentary on the Old Testament, 2013)commentary

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

All attested forms of דִּין

qal imperfect 3ms

יָדִין, יָדוֹן

Gen 49:16, Deu 32:36, 1Sa 2:10, Job 36:31, Psa 7:8, Psa 9:8, Psa 72:2, Psa 96:10

qal infinitive-construct construct

דִין

Psa 50:4, Ecc 6:10, Isa 3:13

qal imperfect 2ms

תְדִינֵ, תָּדִין

Psa 54:1, Zec 3:7

qal participle m s absolute

דָּן

Gen 15:14, Jer 30:13

qal perfect 3ms

דָּן, דָּנַ

Jer 22:16, Gen 30:6

niphal participle m s absolute

נָדוֹן

2Sa 19:9

qal imperative 2mp

דִּינוּ

Jer 21:12

qal imperative 2ms

דִין

Pro 31:9

qal perfect 3cp

דָנוּ

Jer 5:28