StrongerBible

de'ah

דֵּעָה

HebrewH1844“knowledge”

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

1Sa 2:3Job 36:4Psa 73:11Isa 11:9Isa 28:9Jer 3:15
Word studydeh-AHnoun

What de'ah means

knowledge at its highest reach: the complete knowing that belongs to God, and the recognition of God that people are given and taught

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Hebrew has a common, all-purpose word for knowledge (דַּעַת), which stretches from a craftsman's skill to plain good sense to knowing God. This word is its rare relative, appearing only six times, and it keeps to weightier ground. Every one of those six places has to do with God: what God himself knows, what a people comes to know of him, or the teaching that hands that knowing on.

Twice the word is plural, once of God ("a God of knowledge," 1 Samuel 2:3) and once in Elihu's claim that someone "perfect in knowledge" is present (Job 36:4). The plural is not counting separate items of knowledge. In Hebrew poetry a plural like this heightens the idea, so it means knowledge in its fullness, the kind that leaves nothing out and misses nothing.

The most famous verse is Isaiah 11:9, where the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the LORD as the sea is of water. That is not a promise of more religious information. It pictures a whole world that finally recognizes God for who he is and lives accordingly, which is why Jeremiah 3:15 can speak of shepherds feeding a people with this knowledge as their basic job.

A close partner noun (דֵּעַ) turns up only in Elihu's speeches in Job, and he uses the two almost side by side, saying "perfect in knowledge" with one word in Job 36:4 and with the other, of God, in Job 37:16. That partner word also stretches to cover the opinion a speaker is putting forward, which this one never does.

Nuances

1aknowledge that is complete and flawless: the whole knowing Scripture credits to God
1Sa 2:3Job 36:4Psa 73:11
1bknowing the LORD: the recognition of God that a people comes to have
Isa 11:9
1cknowledge as something taught: the understanding of God a teacher or leader hands on to others
Isa 28:9Jer 3:15

What scholars say about de'ah

The standard lexicons treat דֵּעָה as a feminine noun from the root ידע, standing alongside the masculine דֵּעַ (H1843) and the far more frequent דַּעַת (H1847); BDB and HALOT list it separately from both, while noting the shared derivation. Its six occurrences are consistently theological in orientation, which is why the STEPBible lexicon glosses it "knowledge (of God)." The plural דֵּעוֹת in 1 Samuel 2:3 and Job 36:4 is generally analyzed as a plural of amplification or intensity rather than a numerical plural (GKC 124e), giving "a God of all knowledge" and "complete in knowledge"; the well-known textual issue in 1 Samuel 2:3 concerns the Kethiv/Qere of ולא/ולו in the following clause, not the noun. In Isaiah 11:9 the phrase דֵּעָה אֶת־יְהוָה is standardly taken as an objective genitive, knowledge whose object is Yahweh, and is compared with the parallel formulation in Habakkuk 2:14; Wildberger reads it as universal acknowledgment of Yahweh's rule rather than the transfer of doctrinal content. Jeremiah 3:15 assigns the communication of this knowledge to the shepherds God gives, and Isaiah 28:9 places the noun in the mouths of the prophet's mockers. The one genuinely contested passage is Job 36:4, where interpreters divide over whether תְּמִים דֵּעוֹת refers to Elihu himself, as most modern commentators including Clines and Hartley take it, or to God, the reading favored by parts of the older interpretive tradition and supported by the near-identical phrase applied to God in Job 37:16.

Sources

  • Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1906), 395, s.v. דֵּעָהlexicon
  • Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Brill, 1994), s.v. דֵּעָהlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 2 (Sheffield Academic, 1995), s.v. דֵּעָהlexicon
  • Bergman, Botterweck, and Ottosson, "יָדַע," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 5 (Eerdmans, 1986), 448-81theological-dictionary
  • Terence E. Fretheim, "ידע," in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, vol. 2 (Zondervan, 1997), 409-14theological-dictionary
  • Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Kautzsch, trans. A. E. Cowley, 2nd ed. (Clarendon, 1910), 124egrammar
  • Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1-12, Continental Commentaries (Fortress, 1991), 480-82commentary
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 21-37, Word Biblical Commentary 18A (Nelson, 2006), 858-59commentary
  • John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1988), 464-65commentary
  • P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel, Anchor Bible 8 (Doubleday, 1980), 69-72commentary

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

All attested forms of דֵּעָה

f s absolute

דֵּעָה

Psa 73:11, Isa 11:9, Isa 28:9, Jer 3:15

f p absolute

דֵּעוֹת

1Sa 2:3, Job 36:4