StrongerBible

hod

הוֹד

HebrewH1935“majesty, honor, ...”

Appears 24 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Num 27:201Ch 16:271Ch 29:111Ch 29:25Job 37:22Job 39:20Job 40:10Psa 8:1(2)Psa 21:5(6)Psa 45:3(4)Psa 96:6Psa 104:1Psa 111:3Psa 145:5Psa 148:13Pro 5:9Isa 30:30Jer 22:18Dan 10:8Dan 11:21Hos 14:6(7)Hab 3:3Zec 6:13Zec 10:3
Root family
Names & words formed with this
Word studyResearch-gradehode (rhymes with road)noun

What hod means

1

splendor, majesty: the visible, awe-inspiring radiance that marks a legitimate sovereign

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This word names the splendor you can actually see on a sovereign, the shining, awe-commanding aura that announces a king as king and God as God. It is almost always poetic, and it belongs, first and above all, to God. When it lands on a human ruler it is on loan: the king wears a splendor that is really God's, handed down to him.

Because it is something worn and given, this word keeps company with verbs of clothing and bestowing, and it turns up again and again at moments of transfer. Moses places a portion of his own dignity on Joshua. God gives royal splendor to Solomon. God clothes the psalmists' king in it. God will set it on the promised coming ruler. And it is pointedly withheld from a contemptible king who seizes a throne he was never granted. Its most frequent partner is a near-twin word for outward glory, and the two are so often paired that together they work almost as a single phrase for regal magnificence.

The splendor can even be located in something heard rather than seen: the thunder of God's voice in judgment, or the terrifying snort of a war-horse charging into battle. Scholars debate whether this points back to an older sense tied to sound, but in the Bible itself the word still means visible majesty, here simply attached to an awesome noise.

Nuances

1athe visible splendor of God himself, the radiance that fills his throne room and covers the heavens
1Ch 16:271Ch 29:11Job 37:22Job 40:10Psa 8:1(2)Psa 96:6Psa 104:1Psa 111:3Psa 145:5Psa 148:13Isa 30:30Hab 3:3
1broyal majesty: the splendor of legitimate kingship, laid on a human ruler as a gift from God
Num 27:201Ch 29:25Psa 21:5(6)Psa 45:3(4)Jer 22:18Dan 11:21Zec 6:13
1cthe majestic, awe-inspiring force of a war-horse
Job 39:20Zec 10:3
2

vigor, healthy bloom: the visible freshness and strength of a living body

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

In two later texts the word turns inward, from the splendor of a throne to the bloom of a living body. It is the youthful vigor a young man can squander, and the healthy glow that drains from a visionary's face when he is overwhelmed, leaving him with no strength left.

This is a modest, later stretch of the same idea rather than a separate word: the visible radiance that once marked a sovereign now marks a body that is still full of life. English has no single tidy word for it, so translators reach for vigor, bloom, freshness, or comeliness.

Nuances

2athe bodily vigor and freshness of health in a living person
Pro 5:9Dan 10:8
2bthe thriving, healthy beauty of a growing plant, extended just once to a restored people pictured as a flourishing olive tree
Hos 14:6(7)

What scholars say about hod

The standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH, Gesenius18) and the theological dictionaries (TDOT, TWOT, NIDOTTE, TLOT) converge on a core sense of splendor, majesty, dignity, and, in later texts, vigor, chiefly in poetry. Warmuth (TDOT) draws the key distinction from the near-synonym kavod: where kavod (root sense weight) denotes the substantive heaviness of glory, hod is more specifically the visible radiance that is displayed, the seen face of glory. It stands alongside hadar (visible ornamentation, its frequent doublet), tiferet (ornamental beauty), gaon (loftiness shading into pride), and oz (strength). The etymology is contested. Gesenius proposed an Arabic cognate hawwada with auditory associations, and Delitzsch used this to explain the passages where majesty attaches to a sound (Isaiah 30:30; Job 39:20); Coppes (TWOT) counters that no cognate is attested and the word is uniquely Hebrew; Warmuth and Wakely (NIDOTTE) treat the etymology as undecided and reject any link to Ugaritic hd, which is only the divine name. HALOT notes the Akkadian semantic neighborhood of melammu, the terrifying divine radiance. The fixed pair hod wehadar is a stereotyped doublet in the doxologies (e.g. Psalm 96:6; 104:1; 111:3; Job 40:10) and functions as a hendiadys for regal or divine splendor, though Avishur notes it lacks an exact Ugaritic counterpart. Job 40:10 sarcastically dares Job to don this divine regalia. The construct phrase hod malkut (majesty of kingship) appears only at 1 Chronicles 29:25 (given to Solomon) and Daniel 11:21 (withheld from Antiochus), where Collins and Goldingay read a deliberate inversion of the Solomon paradigm. Proverbs 5:9 and Daniel 10:8 evidence a modest diachronic extension toward somatic vigor or healthy bloom; Collins, Goldingay, and Hartman and Di Lella read Daniel 10:8 as radiant appearance or vitality draining from the seer's body.

Where scholars disagree about hod

Whether הוֹד originally named an audible phenomenon (a resounding voice or sound) or a visible radiance, and whether the word has any related word in a neighboring Semitic language.

  • majorityThe word means visible majesty. It can be predicated of something heard, such as the sound of God's voice (Isaiah 30:30) or a war-horse's snort (Job 39:20), without itself denoting sound. This is the reading of the modern commentary tradition.; D. J. A. Clines, Job 38-42, WBC 18B (Nashville: Nelson, 2011), 1074; J. Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, AB 19 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 419-422; G. Warmuth, TDOT 3:352-356
  • minorityThe word's oldest sense was auditory, a solemn resonant sound, on the strength of a proposed Arabic verb meaning to hum or chant in a low voice.; W. Gesenius, Thesaurus Philologicus Criticus Linguae Hebraeae (Leipzig, 1829-1858), s.v. הוד; F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Psalms (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1867), at Psalm 104
  • minorityThe word is uniquely Hebrew, with no established relative in any other Semitic language.; L. J. Coppes, TWOT §482a, 1:209-210
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

  • Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), 217a, s.v. הוֹדlexicon
  • Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1:240, s.v. הוֹדlexicon
  • D. J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield, 1995), 2:503-504, s.v. הוֹדlexicon
  • G. Warmuth, הוֹד, in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 3:352-356theological-dictionary
  • L. J. Coppes, הוד, in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody, 1980), §482a, 1:209-210theological-dictionary
  • Robin Wakely, הוֹד, in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 1:1014-1016theological-dictionary
  • J. Milgrom, Numbers, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: JPS, 1990), 236commentary
  • J. J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 372-375, 380-382commentary
  • R. Alter, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (New York: Norton, 2007), note at Psalm 104:1commentary

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

All attested forms of הוֹד

m s absolute

הוֹד, וְהַהוֹד, וְהוֹד

1Ch 16:27, Job 37:22, Psa 21:5, Psa 96:6, Psa 104:1, Psa 111:3, Zec 6:13, 1Ch 29:11

m s construct

הוֹדְךָ, הוֹדֶךָ, מֵהוֹדְךָ

Psa 8:1, Psa 45:3, Psa 145:5, Pro 5:9, Num 27:20

m s construct

הוֹדוֹ, הֹדוֹ

Psa 148:13, Hos 14:6, Hab 3:3, Zec 10:3, Jer 22:18

m s construct

הוֹד

1Ch 29:25, Job 39:20, Isa 30:30, Dan 11:21

m s construct

וְהוֹדִי

Dan 10:8