the ringing shout a crowd raises together over the winepress, and the same cry turned into the roar of an attacking army
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
The word imitates the sound it names, the way English has "heave ho" or "hurrah". It belongs first to the winepress. A line of workers stamping grapes kept time by shouting together, so this cry was the ordinary noise of a good harvest and of a country at peace.
The prophets took hold of that picture. A winepress is also a place where something gets crushed, so the same shout can be aimed at people rather than fruit. Across its few occurrences the cry runs in three directions:
the cheer of workers treading out the new wine
the roar of an army closing in on a town and its crops
the shout of the LORD himself as he treads the nations like grapes
Because one word carries all three, a prophet can turn a happy sound into a threat without changing a syllable. Every occurrence sits inside a message of judgment against Moab or Babylon, and the usual point is loss: the harvest cheer stops, and whatever shouting is left is not the glad kind. Hebrew has broader words for a crowd's shout, such as תְּרוּעָה and רִנָּה, but this one stays tied to the press and to the moment of trampling.
Nuances
1athe shout of workers treading grapes, raised in rhythm as they stamp out the new wine
Isa 16:10Jer 48:33 (3×)*
1bthe shout an attacking force raises as it closes in, the harvest cry turned into a war cry
Isa 16:9*Jer 51:14
1cthe shout the LORD himself raises over the nations, pictured as a man shouting over the grapes he treads
This cry belongs to the winepress. It is the noise a line of workers makes as they stamp out the new wine, keeping time together, so it is the ordinary sound of a good harvest. The other word is never raised over grapes or over any kind of farm work.Isa 16:10Jer 48:33
It can be the LORD's own shout. He is pictured treading the nations the way a worker treads grapes, and the cry he lets out over them is this one. The other word is always raised by people, by an army, or by a horn, never by God himself.Jer 25:30
Every time it appears it is inside a prophet's message about a nation being brought down, Moab or Babylon, and the point is usually that a familiar cheer has been silenced or turned hostile. It never shows up in a law, a psalm, or a story.Isa 16:9Jer 51:14
Both
Both are the roar an attacking force raises as it closes in on a town. One word does it as invaders fall on Moab's fruit and as Babylon's attackers lift their voice, the other as an army storms a city.Jer 51:14Isa 16:9Jer 49:2Amo 1:14
Both can be either a happy noise or a frightening one without changing form, so the reader has to take the mood from the scene. One is the vintage cheer in one verse and the cry of an army in the next; the other was so close to the sound of weeping at the temple that nobody could tell the two apart.Isa 16:10Jer 25:30Ezr 3:13Amo 2:2
Both are loud enough to stand for a whole event, which is why English Bibles fall back on the same plain word "shout" for each and lose the difference between a work cry over the grapes and a massed blast or acclamation.Jer 48:33Jos 6:20
It does not have to come from a throat at all. The same word names the signal blown on a horn or a trumpet, so a priest with an instrument can make this sound without anyone shouting.Lev 25:9Num 10:5Num 31:6
It is at home in worship. It is the roar a crowd sends up as the sacred chest is carried in, the noise at the laying of the temple foundation, and the sound of a congregation hailing God as king.2Sa 6:15Ezr 3:11Psa 47:5
It can be scheduled. Israel's law fixes a day for this sound and sets it as the standing signal for the camp to break and move, so it is something commanded and repeated rather than something that simply breaks out.Lev 23:24Num 29:1Num 10:6
It can belong to one person. Job is told his own lips will carry this sound if God restores him, and a restored man is said to come back to God with it, whereas the other word is always a crowd making noise together.Job 8:21Job 33:26
רִנָּהthe ringing cry of gladness or urgent pleading, at home in worship rather than over a winepress
This is the shout of a particular job. It is the noise workers make while treading grapes in the winepress, so it turns up wherever the wine harvest is in view and stops when the treading stops.Isa 16:10Jer 48:33
Its absence is how a ruined country is measured. When the fruit and the grain are gone the shout has fallen with them, and Moab's lost gladness is described by piling up the word three times over and then denying it.Isa 16:9Jer 48:33
The same harvest noise gets turned on people. The LORD roars over everyone living on the earth the way a treader shouts over the grapes, and the nations raise this shout over Babylon, so the sound of the winepress becomes the sound of a trampling.Jer 25:30Jer 51:14
It is pure sound with nothing said in it. Every occurrence is a wordless yell that goes with the work or the attack, never a request, a message, or a song with content.Isa 16:10Jer 25:30
Both
Both are the loud noise of a crowd at harvest, joy you can hear across a field. One is the yell of the grape treaders, the other the shouting of reapers who sowed in tears and came back carrying sheaves.Isa 16:10Psa 126:5Psa 126:6
Both can go up over a fallen enemy. The nations raise the one against Babylon, and the earth breaks into the other when its oppressor is gone, just as a town rings out when the wicked perish.Jer 51:14Isa 14:7Pro 11:10
Both can be shut down by God. He says he has made the vintage shouting stop in the vineyards, and he forbids the other from even being lifted up for a people he has finished listening to.Isa 16:10Jer 7:16
This cry can be aimed at God as a request. It stands next to the ordinary word for prayer in Solomon's plea at the temple and in the psalms, where the worshipper asks God to listen to it and let it come near.1Ki 8:282Ch 6:19Psa 17:1Psa 119:169
Because it is addressed to someone, it can be refused. God tells Jeremiah not to raise it on the people's behalf and says plainly that he will not listen to it, which is a thing you can only say about a cry meant to be heard.Jer 7:16Jer 11:14Jer 14:12
It is the sound rescued people travel home with. Israel comes out of Egypt with it and returns from exile with it, so it belongs to the whole story of being brought back rather than to one moment of work.Psa 105:43Isa 35:10Isa 48:20Isa 51:11
It carries words. An announcement is passed through an army with it at sunset, singers begin their praise with it, and people tell what God has done with it, so a message can ride inside this sound.1Ki 22:362Ch 20:22Psa 107:22
It reaches past human throats. The heavens, the mountains, and the trees of the field are told to break out in it, and God himself is said to rejoice over his people with it.Isa 44:23Isa 49:13Isa 55:12Zep 3:17
hedad in the other biblical languages
κραυγήGreek“shouting”the Greek noun for loud shouting, used of protest, grief, and uproar, never of a harvest cry
Belongs to the winepress: the ringing shout workers keep up together as they tread out the grapes, so when it stops the harvest itself has stopped.Isa 16:10Jer 48:33
Turns into the roar of an attacking force with the picture of grape treading still behind it, so the cry that once meant new wine now means a place being crushed.Isa 16:9Jer 51:14
Can be raised by the LORD himself over the nations, pictured as a man shouting over the grapes he is treading.Jer 25:30
Both
Both name the noise of a shout rather than the words being said, loud enough to carry across a whole scene, and English Bibles reach for the same renderings for both, "shout" and "shouting" and "cry".Isa 16:10Mat 25:6
In both, a shout can be the sound of trouble arriving, the massed noise of a crowd set against someone rather than a single voice.Jer 51:14Act 23:9
Covers the cry of grief and pain, the sound a person makes under real distress, which is why it stands alongside tears and mourning.Heb 5:7Rev 21:4
Names the angry uproar people raise at each other, the shouting of a quarrel, which a letter can list among the habits a church should get rid of.Eph 4:31Act 23:9
Carries a message people are meant to hear and act on, whether it announces that someone is arriving or pronounces a blessing out loud.Mat 25:6Luk 1:42
κέλευσμαGreek“command”the Greek word for a rousing shout that sets a body of people moving in time, a comparable work cry but one called out by a leader rather than raised by the whole crowd
This cry belongs to the winepress. It is the shout a line of workers raises while stamping out the new wine, so it carries the sound of a good harvest and a country at peace.Isa 16:10Jer 48:33
It goes up from a whole crowd at once rather than from one voice, which is why it can be silenced: the prophets announce that the shouting over the vats has stopped.Jer 48:33Isa 16:10
The same cry can turn hostile. An army closing in on a town and its crops raises it too, so one word can be either a cheer or a threat depending on who is shouting.Isa 16:9Jer 51:14
Both
Both name a cry rather than a speech. Each is one loud call meant to be heard at once by everyone within range, and its force lies in the sound and the moment, not in an argument being made.Isa 16:101Th 4:16
In both, the shout can be God's own, raised as he acts. Jeremiah pictures the LORD shouting over the nations the way a man shouts over the grapes he is treading, and Paul has the Lord descend with a cry of command.Jer 25:301Th 4:16
This cry comes from whoever is in charge, and it is an order as much as a noise. In its one New Testament verse the Lord himself comes down with it, and the dead in Christ rise, so the shout is what sets everything in motion.1Th 4:16
It sounds once, at a single decisive moment, and it stands next to an archangel's voice and God's trumpet. It is a signal that announces something, not the running noise of people at work.1Th 4:16
What scholars say about hedad
The lexica treat הֵידָד as an onomatopoeic interjection used as a noun, the cry raised by those treading grapes (BDB, HALOT, DCH). BDB divides the seven attestations three ways: the treaders' shout (Isaiah 16:10;Jeremiah 48:33), the shout of enemies (Isaiah 16:9;Jeremiah 51:14), and the shout of Yahweh, explicitly likened to that of treaders (Jeremiah 25:30).Isaiah 16:9 is the crux: the parallel Moab oracle at Jeremiah 48:32 reads שֹׁדֵד "destroyer" where Isaiah has הֵידָד, and commentators divide over whether Isaiah's noun denotes the invaders' war cry falling upon the harvest or the vintage cheer that has ceased, with some proposing textual assimilation between the two oracles. The third הֵידָד of Jeremiah 48:33 is likewise metrically and syntactically awkward and has been variously repointed, deleted, or defended as emphatic repetition.
Sources
BDB, s.v. הֵידָדlexicon
HALOT, s.v. הֵידָדlexicon
DCH, s.v. הֵידָדlexicon
Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 13-27 (Continental Commentaries), on Isaiah 16:9-10commentary
William McKane, Jeremiah, International Critical Commentary, on Jeremiah 48:33commentary