StrongerBible

zud

זִיד

HebrewH2102“presumptuously, proudly, ...”

Appears 10 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 25:29Exo 18:11Exo 21:14Deu 1:43Deu 17:13Deu 18:20Neh 9:10Neh 9:16Neh 9:29Jer 50:29
Root family
Word studyzeedverb

What zud means

1

to act presumptuously: to knowingly step past a limit God or lawful authority has set, and to do it with contempt

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This word does not name a mood. It names a move. Someone knows where the line has been drawn and crosses it anyway, on purpose and without apology. That is why Israel's law reaches for this verb when it needs to separate the person who stumbles into a wrong from the person who plans it and then does it.

The range holds together because the act always points the same direction, upward, against an authority higher than the offender. A man plotting a killing, a prophet delivering words he was never given, an empire grinding down the people God had claimed, Israel marching into the hills after being told to stay put: in every case someone treats a boundary as beneath him. Deuteronomy 1:43 makes the logic almost audible by setting the command and the crossing side by side, and by pairing this verb with the ordinary word for rebelling (מָרָה).

This is also why the word carries such weight in Israel's law. The sacrificial system had a remedy for wrong done by mistake. For wrong done this way it named no sacrifice at all, only being cut off from the people. The trouble was never the size of the offense but its posture: not a failure to keep the covenant, but a refusal of it. The noun for that posture is זָדוֹן, and the person who lives there is a זֵד.

Nuances

1ato do what one has plainly been told not to do: willful disobedience of a known command
Deu 1:43Neh 9:16Neh 9:29
1bto act with deliberate intent: in law, the mark of a planned killing rather than an accident
TranslatabilityApproximate
Exo 21:14
1cto take up authority that was never granted: to speak or to rule where God has not authorized it
Deu 17:13Deu 18:20
1dof a hostile nation: to set itself insolently against the LORD or against his people
Exo 18:11Neh 9:10Jer 50:29
2

to boil: to cook something in a pot over heat

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

Once in the Hebrew Bible this word simply describes cooking. Jacob has a pot on the fire, Esau comes in from the field worn out, and the meal that will change the family's whole future is on the boil. The word for the stew itself (נָזִיד) comes straight from this verb.

The cooking sense sits oddly beside the word's far more common moral use, and scholars disagree about why the two look alike. Some hear a real connection, since a pot boiling over pictures anything that swells past its proper bounds. Others point out that the languages neighboring Hebrew use this root for exceeding or adding, with no trace of boiling anywhere, and would rather treat the cooking word as a separate word that happens to sound the same.

What the verse itself means is not in doubt. Whatever the word's history, here it is ordinary kitchen language, and a number of scholars think the storyteller chose it on purpose, hearing in the boiling pot an echo of the grasping that goes on around it.

Gen 25:29

What scholars say about zud

The lexicons agree on the moral sense of the verb, "act presumptuously, insolently" (BDB, pp. 267-268; HALOT, s.v. זיד; DCH III, s.v. זיד), and on the single culinary attestation at Gen 25:29 with its derived noun נָזִיד. They differ over whether the two senses belong to one polysemous root or to homonyms. The comparative evidence supports a core sense "exceed, overstep" with no "boil" component: Arabic zada "increase, exceed"; Old South Arabian zyd; Sam'alian זד "presumptuous" (KAI 214.33); Biblical Aramaic Haphel at Dan 5:20; Mandaic ZWD. No Akkadian or Ugaritic cognate is attested. Josef Scharbert (TDOT IV) defends "deliberate, willful transgression of divinely set boundaries" as the semantic center, treating Gen 25:29 as paronomasia. In the legal corpora the verb is the technical marker of premeditation: Exod 21:14 (יָזִד ... בְעָרְמָה) as against the accidental killer of v. 13, read this way by Propp (AB), Houtman (HCOT), and Childs (OTL); Deut 17:12-13 of defiance toward the central sanctuary court, and Deut 18:20-22 of the uncommissioned prophet, treated by Tigay (JPS) and Nelson (OTL) as parallel offences of arrogating a divine prerogative. Milgrom (Numbers, JPS, Excursus 36; Leviticus 1-16, AB) identifies the cognate noun and the Priestly idiom בְּיָד רָמָה (Num 15:30) as a single category standing outside the reach of the חַטָּאת and as the ancestor of the rabbinic מֵזִיד / שׁוֹגֵג distinction; his confession mechanism is contested by Gane (Cult and Character) and Sklar. On Neh 9, Williamson (WBC) and Blenkinsopp note the deliberate irony by which הֵזִידוּ is applied first to the Egyptians (v. 10) and then to Israel's own ancestors (vv. 16, 29), universalizing the category. On Jer 50:29 within the Babylon oracles see Holladay (Hermeneia) and Lundbom (AB). The Septuagint renders the verb chiefly with ἀσεβέω and τολμάω, the nominal forms with ὑπερήφανος / ὑπερηφανία and ὕβρις.

Where scholars disagree about zud

Whether the cooking sense at Gen 25:29 and the moral sense of presumptuous overstepping belong to one polysemous root or to two homonyms, and therefore whether this verb has one meaning or two. The disagreement is about the root's history and lemma structure, not about what either sense denotes.

  • contestedOne polysemous root: the physical boiling over of Gen 25:29 supplies the living image for uncontrolled self-assertion, and the "raging waters" of Ps 124:5 (הַמַּיִם הַזֵּידוֹנִים, from the same root) bridge the physical and moral senses within Hebrew itself.; BDB, pp. 267-268; NIDOTTE, s.v. זוד/זיד
  • contestedTwo separate words that merely share a sound: the presumption word goes back to a Proto-Semitic sense "swell, exceed, overstep" (supported by Arabic zada "increase, exceed" and the Aramaic cognates), while the culinary sense is attested only at Gen 25:29 plus נָזִיד and does not underlie it.; HALOT, s.v. זוד I / II; DCH III, s.v. זוד

Sources

  • BDB, pp. 267-268 (זוּד / זִיד)lexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. זידlexicon
  • DCH III, s.v. זידlexicon
  • Josef Scharbert, "zwd/zyd," TDOT IV:46-51dictionary
  • NIDOTTE, s.v. זוד/זידdictionary
  • Jacob Milgrom, Numbers, JPS Torah Commentary (1990), Excursus 36commentary
  • William H. C. Propp, Exodus 19-40, AB 2A (2006)commentary
  • Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus, OTL (1974)commentary
  • Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, JPS Torah Commentary (1996)commentary
  • Richard D. Nelson, Deuteronomy, OTL (2002)commentary
  • H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, WBC 16 (1985)commentary
  • Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 37-52, AB 21C (2004)commentary

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

All attested forms of זִיד

hiphil perfect 3cp

הֵזִידוּ

Neh 9:10, Neh 9:16, Neh 9:29

hiphil imperfect 3ms

יָזִד, יָזִיד

Exo 21:14, Deu 18:20

hiphil consecutive-imperfect 2mp

וַתָּזִדוּ

Deu 1:43

hiphil consecutive-imperfect 3ms

וַיָּזֶד

Gen 25:29

hiphil imperfect 3mp

יְזִידוּ

Deu 17:13

qal perfect 3cp

זָדוּ

Exo 18:11

qal perfect 3fs

זָדָה

Jer 50:29