StrongerBible

zulah

זוּלָה

HebrewH2108“except, besides, ...”

Appears 16 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Deu 1:36Deu 4:12Jos 11:13Rut 4:41Sa 21:9(10)2Sa 7:221Ki 3:181Ki 12:202Ki 24:141Ch 17:20Psa 18:31(32)Isa 26:13Isa 45:5Isa 45:21Isa 64:4(3)Hos 13:4
Root family
Word studyzoo-LAHparticle

What zulah means

except, besides: marking the one person or thing left out of what is said about all the rest

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is a small word with one job: it carves out an exception. Something is said about a whole group, or a whole class of things is denied, and this word names the one that falls outside it. Joshua burned none of the cities that stood on their mounds, except Hazor. All Israel went over to Jeroboam, except the tribe of Judah. There was no stranger in the house, except the two women themselves.

It turns up in only sixteen verses, and it nearly always has a short ending attached, so that it looks like "except me" or "besides you." Sometimes that is exactly what it means, as when God says that no other god stands besides him. But often the ending is not a pronoun at all, and the word simply means "except," with the thing excepted named right after it: at the mountain the people saw no shape, only a voice (Deuteronomy 4:12), and the psalmist asks who is a rock except our God (Psalm 18:31).

The second way it works is to rule out any rival. A whole class is denied, and then the one named is set over against it: no God besides you, no rock except our God, no other sword besides this one, no kinsman besides you with the right to buy back the land. That wording is ordinary Hebrew, used of a sword and a relative as readily as of God, and it is the frame that carries some of the Old Testament's sharpest claims that the LORD alone is God.

Hebrew has a small family of words for "except" and "without," and two verses set this one right beside another of them. Psalm 18:31 asks who is God apart from the LORD (בִּלְעֲדֵי) and who is a rock except our God, and Hosea 13:4 says there is no God besides me and no savior but me (בִּלְתִּי). The two words are close enough in force that the writers seem to be varying them for the sake of the poetry rather than drawing a distinction.

Nuances

1aexcept, apart from: leaving one person, place, or group out of a sweeping statement about a larger whole
Deu 1:36Deu 4:12Jos 11:131Ki 3:181Ki 12:202Ki 24:14
1bbesides, other than: setting the one named over against every other of the same kind, usually where the existence of any other is being denied
Rut 4:41Sa 21:9(10)2Sa 7:221Ch 17:20Psa 18:31(32)Isa 26:13Isa 45:5Isa 45:21Isa 64:4(3)Hos 13:4

What scholars say about zulah

A feminine noun from the root זול, attested only in the construct and with pronominal suffixes, and functioning throughout as a particle of exception. BDB glosses the underlying noun "a removal, a putting away," so that the construct means literally "with the removal of." HALOT and DCH register two uses: prepositional ("except, besides") and, at Joshua 11:13 and by some accounts 1 Kings 3:18, conjunctional ("except that"), where a clause rather than a single item follows. זוּלָתִי is the most frequent form; its yod is usually taken not as the first-person suffix but as an old connecting vowel of the construct (the hireq compaginis, discussed at GKC §90l and in Waltke and O'Connor), which is why the word means simply "except" before a following noun at Deuteronomy 4:12, Joshua 11:13, 1 Kings 3:18, 1 Kings 12:20, and Psalm 18:31, while the genuinely suffixed forms (זוּלָתֶךָ, זוּלָתָהּ) and the first-person forms in divine speech (Isaiah 45:5, 45:21; Hosea 13:4) do mean "besides you, besides it, besides me." In the exclusivity statements of Deuteronomistic and Isaianic texts it stands in parallel with בִּלְעֲדֵי and בִּלְתִּי, apparently varied for poetic effect rather than for any difference in force; MacDonald and Blenkinsopp both treat these formulas as claims of the LORD's incomparability and sole effective deity rather than as abstract statements about how many gods exist. The word's sense is uncontested across the lexica; the open questions concern its derivation from זול and the parsing of individual forms, not its meaning.

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. זוּלָהlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. זוּלָהlexicon
  • DCH (Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, ed. David J. A. Clines), s.v. זוּלָהlexicon
  • Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Kautzsch, trans. A. E. Cowley, 2nd English ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1910), §90lgrammar
  • Bruce K. Waltke and M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990)grammar
  • Nathan MacDonald, Deuteronomy and the Meaning of "Monotheism", Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2/1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003)monograph
  • Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55, Anchor Bible 19A (New York: Doubleday, 2002)commentary

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

All attested forms of זוּלָה

f s construct

זוּלָתִי, זוּלַת

Deu 1:36, Deu 4:12, Jos 11:13, 1Ki 3:18, 1Ki 12:20, Psa 18:31, 2Ki 24:14

f s construct

זוּלָתֶךָ, זוּלָתְךָ

2Sa 7:22, 1Ch 17:20, Isa 26:13, Rut 4:4, Isa 64:4

f s construct

זוּלָתִי

Isa 45:5, Isa 45:21, Hos 13:4

f s construct

זוּלָתָהּ

1Sa 21:9