StrongerBible

ḥavah

חֲוָה

AramaicH2324“declare, show, ...”

Appears 14 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Dan 2:4Dan 2:6 (2×)Dan 2:7Dan 2:9Dan 2:10Dan 2:11Dan 2:16Dan 2:24Dan 2:27Dan 4:2(3:32)Dan 5:7Dan 5:12Dan 5:15
Word studykhuh-VAHverb

What ḥavah means

to declare: to state out loud for someone else what they have no way of finding out on their own, above all a dream, its meaning, or a hidden matter.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Almost every time this verb appears, someone is being pressed to produce what they have no ordinary way of knowing. What gets declared in the book of Daniel is always out of human reach:

  • the dream the king refuses to describe to his experts
  • the meaning of that dream once it has been told
  • the mystery that stands behind the dream
  • the writing that appears on the wall at Belshazzar's feast

So the word belongs to the throne room. It is the verb of the king's demand and of the answer promised back to him, used both by the experts who cannot deliver and by Daniel who can. That contrast drives the whole of Daniel 2: no one on earth can declare what the king is asking, and the God of heaven does.

It sits close to the ordinary Aramaic verb for making something known, יְדַע, and the two stand side by side in a single demand: the king orders his experts to make the dream known to him, and in the same breath insists that they declare what it means. Where the two pull apart, this word points at the hidden content being said out loud, while its neighbor points at the hearer coming to know it.

One use stands apart from the rest. In Daniel 4:2 the king is not answering anyone. He is sending an open letter to every nation, telling them what God has done to him. There the word is closer to making a public announcement than to giving up a secret.

Nuances

1ato state for someone who is demanding it the content of a dream, its meaning, or a hidden matter, when there is no ordinary way to find it out.
Dan 2:4Dan 2:6 (2×)Dan 2:7Dan 2:9Dan 2:10Dan 2:11Dan 2:16Dan 2:24Dan 2:27Dan 5:7Dan 5:12Dan 5:15
1bto announce publicly: to put out to a wide audience news they had no other way of hearing.
TranslatabilityDirect
Dan 4:2(3:32)

What scholars say about ḥavah

The Aramaic verb חֲוָה is glossed uniformly across the standard lexica of Biblical Aramaic as "to show, tell, declare, make known" (HALOT, Aramaic section; BDB, Aramaic section; Vogt, Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic), and there is no live disagreement over its sense. Two technical points recur in the grammatical literature. First, the verb is attested in Biblical Aramaic in both a pael and a haphel formation with no discernible difference in sense: Daniel 2:4 (pael) and Daniel 2:7 (haphel) carry the identical promise to declare the interpretation. Second, the haphel forms retain an initial he (as in לְהַחֲוָיָה) instead of the aleph expected in Imperial Aramaic, a morphological anomaly discussed by Bauer and Leander and by Rosenthal. On the Hebrew side, the rare verb חָוָה of Job 15:17, 32:6, 32:10, 32:17, 36:2 and Psalm 19:2 is generally taken as an Aramaism cognate with this verb rather than as an independent Hebrew root (HALOT; BDB). Note also that Daniel 4:2 in English versification stands at Daniel 3:32 in Aramaic and Hebrew Bibles. For the function of the verb within the Danielic court contests, and for the pairing of this verb with the causative of ידע across Daniel 2 and 5, see the critical commentaries of Montgomery, Collins, and Goldingay.

Sources

  • Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner and Johann Jakob Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Aramaic section, s.v. חוהlexicon
  • Francis Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Aramaic section, s.v. חוהlexicon
  • Ernst Vogt, A Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic, trans. and rev. Joseph A. Fitzmyer (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 2011), s.v. חוהlexicon
  • Hans Bauer and Pontus Leander, Grammatik des Biblisch-Aramäischen (Halle, 1927), sections on the haphel and paelgrammar
  • Franz Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, 7th expanded ed. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006)grammar
  • James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1927)commentary
  • John J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993)commentary
  • John E. Goldingay, Daniel, Word Biblical Commentary 30 (Dallas: Word, 1989)commentary

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

All attested forms of חֲוָה

haphel infinitive-construct construct

הַחֲוָיָה

Dan 2:10, Dan 2:16, Dan 2:27, Dan 4:2, Dan 5:15

haphel imperfect 2mp

תְּהַחֲוֹן, תְּהַחֲוֻנַּ

Dan 2:6, Dan 2:9

pael imperfect 3ms

יְחַוִּנַּ

Dan 2:11, Dan 5:7

haphel imperative 2mp

הַחֲוֹ

Dan 2:6

haphel imperfect 1cp

נְהַחֲוֵה

Dan 2:7

haphel imperfect 3ms

יְהַחֲוֵה

Dan 5:12

pael imperfect 1cp

נְחַוֵּא

Dan 2:4

pael imperfect 1cs

אֲחַוֵּא

Dan 2:24