StrongerBible

ḥo'aḥ

חוֹחַ

HebrewH2336“thorn, thistle, ...”

Appears 12 times · tap a cell to see the verses

1Sa 13:62Ki 14:9 (2×)2Ch 25:18 (2×)2Ch 33:11Job 31:40Job 41:2(40:26)Pro 26:9Sng 2:2Isa 34:13Hos 9:6
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeKHO-akhnoun

What ḥo'aḥ means

1

a prickly wild plant: a thornbush, thistle, or bramble of the sort that overruns neglected ground

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Hebrew has a whole vocabulary for spiny plants, and this is one of the common members of it. It does not name a species, and no scholar can say which plant the writers had in view. What ancient readers heard was something prickly and useless that comes up on its own wherever nobody is farming, so English Bibles reach for whichever of "thorn," "thistle," or "bramble" suits the line. Chasing the botany is a dead end; the plant is always there for what it stands for.

Almost everywhere the word carries a settled overtone of worthlessness or ruin:

  • In the fable Jehoash sends to Amaziah, a roadside thornbush proposes marriage to the cedar of Lebanon and is then trampled by a passing animal, which shrinks the king who picked the fight down to a weed. The older fable Jotham tells in Judges works the same way with a buckthorn (אָטָד).
  • In oracles against Edom and against Israel, this thorn and the nettle (קִמּוֹשׂ) come up through palaces and shrines, picturing settled land collapsing back into wilderness.
  • In the great oath that closes his defense, Job calls down thorns instead of wheat on his own fields if he has lied, using the standard curse language of ancient treaties.

Two passages turn the image around. In the Song of Songs the man calls his beloved a lily among thorns, so the dull prickly bushes become the background that makes one flower stand out. And Proverbs sets a proverb in a fool's mouth beside a thorn in a drunkard's hand. Readers have long disagreed about the picture there: older translators saw a spike the drunk never notices going in, while most scholars now see a whole thorny branch he is swinging about and endangering everyone with. The second reading fits the sayings on either side of it, which are all about harm done at random.

1Sa 13:62Ki 14:9 (2×)2Ch 25:18 (2×)Job 31:40Pro 26:9Sng 2:2Isa 34:13Hos 9:6
1Sa 13:6

Whether חוֹחַ is the correct reading at 1 Samuel 13:6, and if so, whether it denotes a thorny thicket or an aperture in the rock.

  • majorityThe consonantal text is corrupt and should be emended to חוֹרִים, "holes." The doublet at 1 Samuel 14:11, where the same Hebrews emerge מִן־הַחֹרִים אֲשֶׁר הִתְחַבְּאוּ־שָׁם, supplies the control, the ר / ו confusion is a single graphic slip, and the resulting series (caves, holes, rocks, cellars, cisterns) is uniformly geological.; S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913), ad loc.; P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel, Anchor Bible 8 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), ad loc.; Ralph W. Klein, 1 Samuel, Word Biblical Commentary 10 (Waco: Word, 1983), ad loc.
  • minorityThe received text stands, and the noun carries its ordinary botanical sense: "thickets," a vegetal hiding place set among the geological ones, adding a note of desolation and animal-like flight.; David Toshio Tsumura, The First Book of Samuel, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), ad loc.
  • minorityThe anomalous plural חֲוָחִים represents a distinct lexeme meaning "aperture, cleft, opening," cognate with Arabic khawkha "wicket" and Geʿez ḫoḫt "door, gate," reflecting a second Semitic base merged with the thorn word by regular sound change. Philologically defensible but not adopted in the mainline lexica.; Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 210, 213
2

a hook or piercing ring: a metal barb driven through the jaw or nose to hold and lead a captive or a beast

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Two late passages use this same word for something forged rather than something grown. What holds the two together is a sharp point that catches and will not let go. Hebrew already had a shorter word for exactly this object, the hook or nose ring (חָח), and in these two places our word steps into its territory.

In the speech about Leviathan, God asks Job whether he can haul the creature out with a fishhook (חַכָּה), press down its tongue, run a cord through its nose, and pierce its jaw with a hook. The answer is obviously no, and the sting is that this is precisely what God elsewhere threatens to do to Pharaoh: the creature no man can hook, God hooks at will. Ancient Greek translators saw no plant here at all and simply wrote "ring."

The other passage is the capture of Manasseh, whom his captors take "with hooks" and then bind in bronze shackles and march off to Babylon. Assyrian palace carvings show conquered kings led on a cord tied to a ring through the lip or nose, and not one ancient translator of this verse kept the plant: they all reached for chains or bonds. The Chronicler's first readers would have caught the reversal, since the king of Judah is now dragged off like an animal by the very means God had once threatened against the Assyrian who besieged his father.

2Ch 33:11Job 41:2(40:26)

What scholars say about ḥo'aḥ

Every major critical lexicon files חוֹחַ as a single polysemous head-entry with two sense-clusters, a plant sense and a late "hook, ring, fetter" sense, and each cross-refers the latter to the shorter noun חָח. BDB (296) numbers the two senses under an assumed notion "to pierce" and marks sense 2 explicitly "late," restricting it to Job 40:26 (English 41:2) and 2 Chronicles 33:11, while listing 1 Samuel 13:6 under sense 1 with the note that Ewald, Wellhausen and Driver emend to חוֹרִים. Gesenius, in both the Tregelles translation and the 18th German edition edited by Donner, keeps one lemma with three graded senses (thorn; a ring through the nostrils of a large fish at Job 40:26, glossed i.q. חָח; the same instrument used on captives at 2 Chronicles 33:11) and supplies the philological rationale: no verbal root of suitable meaning exists, so the noun is primary, its inflection oscillating between hollow and geminate patterns, which is what allows חוֹחַ and חָח to be read as byforms of one biliteral base. HALOT and DCH are best described as retaining a single head-entry with contextual specification rather than promoting a formal I / II split, though a reader with the printed volumes should verify the point directly. NIDOTTE and Even-Shoshan likewise keep one head-word with sub-groupings; TDOT has no dedicated article, treating the word only inside its survey of the Hebrew thorn field under קוֹץ. Klein alone posits a distinct lexeme, and only for the anomalous plural at 1 Samuel 13:6, glossing it "aperture, cleft, opening" with Arabic khawkha and Geʿez cognates. The Aramaic and Syriac material is the strongest cognate evidence (Targumic and Jewish Palestinian חוֹחָא and Classical Syriac "thornbush, briar," with a secondary "plum" sense bridged by the thorny Prunus spinosa); proposed Akkadian ḫaḫḫu "phlegm" is semantically remote and is not cited by the standard lexica, and Ugaritic offers no corresponding root. On the two hook passages the commentators are unanimous: Clines (WBC Job 38 to 42, 1190), Pope (AB, 321), Habel (OTL, 217) and Hartley (NICOT, 534) read Job 40:26 as a piercing ring on the strength of the parallelism with אַגְמוֹן and the intertext of Ezekiel 29:4, and the Septuagint's ψέλλιον "ring" confirms that the Greek translator saw no plant; Japhet (OTL, 1006), R. Klein (Hermeneia, 476 to 479), Dillard (WBC 15, 264 to 265) and Williamson read 2 Chronicles 33:11 as literal nose or lip hooks, supported by the חָח parallels (2 Kings 19:28 // Isaiah 37:29; Ezekiel 19:4, 9; 29:4; 38:4) and by Neo-Assyrian reliefs from Zincirli, Khorsabad and Nineveh showing captive rulers led by a cord attached to a ring through the lip. For the plant passages Cogan and Tadmor (AB II Kings) gloss the word as a wild thorny plant of unattended fields and abandoned sites; Blenkinsopp (AB Isaiah 1 to 39, 452 to 456) and Wildberger warn against botanical precision at Isaiah 34:13, where the accumulation of prickly growth functions as the rhetorical undoing of civilized space; Andersen and Freedman (AB Hosea, 526 to 529) and Wolff read Hosea 9:6 in the same vein, with the weeds inheriting Israel's silver in a reversal of covenant inheritance; Clines (WBC Job 21 to 37) resists a Genesis 3 echo at Job 31:40 on lexical grounds, since Genesis uses קוֹץ and דַּרְדַּר, and reads the couplet within the self-maledictory oath tradition Pope compares to Sefire I A 36 and VTE 63 to 64; and Fox (AYB Proverbs 10 to 31), Waltke (NICOT, 351 to 353) and Clifford (OTL), behind them Toy (ICC), prefer the brandished-branch reading of Proverbs 26:9 over the older piercing reading of the Septuagint, Vulgate and KJV, arguing from the surrounding sayings about random harm.

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

  • BDB, s.v. חוֹחַ, 296lexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. חוֹחַlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. חוֹחַlexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, trans. Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, s.v. חוֹחַlexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18th ed., ed. Herbert Donner, s.v. חוֹחַlexicon
  • Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 210, 213lexicon
  • Willem A. VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, s.v. חוֹחַtheological-dictionary
  • G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, eds., Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, s.v. קוֹץtheological-dictionary
  • Abraham Even-Shoshan, A New Concordance of the Bible (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1989), s.v. חוֹחַreference
  • Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings, Anchor Bible 11 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1988), ad loc.commentary
  • Sara Japhet, I & II Chronicles, Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 1006commentary
  • Ralph W. Klein, 2 Chronicles, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 476 to 479commentary
  • Raymond B. Dillard, 2 Chronicles, Word Biblical Commentary 15 (Waco: Word, 1987), 264 to 265commentary
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 38 to 42, Word Biblical Commentary 18B (Nashville: Nelson, 2011), 1190commentary
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 21 to 37, Word Biblical Commentary 18A (Nashville: Nelson, 2006), ad loc.commentary
  • Marvin H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15, 3rd ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), 321commentary
  • Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985), 217commentary
  • John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 534commentary
  • Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1 to 39, Anchor Bible 19 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 452 to 456commentary
  • Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 28 to 39, Continental Commentaries (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), ad loc.commentary
  • Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea, Anchor Bible 24 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 526 to 529commentary
  • Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), ad loc.commentary
  • Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10 to 31, Anchor Yale Bible 18B (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), ad loc.commentary
  • Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 15 to 31, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 351 to 353commentary
  • Richard J. Clifford, Proverbs, Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), ad loc.commentary
  • J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs, Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), ad loc.commentary
  • Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)monograph
  • David Toshio Tsumura, The First Book of Samuel, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), ad loc.commentary
  • P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel, Anchor Bible 8 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), ad loc.commentary
  • S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913), ad loc.monograph
  • Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002), s.v. חָחָאlexicon

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

All attested forms of חוֹחַ

m s absolute

הַחוֹחַ, חוֹחַ, וּבְחוֹחַ, וָחוֹחַ

2Ki 14:9, 2Ki 14:9, 2Ch 25:18, 2Ch 25:18, Job 31:40, Pro 26:9, Hos 9:6, Job 41:2

m p absolute

הַחוֹחִים, חֲוָחִים, חֹחִים

Sng 2:2, 1Sa 13:6, 2Ch 33:11