StrongerBible

ḥizzavon

חִזָּיוֹן

HebrewH2384“vision, vision of the night”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

2Sa 7:17Job 4:13Job 7:14Job 20:8Job 33:15Isa 22:1Isa 22:5Jol 2:28(3:1)Zec 13:4
Word studyResearch-gradekhiz-zah-YOHNnoun

What ḥizzavon means

a vision: a revelatory seeing granted by God, through which a message or word is made known.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This is a poetic, elevated word for a vision, meaning a seeing through which God makes something known. It is not ordinary eyesight and not an idea a person thinks up; it names the moment a divine message arrives in the form of something seen. It grows from a root for seeing that Hebrew reserves mostly for poetry and for the special sight of a prophet, as opposed to the everyday word for looking at things.

It is used across a wide range of settings, and context, not the word itself, sets the exact flavor each time:

  • Nathan's message to David is summed up as this kind of vision, the form in which a true oracle came (חָזוֹן).
  • Joel promises that in the last days ordinary people, young and old, will receive such visions as the Spirit is poured out.
  • Zechariah turns the word into an accusation, picturing a day when even claiming to have a vision will be a source of shame among discredited prophets.
  • In Job the word gathers four times around sleep, standing beside the word for a dream and tied to the night.

That spread across sleep and waking, promise and rebuke, is why the two shades below sit under one meaning: they are the same revelatory seeing, differing only in whether the vision comes by night.

Nuances

1aa prophetic vision: a revelatory seeing through which a divine word comes, with no particular tie to sleep or night.
2Sa 7:17Isa 22:1Isa 22:5Jol 2:28(3:1)Zec 13:4
1ba vision of the night: a revelation that comes in sleep, closely bound up with a dream.
Job 4:13Job 7:14Job 20:8Job 33:15

What scholars say about ḥizzavon

חִזָּיוֹן is a qiṭṭālôn abstract noun from the root חז"ה "to see," formed with a geminated middle radical in the singular absolute (ḥizzāyôn) that disappears in the construct and plural; its pattern-mates are שִׁגָּיוֹן and גִּלָּיוֹן (Bauer-Leander; SAHD s.v. גִּלָּיוֹן). The root is Northwest Semitic (Ugaritic ḥdy, Aramaic/Deir ʿAllā/Zakkur חזה) and is the ordinary verb "to see" in Aramaic while remaining a marked, poetic and visionary verb in Hebrew alongside the everyday ראה (BDB; Jepsen, TDOT; Fuhs, Sehen und Schauen, 1978). Whether Hebrew חזה is an Aramaism or a native inheritance is disputed (Wagner allows native given Ugaritic; Fuhs stresses its non-synonymy with ראה; Hurvitz cautions that an "Aramaism" is not by itself a marker of late date, bearing on the Aramaic coloring of Job). The four sibling nouns חִזָּיוֹן, חָזוֹן, מַחֲזֶה, and חָזוּת occupy one overlapping field; the synoptic parallel 2 Samuel 7:17 (חִזָּיוֹן) against 1 Chronicles 17:15 (חָזוֹן) is the strongest evidence that they function as stylistic variants, and the popular fourfold taxonomy of vision-modes is rejected by the critical lexica. BDB nonetheless records a distributional "vision in the night" sense: all four Joban occurrences stand with לַיְלָה "night" or parallel to חֲלוֹם "dream," so the night shading is real but distributional rather than definitional. Live cruxes: the referent and text of גֵּיא חִזָּיוֹן in Isaiah 22 (Jerusalem, Hinnom, ironic wordplay, or corruption; the LXX reads "valley of Zion"), debated by Wildberger, Williamson, Blenkinsopp, Roberts, Childs, Beuken, and Sweeney with no consensus; whether Eliphaz's night vision in Job 4:12-21 is genuine or a parodied false-prophetic claim (Clines, Habel, Newsom, Greenstein, Burnight); and whether prophetic vision reflects real ecstatic experience (Mowinckel, Lindblom, Nissinen) or is primarily a literary convention. Diachronically the Hebrew noun does not become technical, but its Aramaic cognate חֵזוּ dominates the apocalyptic night-visions of Daniel 7, carrying the motif from prophecy toward apocalyptic (Collins).

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. חִזָּיוֹן (H2384)lexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. חִזָּיוֹןlexicon
  • A. Jepsen, "חָזָה," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) 4:280-290dictionary
  • H. F. Fuhs, Sehen und Schauen: Die Wurzel ḥzh im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament (FB 32; Würzburg: Echter, 1978)monograph
  • H. Bauer and P. Leander, Historische Grammatik der hebräischen Sprache §498, §537fgrammar
  • M. Wagner, Die lexikalischen und grammatikalischen Aramaismen im alttestamentlichen Hebräisch (BZAW 96; 1966), 53-54monograph
  • A. Hurvitz, "Hebrew and Aramaic in the Biblical Period: The Problem of 'Aramaisms'," in Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology (ed. I. Young; London: T&T Clark, 2003), 24-37article
  • H. Wildberger, Jesaja (BKAT X)commentary
  • H. G. M. Williamson, Isaiah (ICC)commentary
  • M. Nissinen, Ancient Prophecy: Near Eastern, Biblical, and Greek Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)monograph
  • J. Lindblom, Prophecy in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962)monograph
  • J. J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993)commentary

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

All attested forms of חִזָּיוֹן

m s absolute

חִזָּיוֹן

2Sa 7:17, Isa 22:1, Isa 22:5

f p absolute

חֶזְיֹנוֹת

Job 7:14, Jol 2:28

m s construct

חֶזְיוֹן

Job 20:8, Job 33:15

f p construct

חֶזְיֹנוֹת

Job 4:13

m s construct

חֶזְיֹנוֹ

Zec 13:4