StrongerBible

ḥelem

חֵלֶם

AramaicH2493“dream”

Appears 22 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Dan 2:4Dan 2:5Dan 2:6 (2×)Dan 2:7Dan 2:9 (2×)Dan 2:26Dan 2:28Dan 2:36Dan 2:45Dan 4:5(2)Dan 4:6(3)Dan 4:7(4)Dan 4:9(6)Dan 5:12Dan 7:1
Word studyKHEH-lemnoun

What ḥelem means

a dream: the images a person sees while asleep, presented throughout Daniel as a message from God that has to be interpreted

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

Every appearance of this word belongs to the same world. A sleeper wakes shaken by images he cannot forget, and those images turn out to carry a meaning he cannot unlock on his own. In the Aramaic chapters of Daniel the dream is never idle sleep: King Nebuchadnezzar's two dreams (chapters 2 and 4) and Daniel's own night vision (chapter 7) all press toward a message that only God can disclose through an interpreter.

Because the word covers the whole event, it stands at the center of a small vocabulary of revelation. The dream comes, an explanation is demanded, the royal experts fail, and Daniel succeeds because God gives him the meaning. The stories turn on the conviction that the dream is real communication from heaven, so the person who can read it holds something the king's wise men cannot supply.

This Aramaic noun is the near-twin of the Hebrew word for dream, חֲלוֹם, which fills the same role in the dream stories of Genesis and beyond. The two words share a root and a meaning; Daniel simply uses the Aramaic form in the Aramaic sections of the book. It sits close to the word for a waking vision (חֵזֶו), and the two often appear side by side, as when Daniel has "a dream and visions of his head."

Dan 2:4Dan 2:5Dan 2:6 (2×)Dan 2:7Dan 2:9 (2×)Dan 2:26Dan 2:28Dan 2:36Dan 2:45Dan 4:5(2)Dan 4:6(3)Dan 4:7(4)

What scholars say about ḥelem

The Biblical Aramaic noun חֵלֶם is the standard term for a dream, cognate with Hebrew חֲלוֹם and derived from the common Semitic root חלם "to dream." The lexica are unanimous on a single sense: HALOT (s.v. חֵלֶם, in the Aramaic section) and BDB (s.v. חֵלֶם) both gloss it simply "dream," as does Vogt's Lexicon Linguae Aramaicae Veteris Testamenti. All twenty-two occurrences fall within the Aramaic of Daniel (chapters 2, 4, 5, and 7), where the dream functions as a vehicle of divine revelation requiring skilled interpretation (פְּשַׁר), a motif that ties Daniel to the older Joseph narratives (Gen 37-41) and to the wider Ancient Near Eastern tradition of the mantic dream and its professional interpreters. Commentators (Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia; Goldingay, Daniel, WBC; Montgomery, Daniel, ICC) treat the term as unremarkable lexically; the interpretive interest lies not in the word's meaning but in the theology of revelation and the polemic against the Babylonian wise men who cannot supply what God gives to Daniel. There is no dispute about the sense.

Sources

  • Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Aramaic section, s.v. חֵלֶםlexicon
  • Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Aramaic appendix, s.v. חֵלֶםlexicon
  • Vogt, A Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic, s.v. חֵלֶםlexicon
  • Collins, Daniel, Hermeneiacommentary
  • Goldingay, Daniel, Word Biblical Commentary 30commentary
  • Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, ICCcommentary

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

All attested forms of חֵלֶם

c s determined

חֶלְמָא

Dan 2:4, Dan 2:5, Dan 2:6, Dan 2:6, Dan 2:7, Dan 2:9, Dan 2:9, Dan 2:26

c s absolute

חֵלֶם

Dan 4:5, Dan 7:1

c s construct

חֶלְמִי

Dan 4:9

c s construct

חֶלְמָךְ

Dan 2:28

m p absolute

חֶלְמִין

Dan 5:12