StrongerBible

ḥanat

חָנַט

HebrewH2590“embalm, embalming, ...”

Appears 5 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 50:2 (2×)Gen 50:3Gen 50:26Sng 2:13
Word studyResearch-gradekhah-NAHTverb

What ḥanat means

1

to treat a dead body with spices and fragrant resins so that it will not decay: to embalm

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Jacob dies in Egypt, and Joseph orders the physicians in his service to do this to his father's body. At the end of Genesis the same is done for Joseph himself. The word does not literally say "preserve" or "mummify." Its picture is spices: fragrant resins, oils, and drying salts worked into the body so that it will not rot. That is what Egyptian embalming looked like from the outside, and it is the feature this Hebrew word picks out.

Genesis also counts the treatment as a measured stretch of time. Forty days go to the body itself, while Egypt mourns for seventy. The two figures do not compete: the shorter one covers the drying and spicing, the longer one the whole official period of grief.

Two details are worth noticing. The men who do the work are called healers, the ordinary word for physicians, rather than priests, which keeps the scene clear of Egyptian temple ritual. And in both cases the point of the treatment is travel: a body that will not decay can be carried out of Egypt and buried (קָבַר) in the family grave back in Canaan.

Nuances

1a
Gen 50:2 (2×)Gen 50:26
1bthe embalming named as a process, counted in days
Gen 50:3
2

of a fig tree: to bring out its first small figs and start them ripening

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested

This is the word's other life, and it appears only once. In a spring song, winter is over, the rains have stopped, flowers are out, and the fig tree does this to its earliest figs while the budding vines give off their scent. Everything around the line is a season turning, so the verb marks a beginning rather than a harvest: the fruit has only just appeared and is on its way.

Exactly what the tree is doing is an old argument. The older reading kept the fragrance sense of the embalming passages and had the tree perfuming its young figs, which sits well beside the mention of scent in the very next line. Others heard a color word behind it, the fruit reddening as it matures. Most modern readings take it as a grower's term for the first setting of fruit, a use well attested in later Jewish discussion of tithes.

The three readings stay close enough in practice that a translation can carry the picture either way, which is why English Bibles differ freely here: "has ripened its figs," "forms its early fruit," "puts forth green figs."

Sng 2:13
Sng 2:13

What the fig tree is said to do to its earliest figs in Song of Songs 2:13: make them fragrant, redden them, or simply put them out and set them ripening.

  • majorityThe tree reddens or brings its early figs toward ripeness, on the strength of an Arabic cognate meaning to become red.; Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18. Aufl., s.v. חנט; E. W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (London: Williams & Norgate, 1863-93), 657a
  • minorityThe tree makes its early figs fragrant, the same aromatic sense the verb has in the Genesis embalming passages.; F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, tr. M. G. Easton (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1885), ad Song 2:13; BDB, 334, s.v. חָנַט; M. H. Pope, Song of Songs, AB 7C (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977), 396-401
  • minorityThe tree puts out its first figs, a horticultural term for fruit-set known from later rabbinic usage about tithing.; A. Bloch and C. Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation with an Introduction and Commentary (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1998), ad loc.; D. Garrett and P. R. House, Song of Songs / Lamentations, WBC 23B (Nashville: Nelson, 2004), 158-159

What scholars say about ḥanat

חנט occurs five times in four verses: three times of the mortuary treatment of Jacob and Joseph (Gen 50:2 twice, 50:26), once as the abstract plural noun חֲנֻטִים in the phrase "the days of embalming" (Gen 50:3), and once of a fig tree in Song 2:13. The comparative apparatus is broad. Classical Arabic preserves ḥanaṭa (I) "become mature, become red" alongside ḥannaṭa (II) "embalm with spices," with the nouns ḥanūṭ "burial spices" and ḥannāṭ "embalmer" and, on one common analysis, ḥinṭah "wheat"; Jewish Aramaic and Syriac attest ḥnaṭ "embalm" (Targum Onqelos at Gen 50:2; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan substitutes בסם, a telling semantic gloss); Ge'ez ḥanaṭa has been treated since Dillmann as a Northwest Semitic loan; and Akkadian ḫanāṭu "give off a strong smell, become pungent" carries a D-stem ḫunnuṭu used of ripening dates and figs. BDB, Gesenius (18th ed.), TWOT 691, NIDOTTE 2846, and Jastrow treat the material as one polysemous root whose core notion is imparting an aromatic or maturing quality. DCH separates חנט I "embalm, mummify" from חנט II "ripen" on synchronic, usage-based grounds; Klein separates them etymologically and further derives חִטָּה "wheat" from the second root by loss of nun. Longman, Hess, and Garrett argue for two roots from the Akkadian cognate, though the correspondence is not phonologically secure (Akkadian ḫ normally reflects Proto-Semitic *ḫ, while Hebrew ח collapses *ḥ and *ḫ), and the CAD gloss of ḫanāṭu as an odor verb arguably supports the unitary analysis as readily as the split. No Egyptian etymology is proposed by anyone: Egyptian mortuary vocabulary uses wt for embalming and qrs / qrsw for burial and coffin, and neither Lambdin nor Muchiki lists חנט among Egyptian loanwords in Northwest Semitic. Genesis commentators (Skinner, Speiser, Sarna, Westermann, Wenham, Hamilton) take the Egyptian coloring as authentic and read the forty days of Gen 50:3 as the desiccation phase within the seventy-day mourning total known from Herodotus 2.86 and Diodorus 1.72, 1.91; Sarna notes that the operators are called רֹפְאִים rather than mortuary priests, plausibly to keep the pagan rite out of view. TDOT carries no article on the root, a fair index of its lexicographical rather than theological interest.

Where scholars disagree about ḥanat

Whether the spicing of a corpse in Genesis 50 and the fig tree's action in Song of Songs 2:13 belong to one word with a wide range or to two separate words that happen to look alike.

  • contestedOne word, whose core notion is imparting an aromatic or maturing quality; embalming a body and a fruit coming to maturity are two applications of it, as the Arabic evidence keeps both senses under one root.; BDB, 334, s.v. חָנַט; Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18. Aufl., s.v. חנט; TWOT, entry 691; NIDOTTE, entry 2846, 2:199-200
  • contestedTwo distinct words, an embalming verb and an unrelated verb of ripening, the latter matched by Akkadian ḫunnuṭu used of ripening dates and figs.; E. Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (Jerusalem/Haifa: Carta, 1987), 224; T. Longman III, Song of Songs, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 122-124; R. S. Hess, Song of Songs, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 89-90
  • contestedA mediating view: one ancient root historically, but two senses so far specialized by the biblical period that Hebrew usage treats them as separate words, with no verdict offered on the deeper etymology.; DCH, vol. III, s.v. חנט I, חנט II; J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968)
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, 334, s.v. חָנַטlexicon
  • HALOT, 1:333, s.v. חנטlexicon
  • DCH, vol. III, s.v. חנט I, חנט IIlexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18. Aufl. (Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer, 1987-2013), s.v. חנטlexicon
  • E. Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (Jerusalem/Haifa: Carta, 1987), 224dictionary
  • TWOT, entry 691theological-dictionary
  • NIDOTTE, entry 2846, 2:199-200theological-dictionary
  • M. Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (1903), 482dictionary
  • The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, vol. Ḫ (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1956), 76, s.v. ḫanāṭulexicon
  • W. von Soden, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1965-1981), 320lexicon
  • E. W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (London: Williams & Norgate, 1863-93), 657alexicon
  • A. Dillmann, Lexicon Linguae Aethiopicae (Leipzig: Weigel, 1865), col. 110lexicon
  • J. Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis, ICC, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1930), 535-538commentary
  • N. M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: JPS, 1989), 346-348commentary
  • G. J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, WBC 2 (Dallas: Word, 1994), ad Gen 50:2-3commentary
  • V. P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 18-50, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 692ff.commentary
  • C. Westermann, Genesis 37-50: A Commentary, tr. J. J. Scullion (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), 199-201commentary
  • F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, tr. M. G. Easton (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1885), ad Song 2:13commentary
  • M. H. Pope, Song of Songs, AB 7C (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977), 396-401commentary
  • T. Longman III, Song of Songs, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 122-124commentary
  • R. S. Hess, Song of Songs, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 89-90commentary
  • D. Garrett and P. R. House, Song of Songs / Lamentations, WBC 23B (Nashville: Nelson, 2004), 158-159commentary
  • M. V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 111-113monograph
  • J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968)monograph
  • Y. Muchiki, Egyptian Proper Names and Loanwords in North-West Semitic, SBLDS 173 (Atlanta: SBL, 1999)monograph
  • T. O. Lambdin, "Egyptian Loan Words in the Old Testament," JAOS 73 (1953): 145-155article
  • P. Galpaz-Feller, "The Embalmment of Jacob," Bulletin of the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo 26 (2004): 12-15article

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

All attested forms of חָנַט

qal consecutive-imperfect 3mp

וַיַּחַנְטוּ

Gen 50:2, Gen 50:26

m p absolute

חֲנֻטִים

Gen 50:3

qal infinitive-construct construct

חֲנֹט

Gen 50:2

qal perfect 3fs

חָנְטָה

Sng 2:13