ḥoq

At its core this word names something that has been settled and put on the books. The root behind it means to cut into, to carve, or to engrave, so the picture is of a rule that has been incised and made permanent, not advice or a custom that grew up on its own. It is something an authority has fixed in place, so that it now stands and must be kept. That is why it so often travels alongside other words for law and judgment: it is one of Israel's standard terms for an item of binding legislation.

Most of the time the authority behind the statute is God. In Deuteronomy and Psalm 119 especially, the word piles up with commandment (מִצְוָה), law (תּוֹרָה), and ruling (מִשְׁפָּט) to describe the whole body of what the LORD has decreed for his people to live by. Keeping his statutes is the mark of loyalty to him; abandoning them is the charge the prophets bring against Israel.

The same word also covers rules set by people. A king, a leader, or a community can establish a statute that then governs how things are done, and once set it carries the same fixed, must-be-obeyed force. So the line between God's statutes and human ones is not in the word itself but in who issued the rule.

The same idea of something fixed and laid down also produces a very practical use: a set amount owed to or set aside for a person. It is the share you are entitled to, measured out and not left to chance. Because it is fixed, it can be a recurring allowance: a daily ration of food, a regular allotment.

The word is at home in the priestly laws, where it names the portion of the offerings assigned to the priests as their due. This is theirs by ordinance, given again and again as a standing entitlement, which is why English Bibles often render it a perpetual due or appointed portion. The connection to the statute meaning is close: the portion is fixed precisely because a decree assigns it.

Elsewhere it is simply a livelihood:

• The food allowance of Egypt's priests under Pharaoh
• The rations Israelite slaves were forced to meet
• The bread a wise household provides

In these places the word looks past the legal setting to the everyday reality of a measured-out share.

When the thing being decreed is how far something may go, the word means a fixed limit. This is the bound God sets for the sea so it cannot pass its shore, the line marked out for the waters, or the span of days appointed for a human life. The limit is not a suggestion; it is a line laid down by the one who governs creation, the same root idea of something carved in and made to hold.

This use shows up most in poetry about how God orders the world:

• The horizon drawn on the face of the waters
• The boundary the proud waves are told to halt at
• The rule fixed for rain and storm

Each is a limit God established at creation and keeps in force. The same picture is turned on human life, where the number of a person's days, or even the appointed time in the grave, is spoken of as a limit God has set. Hebrew does not draw the line we tend to draw between the laws of nature and the laws God gives his people: the regular path of the sea and the rules of the covenant are both things he has engraved.

The meaning grows naturally out of the others.

• A decree fixes what must be
• A portion fixes how much
• Here the fixing applies to how far, giving the bounded edge that nothing within creation is permitted to overstep