dry ground: bare, waterless ground, especially a seabed or riverbed left exposed when the water is driven back
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This word names ground by what is missing from it. It belongs to a family of Hebrew words about drying up and being left waste, the same family that gives the word for a ruined, abandoned place (חׇרְבָּה). So the ground it names is not simply solid land. It is land the water has left.
That is why it turns up in the Bible's crossing scenes rather than in its geography:
Moses stretches out his hand and the sea becomes this kind of ground
the priests carrying the ark stand on it in the middle of the Jordan
Elijah strikes the water with his rolled up cloak and the two prophets walk across on it
In each case the ground is dry only because God has driven the water aside, and only for as long as he holds it there.
Because the word names dryness rather than solidity, it can swing between rescue and ruin without changing its meaning. The bared seabed that saves Israel and the emptied channels of the Nile that ruin Egypt are the same act of God seen from opposite ends. Hebrew has a separate and far more common word for the settled dry land people live on (יַבָּשָׁה), and Exodus chapter 14 uses both within two verses of each other, which is part of why scholars read that chapter as woven together from more than one older account.
Nuances
1adry ground laid bare when God drives water back, so that people can walk across where water stood
Exo 14:21Jos 3:17 (2×)Jos 4:18*2Ki 2:8
1bthe dry land as one of the world's great regions, set over against the sea
TranslatabilityDirect
Gen 7:22Hag 2:6
1cdried out: said of waterways that God empties of their water
Ezk 30:12
Disputed
Whether the switch between this word and the ordinary word for dry land within Exodus 14 marks two older sources woven together, or is simply variation in style.
majorityThe alternation is a seam: 14:21 belongs to an older narrative strand and 14:22 and 14:29 to the Priestly strand, so the two words come from two hands.; Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary (OTL; Westminster, 1974); William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1-18 (Anchor Bible 2; Doubleday, 1999)
minorityThe chapter is a unity and the two words are stylistic variation by one writer, not evidence of separate sources.; Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus (Magnes, 1967)
names the ground by the fact that water has been taken off it, so the word carries the drying itself and not only the terrainExo 14:21Ezk 30:12
Both
both name walkable ground with no water standing on it, set over against the seaGen 7:22Hag 2:6
Only dry ground
the English phrase sounds like a fixed feature of the landscape, and gives no hint that this ground may have been under water an hour earlier
“dry land”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“dry”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How ḥaravah differs from similar Hebrew words
יַבָּשָׁהthe ordinary word for dry land: the settled, solid ground people live on, named for what it is rather than for water having been taken off it.
Names ground that has been dried up, the bare surface left after water is removed or has died away, often carrying a sense of drought or desolation.Gen 7:22Ezk 30:12
Used for the exposed riverbed or seabed at the moment water is driven back, the temporary path opened up so people can cross.Exo 14:21Jos 3:172Ki 2:8
Both
Both name the dry seabed laid open at the Red Sea, the ground Israel walked across when God drove the water back.Exo 14:21Exo 14:22
Names the settled, life-supporting land that God brings up out of the waters and calls into being, the firm ground meant to be lived on.Gen 1:9Gen 1:10
Stands as the fixed counterpart of the sea, the solid land as opposed to the water, the place of safety reached out of the deep.Jon 1:9Jon 2:10
חׇרְבָּהa ruin or a wasted place: the same root's word for land emptied of people and left in rubble, not ground that is merely free of water.
Names the ground that appears when water is pushed back, the sea floor or river bed laid bare so that people can walk across on foot.Exo 14:21Jos 3:17Jos 4:182Ki 2:8
Works as the opposite number to the sea, the solid half of the world where creatures that breathe air live and where God's shaking reaches.Gen 7:22Hag 2:6
Can describe one particular waterway emptied out, the channel itself left bare, rather than a countryside that never gets rain.Ezk 30:12
Both
Both name ground with no water on it, and both belong to scenes where God settles whether the water is there at all: he turns a sea into walkable ground, and he turns thirsty country into pools.Exo 14:21Isa 41:18
Both can be the shape a punishment takes, with water withdrawn from a place that used to have it.Ezk 30:12Jer 51:43
Names a whole stretch of country that gets no rain, the kind of land that leaves people and animals dying of thirst.Psa 63:1Ezk 19:13Jer 2:6Job 30:3
Is the standard picture of a ruined nation, a settled country reduced to waste where nobody lives any more.Jer 50:12Jer 51:43Zep 2:13Hos 2:3
Is the hopeless landscape God is pictured reversing, wasteland turned into pools and springs, and the unpromising soil a shoot still manages to grow out of.Psa 107:35Isa 41:18Isa 35:1Isa 53:2
ḥaravah in the other biblical languages
ξηρόςGreek“dried up/withered”the Greek word for "dry," used on its own as a noun for dry land, and the word Hebrews reaches for in saying Israel crossed the Red Sea on dry ground.
Only the Hebrew word names the whole habitable earth as the realm of air-breathing creatures, set over against the water that drowned them. Everything alive "on the dry land" perished in the flood, and the phrase marks who was inside the reach of that judgment.Gen 7:22
Only the Hebrew word is the fixed marker of the Jordan crossings, and its repetition is the point: Israel's priests hold their place in the middle of the riverbed, the water rushes back the moment their feet reach the bank, and generations later Elijah and Elisha walk the same bared channel. The Greek word joins no such chain of stories.Jos 3:17Jos 4:182Ki 2:8
Only the Hebrew word turns dryness into a threat, where drying a nation's waterways is the punishment itself. Egypt loses the river channels that made it rich when God announces he will leave them dry.Ezk 30:12
Both
Both stand alone as a noun meaning simply "the land", the solid half of a world whose other half is the sea. Haggai has God shaking the heavens, the earth, the sea and the dry land, and the same two-part sweep lies behind the complaint that these teachers cross sea and land to win a single convert.Hag 2:6Mat 23:15
Both name the seabed left walkable when God drove the water back at the exodus, and the Greek word is how the New Testament retells what the Hebrew word reports. Exodus says the LORD turned the sea into dry ground; Hebrews says the people passed through as if on dry ground.Exo 14:21Heb 11:29
Only the Greek word describes a living body that has shriveled and stopped working. It is the standard New Testament label for a hand that will not open, and once it names a whole crowd of sick people lying by a pool under that one description. The Hebrew word is only ever ground; it never touches flesh.Mat 12:10Mrk 3:3Luk 6:6Luk 6:8Jhn 5:3
Only the Greek word works as a quality of things that grow, so that dead wood can be set against a living green tree as a picture of what is coming. Jesus asks what will be done to the dry wood if this is what happens to the green.Luk 23:31
What scholars say about ḥaravah
The lexica are unanimous on the sense. BDB, HALOT, and DCH all give a single entry, "dry ground, dry land," for the eight occurrences, deriving the noun from the root chrb, "to be dry, lie waste," the same root behind chorbah "ruin" and chorev "drought." The only usage any of them mark off is Ezekiel 30:12, where the noun stands as the result of the drying ("I will make the Nile channels dry") rather than denoting a tract of land. The word's chief critical interest lies in Exodus 14, where verse 21 uses charavah while verses 22 and 29 use yabbashah. Source critics, Childs and Propp among them, take the alternation as one marker of the chapter's composite makeup, assigning charavah to the older narrative strand and yabbashah to the Priestly strand; Cassuto, reading the chapter as a unity, treats the variation as stylistic. TDOT and NIDOTTE treat the noun under the chrb root together with its cognates, where its comparative freedom from the root's overtones of devastation is the point of interest.
Sources
BDB, s.v. חָרָבָהlexicon
HALOT, s.v. חָרָבָהlexicon
DCH, s.v. חרבהlexicon
TDOT, s.v. חרב (ḥārabh)theological-dictionary
NIDOTTE, s.v. חרבtheological-dictionary
Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary (OTL; Westminster, 1974)commentary
William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1-18 (Anchor Bible 2; Doubleday, 1999)commentary
Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus (Magnes, 1967)commentary