sharp, cut: a sharp-toothed threshing sledge, or a body cut and mutilated
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
At its root this word means simply cut. As a farming term it names the threshing sledge, a heavy board set with sharp stones or iron teeth that a farmer dragged over cut grain to tear the kernels loose from the straw. Isaiah and Amos use it that way, and Job pictures a great beast dragging its jagged underside through the mud like one of these sledges.
The same idea of a cut lies behind its one other use in this range: an animal that is maimed, its body cut or mutilated, and so unfit to be offered to God. A near cousin is the ordinary word for a threshing sledge, מוֹרַג, which Isaiah sets right beside this one.
Nuances
1aa threshing sledge: a heavy sharp-toothed board dragged over grain to cut the kernels loose
Job 41:30(22)*Isa 28:27Isa 41:15Amo 1:3
1bmaimed: an animal cut or mutilated in body, and so unfit for sacrifice
Lev 22:22
2
diligent: keen and industrious in effort, the opposite of the lazy
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
When the sharpness of a cutting edge is applied to a person, it becomes the picture of someone keen and hard-working. Proverbs uses this word for the diligent worker, always set against the lazy: the hand of the diligent grows rich while the slack hand stays poor, and the plans of the diligent lead to plenty. The image is of a person with an edge, focused and industrious, not dull or idle.
Pro 10:4Pro 12:24Pro 12:27Pro 13:4Pro 21:5
3
gold: a poetic word for the precious metal
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
This is a poetic, less common word for gold, chosen by poets and wisdom writers in place of the everyday term זָהָב. Proverbs repeatedly ranks wisdom and understanding above it, calling them better than gold, and Zechariah pictures the city of Tyre heaping up gold like dirt in the streets. In one difficult line a psalm describes a dove whose wings gleam with this gold.
Scholars link it to the idea of something dug or cut out of the ground, and it may hint at the yellow sheen of refined gold, but for a reader its plain sense is simply gold.
From the idea of a cut this word also grew the sense of a decision, much the way English speaks of a matter being cut and dried or a verdict being handed down. It appears only in Joel's cry, "multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision," where the prophet names the place of God's final verdict on the nations. The same root gives Hebrew its verb for deciding or determining.
Jol 3:14(4:14) (2×)
5
a moat or trench cut around a city for defense
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
In its rarest use the word names something cut into the ground, a moat or trench dug around a city wall for defense. This is how most read its single appearance in Daniel's prophecy of a rebuilt Jerusalem, with its open square and its moat.
The reading is not certain. Some tie the word instead to the sense of a firm decision, taking the line to mean the city will be rebuilt in a fixed and determined span of time rather than describing a physical trench.
Dan 9:25*
Disputed
What the word means in Daniel 9:25, its only occurrence in this sense.
majorityA moat or defensive trench cut around the rebuilt city, so the line reads that Jerusalem will be rebuilt with a public square and a moat.; HALOT, s.v. חרוץ; BDB, s.v. חרוץ
minorityA sense carried over from the root meaning to decide or determine, so the phrase describes the rebuilding as fixed within a firmly determined stretch of time rather than naming a physical trench.; TDOT, s.v. חרץ
It is a rare, heightened word that belongs to poetry and to the sayings of the wise, not to law, record keeping, or narrative.Pro 8:10Pro 16:16Psa 68:13
Nobody ever works it, weighs it, or builds with it. It shows up as an image: a gleam on a bird's wings, or a heap so large it counts for nothing.Psa 68:13Zec 9:3
The spelling is shared with unrelated words, so a reader knows gold is meant only from the company it keeps, usually silver or jewels standing alongside it.Pro 3:14Pro 8:19
Both
Both name the precious metal gold, and both are paired with silver as the two things that together add up to wealth.Gen 13:2Pro 3:14Zec 9:3
Both work as the measuring stick for value, so that saying something is better than gold is the strongest way to price it.Psa 19:10Psa 119:127Pro 8:19Pro 16:16
This is the everyday word for gold as a material that people actually handle: metal that is weighed out, hammered, cast, and overlaid onto objects.Exo 25:11Exo 25:311Ki 6:22
It is the word used when gold changes hands in real events: wedding gifts, royal tribute, plunder carried off, payments made to buy off an invading army.Gen 24:531Ki 10:102Ki 18:14
It carries the whole biblical argument about idols, since a god made of gold is the standing example of something people made and then bowed to.Exo 32:31Psa 115:4Isa 40:19
It can be graded by quality, so the text can speak of gold that has been refined or purified and of gold that is merely gold.Job 28:17Pro 17:3Zec 13:9
מוֹרַגthe standard word for a threshing sledge; this word is the "sharp" one Isaiah pairs with it
חָרוּץHaruz is a biblical name written exactly like חָרוּץ, the common Hebrew word grouped here.
Names a sharp thing rather than an action: the heavy toothed sledge dragged over grain, and the jagged pieces of pottery that mark the mud where a monster drags itself.Isa 41:15Amo 1:3Job 41:30
Describes a kind of person, the keen and hard-working one whom Proverbs sets against the lazy; this word is a character label, which the verb never is.Pro 10:4Pro 12:24Pro 13:4Pro 21:5
Serves as a poetic name for gold, the metal itself, weighed against wisdom or piled up as a city's wealth.Pro 3:14Pro 8:19Zec 9:3
Names something cut into a surface: a defensive ditch dug around the rebuilt city, and an animal whose body has been cut about and so may not be brought to the altar.Dan 9:25Lev 22:22
Both
Both reach the idea of a settled decision that cannot be reopened: one names the place where the verdict falls, the other announces the ruin as already decreed and therefore certain.Jol 3:14Isa 10:23Dan 9:27
Both keep the picture of a cutting edge behind whatever they describe, whether it is the studded board that slices grain loose or the whetting of a tongue before it bites.Isa 28:27Exo 11:7
Puts a named agent behind the decision, saying who fixed the outcome: the king's own words sentence himself, and God sets the boundary of a human life.1Ki 20:40Job 14:5
Applies the sharpening to speech: not even a dog will whet its tongue against Israel, and no one wags a tongue against Joshua's returning army.Exo 11:7Jos 10:21
Carries the sense of moving at once on a decision, the signal in the treetops telling David to strike without hesitating.2Sa 5:24
Its "gold" sense is spelled exactly like unrelated words for "sharp" and "diligent," so a reader knows gold is meant only from the silver or treasure standing beside it.Psa 68:13Zec 9:3
Names gold plainly, making no claim about grade or source: wisdom is simply worth more than "gold," and Tyre simply heaps "gold" up like street dirt.Pro 16:16Zec 9:3
Both
Both are rare, poetic substitutes for the ordinary word for gold, reserved for elevated verse rather than the plain metal that is weighed out, cast, and overlaid.Pro 8:19Job 28:19
Both serve as a benchmark of supreme worth, the standard wisdom is declared to surpass and that cannot buy it.Pro 3:14Job 28:16
Marks the very finest grade of gold, called "pure" and tied to the famed sources of Ophir and Uphaz, so it claims top quality and not just the metal.Job 28:19Psa 45:9Dan 10:5
The poets' choice for imagery of unmatched beauty and its loss: a beloved's head like finest gold, a bride adorned in it, and the finest gold gone dim over a ruined city.Sng 5:11Psa 45:9Lam 4:1
Names a thing that already is sharp rather than the act of making it so: the cutting tool itself. It labels the new threshing sledge with its row of edges that strips grain from stalk.Isa 41:15Isa 28:27Amo 1:3
Ranges far past the idea of sharpness into senses that have nothing to do with a cutting edge, since the same spelling carries unrelated words. It names gold as a precious metal and a fixed decree or settled decision.Psa 68:13Jol 3:14Dan 9:25
Both
Both belong to the world of the cutting edge. One word describes the implement that is sharp; the other describes the act of making a weapon sharp, so each leans on the same idea of a keen, biting edge.Isa 41:15Deu 32:41Isa 5:28
Is the action of putting an edge on something, and its favorite picture is the tongue: speech honed into a weapon that wounds like a blade or a drawn arrow.Psa 64:3Psa 140:3Pro 25:18
Stretches the same picture of driving an edge in deep to the work of teaching, telling parents to impress God's words on their children by repeating them over and over.Deu 6:7
ḥaruts in the other biblical languages
χρυσόςGreek“gold”the ordinary Greek word for gold, matching this word's poetic "gold" sense
σπουδήGreek“diligence”the Greek word for diligence or earnest effort, matching this word's "diligent" sense
What scholars say about ḥaruts
Standard lexica treat חָרוּץ as a cluster of homonyms tied to the root ḥrṣ "to cut, sharpen, decide." BDB distinguishes a sense "sharp, sharpened" (the threshing sledge, and in Lev 22:22 "mutilated") with its metaphorical extension "diligent"; a poetic word "gold" (possibly cognate to Akkadian ḫurāṣu); "decision" (Joel 4:14 MT); and "trench, moat" (Dan 9:25). HALOT and DCH follow a similar division. The etymology of the "gold" sense is contested, some deriving it from ḥrṣ "cut/dig out" and others from an inherited Semitic term for the metal, but the sense "gold" itself is not in doubt. Dan 9:25 חָרוּץ is the most disputed occurrence, read either as a defensive moat or, from the root's "decide" sense, as a firmly determined period.