the flavor of a food or drink: what it tastes like on the tongue.
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
This is the plain, physical sense: what something tastes like. It is the word used of the manna, which one account compares to wafers made with honey and another to cakes baked in rich oil, and it is the word Job reaches for when he asks whether anything so bland is worth eating without salt.
Notice that it names a property the food has, not the act of eating. The tasting itself belongs to the matching verb (טָעַם); this word is what the tongue finds there.
Because flavor is something a thing holds onto, it can stand for more than food. Jeremiah pictures Moab as wine left to settle and never poured from one jar to another, so its flavor has stayed in it and its smell has not changed. The point is not the wine but the nation: never shaken, and so never changed.
Nuances
1athe flavor of a particular food or drink, usually described by comparing it to something else.
Exo 16:31Num 11:8 (2×)Job 6:6
1bthe flavor a thing keeps over time, used as a picture of a character that has never been disturbed.
Jer 48:11
2
good sense: the sound judgment a person shows in sizing up a situation and acting fittingly.
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
The step from the tongue to the mind is short in Hebrew, and English still makes it too: we speak of a person of taste, or of a remark in poor taste. Israel took that step further and used this word for discernment itself, the ability to tell what is fitting the way a palate tells what is good.
So it can be prayed for, praised, ruined, or taken away:
The psalmist asks God to teach him good sense along with knowledge.
David blesses Abigail for the good sense that stopped him from shedding blood.
Proverbs says a beautiful woman without it is a gold ring in a pig's snout.
Job says God strips it from the elders who are supposed to have the most of it.
There is also an unsettling use of the word. When David hid from a foreign king by acting insane, the text says he changed his sense in their eyes. He did not merely behave oddly; he made himself look like a man whose judgment had gone. The heading of the psalm that recalls the scene uses the same phrase.
Nuances
2athe good judgment a person has, shows, or lacks in what they decide and say.
1Sa 25:33Job 12:20Psa 119:66Pro 11:22Pro 26:16
2bthe sense a person seems to have in the eyes of onlookers, so that changing it means appearing to have lost one's mind.
1Sa 21:13(14)Psa 34:0(1)*
3
an official order: the binding decision a king or governing authority hands down.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
Once a word can mean sound judgment, it is a short step to the decision that judgment produces. In Jonah, the king of Nineveh and his nobles proclaim a fast for the whole city, and the proclamation goes out "by order of" the king: by his considered decision.
This is the only place in Hebrew where the word carries that force, but the usage is thoroughly at home in Aramaic, where the matching word (טְעֵם) is the ordinary term for a royal decree all through Ezra and Daniel. Scholars generally read the phrase in Jonah as reflecting that administrative language.
names the good sense a person's conduct displays, so altering it means looking like someone whose mind has gone1Sa 21:13
Both
both describe how a person comes across to the people watchingPsa 34:0
Only behavior
English "behavior" describes outward conduct only and says nothing about the judgment behind it
“judgment”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“decree”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How ta'am differs from similar Hebrew words
טָעַםthe verb of this same family: to taste something, and by extension to find out for oneself what it is like. This word is the noun, naming what is tasted or the judgment such perception stands for.
Names the flavor a thing has, a quality that can be described, compared with another flavor, or found to be missing altogether.Exo 16:31Num 11:8Job 6:6Jer 48:11
Names good sense as a settled quality a person either has or lacks: the ability to size up a situation and answer it well, and something God can strip from those who once had it.1Sa 25:33Psa 119:66Pro 11:22Pro 26:16Job 12:20
Names the way a person carries himself in public, the bearing others read off him, which David deliberately altered so he would pass for a madman.1Sa 21:13
Names an official ruling handed down by those in charge, the sense English Bibles give as "decree".Jon 3:7
Both
Both belong to the mouth and its food: one is the tasting, the other the flavor that meets it.1Sa 14:29Exo 16:31
Both carry the language of tasting over to the mind, so that judging something well is spoken of as getting a taste of it: a woman who finds her trading good, and the good sense a person asks to be taught.Pro 31:18Psa 119:66
Names the act itself, something a person does with the mouth, which is why a fast or a sworn abstinence is described as refusing to do it.1Sa 14:241Sa 14:432Sa 3:35
Works as a trial run: finding out first-hand what something is really like. The mouth is set beside the ear as the part of us that sifts what comes to it, and the same move becomes an invitation to try the LORD and see for yourself.Job 12:11Job 34:3Psa 34:8
Can name the loss of the ability itself, an old man who still eats and drinks but no longer registers any of it.2Sa 19:35
מַטְעָםthe savory dish itself, the tasty food someone cooks up (the meal Jacob carried in to Isaac); this word is not the food but the flavor such food has.
names the concrete dish itself, food prepared to be savory, rather than the quality of tasteGen 27:4Gen 27:9Gen 27:31
the rich, coveted fare of the powerful, food to be desired or else distrustedPro 23:3Pro 23:6
שֶׂכֶלgood sense as insight that produces success, the practical shrewdness that gets things right; this word pictures the same soundness of judgment as something perceived, the way a flavor is perceived.
It is first of all flavor on the tongue, the taste of food or of wine, and every mental use grows out of that physical picture.Exo 16:31Num 11:8Job 6:6Jer 48:11
It can name an official order given by a ruler, the royal word that settles what everyone must do.Jon 3:7
It can name the bearing a person shows in public, something that can be put on or altered at will, as when David acted out madness to escape a foreign king.1Sa 21:13Psa 34:0
Both
Both name the good sense a person shows in handling a tense moment well, and both are used of Abigail in the same chapter: she is introduced as a woman of sound sense, then blessed for the judgment that kept David from shedding blood.1Sa 25:331Sa 25:3
Both can be absent from a person, and the proverbs and poetry treat that lack as what makes someone contemptible or blind.Pro 11:22Job 17:4
Both are treated as something granted rather than merely worked up, asked of God in prayer or given by him to a ruler.Psa 119:661Ch 22:12
It is a settled personal quality attached to someone in a formal description, the mark of a person trusted with office: a counselor, a scribe brought back from exile, a king fit to build the temple.1Ch 26:14Ezr 8:182Ch 2:12
It covers making something clear to other people, the sense drawn out of a public reading so the hearers actually grasp it.Neh 8:8
It is repeatedly tied to reward: it wins favor with God and people, and it keeps its owner alive.Pro 3:4Pro 13:15Pro 16:22Psa 111:10
It can be turned to bad ends, since the same shrewdness that guides a wise man also makes a deceiver effective.Dan 8:25
בִּינָהunderstanding as the ability to tell one thing from another and see how things fit; this word is narrower, the good sense a person displays in what they decide and do.
Its plain, everyday sense is flavor in the mouth: what manna tasted like, what a cake baked in oil tasted like, whether a bland food has any taste at all.Exo 16:31Num 11:8Job 6:6
From flavor it stretches to a thing keeping its own character over time, the way wine left undisturbed on its sediment holds its taste unchanged.Jer 48:11
It names the manner a person shows in public, which is why it is something that can be put on deliberately: David escapes by altering his.1Sa 21:13Psa 34:0
It names an official order handed down by a ruler, the word standing behind a royal decree.Jon 3:7
Where it does mean good sense, it is practical tact in handling a person or a moment rather than grasp of an idea: knowing what to say, when to speak up, and when to hold back.1Sa 25:33Pro 11:22Pro 26:16
Both
Both name a mental capacity that comes from God and can be withdrawn by him, so that a ruler prays to be given it while a creature or an elder is left without it.1Ch 22:12Job 39:17Psa 119:66Job 12:20
Both name the good sense a person shows in real life, and both are used to mark the lack of it as folly.Isa 27:11Pro 9:6Pro 11:22Pro 26:16
Wisdom teaching treats it as a prize to be chased down, paid for, and never traded away: the reader is told to cry out for it, to buy it, and to spend everything else to get it.Pro 2:3Pro 4:7Pro 23:23
It is the word for God-given insight that unlocks what is hidden, such as the meaning of a vision nobody else can read.Dan 8:15Dan 9:22Dan 10:1
It is wisdom's standing partner, so that the two words together name the whole mental equipment of a king or a nation.Deu 4:61Ch 22:12Isa 11:2
Poetry can speak of it almost as a person or a place: something hunted for like buried ore, or greeted as a member of the family.Job 28:12Job 28:20Pro 7:4
דַּעַתknowledge, what a person has come to know; the two stand side by side in Psalm 119:66, where the psalmist asks for both the knowing and the good sense to use it.
Its plain use is physical flavour, what food actually tastes like on the tongue.Exo 16:31Num 11:8Job 6:6
It names the good sense a person shows outwardly in the moment, so it can be faked by someone pretending to be mad, or stripped from leaders who once had it.1Sa 21:13Job 12:20
It can even mean a formal order handed down by a ruler, the word for a royal decree that everyone must obey.Jon 3:7
Both
Both name something a person needs in order to live well and can ask God to teach them, which is why one prayer requests the two side by side.Psa 119:66
Both can be conspicuously absent from a person, and the wisdom writings treat the lack as a fault and the presence as something to bless.Pro 1:22Pro 15:14Pro 11:221Sa 25:33
This is knowledge as content: a body of what is known that can be taught, spoken, stored up, and passed on to someone else.Pro 10:14Pro 15:7Psa 94:10
It is used of what God himself knows and gives away, a knowing so far above human reach that a person can only marvel at it.Psa 139:6Job 21:22Pro 2:6
It can mean simple awareness of what one is doing, which is why a killing done without it counts as an accident rather than murder and the killer may flee to a city of refuge.Deu 4:42Deu 19:4Jos 20:3
It also covers hands-on skill, the practical know-how of a craftsman working in metal, stone, and cloth.Exo 31:3Exo 35:311Ki 7:14
Names the plain flavor of food and drink, which the other word never does: the manna compared to honey wafers and to cakes baked in oil, the blandness of egg white, and the wine of Moab that kept its flavor because it was never poured off.Exo 16:31Num 11:8Job 6:6Jer 48:11
Names something a person can actually have, so it can be asked for and praised: the psalmist prays to be taught good sense along with knowledge, and David blesses Abigail for the good sense that kept him from bloodshed.Psa 119:661Sa 25:33
Can mean the sense a person seems to have in the eyes of onlookers, so that changing it means putting on the look of someone whose mind has gone, as David did before a foreign king.1Sa 21:13
Stretches once to an order handed down by an authority, the proclamation of a fast issued on the word of the king of Nineveh and his nobles.Jon 3:7
Both
Both size up whether a person has any sound sense, from opposite ends: one names the good judgment a beautiful woman is said to be without, the other names the emptiness of sense God saw in Samaria's prophets.Pro 11:22Jer 23:13
Both turn up where God is the one passing the verdict on people who are supposed to be trustworthy: God strips the good sense from the elders, and God announces what he found in the prophets.Job 12:20Jer 23:13
Both judge speech rather than deeds: one is the sound answer the sluggard imagines he can outweigh, the other the worthless message God found the prophets giving.Pro 26:16Jer 23:13
Exists only as a fault laid to someone's account or spotted in someone, never as a quality a person carries: the narrator says Job never laid it at God's door, and Job says God lays no such charge on anyone.Job 1:22Job 24:12
Names something offensive, not merely a lapse of sense: God lists it as what he saw in the prophets of Samaria, one line before naming something worse in the prophets of Jerusalem, so it sits among charges of misconduct.Jer 23:13
Both of its uses in Job put God in the frame, asking whether God himself can be charged with such a thing, a question the other word never raises.Job 1:22Job 24:12
ta'am in the other biblical languages
טְעֵםAramaic“command”the Aramaic word of the same spelling, whose main use is the royal decree; it is the everyday administrative term in Ezra and Daniel, and it lies behind the one Hebrew use of this word for a king's order.
Only the Hebrew word is the everyday word for how something tastes, and it normally describes a flavor by comparing it to something else: the manna tasted like a wafer made with honey, or like cakes baked in oil, and food without salt is said to have no flavor at all.Exo 16:31Num 11:8Job 6:6
Only the Hebrew word turns flavor into a picture of character: wine left settled on its dregs and never poured from vessel to vessel keeps its flavor, and that undisturbed flavor stands for Moab, comfortable and never uprooted.Jer 48:11
Only the Hebrew word names the sense a person appears to have in front of onlookers, something that can be deliberately put on: David alters his in the presence of a foreign king in order to pass for a madman and escape.1Sa 21:13Psa 34:0
Only the Hebrew word treats good sense as a lasting quality of a person, one that God can teach and can also strip away, and whose absence is what makes someone a fool in the sayings of the wise.Psa 119:66Job 12:20Pro 11:22Pro 26:16
Both
Both words can name the taste of food or drink. The Hebrew reports what the manna tasted like; the Aramaic sets Belshazzar's order for the temple vessels at the moment he was tasting the wine.Exo 16:31Dan 5:2
Both words can name the sound judgment a person shows in sizing up a situation and answering fittingly. Abigail is blessed for hers, and Daniel answers the king's executioner with tact and discretion rather than protest.1Sa 25:33Psa 119:66Dan 2:14
Both words can name the binding order of a ruler, cited as the authority behind whatever is announced next, and the two languages use the very same phrasing: Nineveh fasts by order of the king, and the temple is rebuilt by order of Cyrus.Jon 3:7Ezr 6:14Ezr 6:1
Only the Aramaic word is the working vocabulary of imperial government, turning up over and over in the set phrase for issuing an order: a king halting the building work, a governor demanding to know who authorized it, a decree that the house of God be rebuilt, or a command that everyone bow at the sound of the music.Ezr 4:19Ezr 5:3Ezr 6:8Dan 3:10Dan 6:26
Only the Aramaic word becomes part of a person's job title, literally the master of the order, meaning the commanding officer or chancellor who writes to the king on the province's behalf and receives the king's reply.Ezr 4:8Ezr 4:9Ezr 4:17
Only the Aramaic word appears in the idiom for giving a ruler his due regard, so that setting no regard upon the king is the charge brought against men who will not treat his command as binding on them.Dan 3:12Dan 6:13
Only the Aramaic word places the order of God in the same breath as the orders of Persian kings, so that the temple is finished by the order of the God of Israel and by the order of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes.Ezr 6:14
αἴσθησιςGreek“insight”the Greek noun for discernment, built like this word on the idea of perceiving by the senses; it covers the good-judgment side but never the flavor of food.
The Hebrew word's plain, everyday use is the flavor of food on the tongue, normally described by comparing one food to another.Exo 16:31Num 11:8Job 6:6
That flavor can stand for a settled character: wine left undisturbed keeps its taste, and the picture is of a nation that has never been shaken out of its complacency.Jer 48:11
It can also name the sense a person appears to have in the eyes of onlookers, so that altering it means putting on an act and seeming to have lost one's mind.1Sa 21:13
In one place it leaves perception behind entirely and names an official order, the binding decision a king and his nobles hand down.Jon 3:7
Both
Both words take a word for bodily perception and use it for the ability to size up a situation and judge rightly, so "discernment" or "good sense" fits each of them in their moral use.Php 1:91Sa 25:33
In both, this discernment is treated as something a person can be given or can lose rather than a fixed trait: it is prayed for, asked of God as a thing to be taught, and described as taken away.Php 1:9Psa 119:66Job 12:20
Behind the Greek word stands perception through the senses in general, not one sense in particular, so the picture it carries is of a person taking in a situation accurately rather than a tongue judging a flavor. Nothing about food or eating clings to it.Php 1:9
Its whole use in the New Testament is moral and spiritual: it stands beside "knowledge" in a prayer that a church's love would keep growing, so it names the discernment that helps people recognize what is genuinely best. It is never used of a physical sensation and never of an official ruling.Php 1:9
δόγμαGreek“decree”the standard Greek word for an official decree; it matches only the order sense, with none of the taste or good-judgment range.
first of all means flavor in the mouth, what something actually tastes like when you eat it: manna like wafers made with honey, or like the taste of fresh oil.Exo 16:31Num 11:8Job 6:6
means good sense or discernment in a person, the inward faculty that judges well and can be taught, lacked, or taken away in old age.Psa 119:66Pro 11:22Job 12:201Sa 25:33
can mean the way a person carries himself, so that David is said to change his when he feigns madness before a foreign king.1Sa 21:13
keeps the flavor idea alive as a picture of a nation left undisturbed: Moab has settled like wine on its dregs, and its taste has stayed in it unchanged.Jer 48:11
Both
both can name an official order issued by a ruler and binding on everyone under him: the king of Nineveh and his nobles publish one, and Caesar Augustus publishes one for the whole empire.Jon 3:7Luk 2:1Act 17:7
names a settled ruling as a fixed text that can be written down, carried from city to city, and handed over for people to keep, so the wording itself is the thing that binds.Act 16:4Col 2:14
covers religious and legal regulations, not only orders from a ruler: the body of rules attached to the law is called by this word, and Paul says Christ abolished it.Eph 2:15Col 2:14
can be broken, and breaking it is a criminal charge: the accusers at Thessalonica say the believers are acting against the emperor's rulings by naming another king.Act 17:7
γεύωGreek“to taste”the Greek verb for tasting; it names the act, where this Hebrew word names the flavor found.
What scholars say about ta'am
The standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH) treat טַעַם as a single noun from the root טעם whose range runs from gustatory flavor to intellectual discernment, a development paralleled in Akkadian ṭēmu ("report, instruction, understanding, plan") and in the Aramaic cognate טְעֵם. The concrete sense predominates where food is in view (Exod 16:31;Num 11:8, twice; Job 6:6) and, by extension, in the wine imagery of Jer 48:11, where Moab has stood undisturbed on its lees so that "its taste has remained in it." The transferred sense, discernment or good judgment, is at home in wisdom material (Ps 119:66;Prov 11:22; 26:16; Job 12:20) and in the narrative appraisal of Abigail's intervention (1 Sam 25:33). The idiom שנה את טעמו at 1 Sam 21:14 (English 21:13) and in the superscription of Ps 34 is generally rendered "feign madness"; טעם there denotes the soundness of mind that observers perceive, which is why the lexica keep it with the discernment sense rather than positing a separate homonym. The single occurrence of מטעם in Jonah 3:7 belongs to the administrative vocabulary of Imperial Aramaic (cf. the recurrent טעם of Ezra 4-7 and Dan 3-6) and is routinely catalogued among the Aramaisms of Jonah; Wagner lists it as such, and commentators including Sasson weigh its bearing on the book's linguistic profile without treating the meaning itself as uncertain. No lexicon splits the word into unrelated homonyms; the three groupings offered here follow the sense divisions of BDB and HALOT rather than positing separate roots.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. טַעַםlexicon
BDB, s.v. טַעַםlexicon
DCH, s.v. טַעַםlexicon
Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), s.v. טעםdictionary
New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDOTTE), s.v. טעםdictionary
Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1-15, NICOT (2004)commentary
David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary (1989)commentary
P. Kyle McCarter Jr., I Samuel, Anchor Bible (1980)commentary
Jack M. Sasson, Jonah, Anchor Bible (1990)commentary
Max Wagner, Die lexikalischen und grammatikalischen Aramaismen im alttestamentlichen Hebräisch, BZAW 96 (1966)monograph