StrongerBible

yagon

יָגוֹן

HebrewH3015“sorrow, grief, ...”

Appears 14 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 42:38Gen 44:31Est 9:22Psa 13:2(3)Psa 31:10(11)Psa 107:39Psa 116:3Isa 35:10Isa 51:11Jer 8:18Jer 20:18Jer 31:13Jer 45:3Ezk 23:33
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeyaw-GONEnoun

What yagon means

sorrow: the deep, inward grief of the heart, the lasting kind that quietly wears a person down

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This word names sorrow felt on the inside: grief that settles in the heart and stays. It is not the public ritual of mourning with torn clothes and ashes (אֵבֶל), and it is not a sharp physical wound (מַכְאוֹב). It is the quiet, wearing sadness a person carries within, often for a long time, after loss or disaster.

The Bible keeps tying it to the slow eroding of a life. One psalm says "my life is consumed" by it and "my years" pass in sighing (Psalm 31:10); another feels it "in my heart" all day long (Psalm 13:2). It pairs again and again with sighing (אֲנָחָה), with distress, and with the hard toil (עָמָל) that produces it (Jeremiah 20:18). Later Jewish writers went so far as to say that grief like this can shorten a life. It is the sorrow that quietly uses a person up.

In the Hebrew, this grief is always something that comes upon a person from outside, never something they take up by choice. Jacob fears it will carry his gray head to the grave over a lost son (Genesis 42:38). Jeremiah names it as the whole weight of his calling as a prophet (Jeremiah 8:18; 20:18), and passes the same word to his scribe Baruch (Jeremiah 45:3). In Ezekiel it is even poured out as a punishment, the grief that fills a cup of judgment (Ezekiel 23:33).

Its steady opposite is joy, never merely relief or healing. That is why the prophets reach for this exact word to name the thing God promises to undo: "sorrow and sighing will flee away" (Isaiah 35:10; 51:11), and "I will turn their mourning into joy and give them gladness for their sorrow" (Jeremiah 31:13). Even the book of Esther, which never mentions God directly, borrows the phrase when the month is "turned from sorrow to joy" (Esther 9:22). It is at once Israel's deepest word for inner grief and the very grief the coming age is pledged to end.

Gen 42:38Gen 44:31Est 9:22Psa 13:2(3)Psa 31:10(11)Psa 107:39Psa 116:3Isa 35:10Isa 51:11Jer 8:18Jer 20:18Jer 31:13

What scholars say about yagon

The lexical consensus is firm: BDB glosses יָגוֹן simply as "grief, sorrow," deriving it from a root יגה "to suffer" attested only in the Niphal, Piel, and Hiphil (never the Qal), so the grief it names is always inflicted rather than self-chosen, a point TWOT #839 draws out by noting Lamentations 3:33's insistence that God "does not afflict willingly." HALOT and the 18th edition of Gesenius render it "grief, sorrow, distress" ("Kummer, Gram, Schmerz"), and SDBH files it under the domain of sadness and sorrow as a deep, often prolonged inner state rather than a ritual act. The word's profile emerges from its collocations: it pairs with sighing (אֲנָחָה), distress (צָרָה), toil (עָמָל, Jeremiah 20:18), and pain (מַכְאוֹב, Jeremiah 45:3), and stands opposed to joy and gladness (שִׂמְחָה, שָׂשׂוֹן), never to mere healing or release, locating it squarely in the field of mood and emotion. Psalm 31:10 ("my life is consumed in grief") and Ben Sira 38:18 ("from grief comes death," catalogued in DCH alongside the Qumran Hodayot attestations) make explicit that this is chronic, life-shortening sorrow. Two matters remain debated, neither touching the settled meaning. The etymology is uncertain: BDB, HALOT, Klein, and Zorell keep יגה distinct from יגע "to be weary," comparing Arabic wajiya "to be footsore, sore," while a minority (Barth, Grimme, Delekat) treats יגה as a secondary variant of יגע, from which "grief" would have grown out of an older "wearying"; the Niphal participle נוּגֶה (Lamentations 1:4; Zephaniah 3:18) points to an original initial waw and favors the first view. And the Septuagint's renderings vary tellingly: ὀδύνη (anguish, pain) is the default and dominant choice, λύπη (sorrow) a minority one, and πένθος (mourning) appears in the reversal formulas (Esther 9:22; Jeremiah 31:13 in the Greek), suggesting Second-Temple translators heard the word as affective and bodily rather than purely emotional. The commentators trace a canonical arc from lament (Jacob's, the psalmists', Jeremiah's, Baruch's) to reversal, since four of the fourteen occurrences name the very grief God pledges to turn into joy: Levenson and Berlin read Esther 9:22 as a deliberate echo of Jeremiah 31:13, Holladay reads the Jeremiah occurrences as one trajectory answered by the Book of Consolation, and Childs and Paul treat the identical Isaiah 35:10 // 51:11 line as the book's signature reversal formula. A textual note: some older concordances list Proverbs 17:21, but the Masoretic text there reads תּוּגָה, not יָגוֹן, leaving exactly fourteen occurrences.

Where scholars disagree about yagon

The word's derivation: whether the root יגה "to grieve" is distinct from יגע "to toil, be weary" or a secondary variant of it. This concerns the word's origin, not its established meaning.

  • majorityיגה "to grieve" is a root of its own, distinct from יגע "to be weary," comparing Arabic wajiya "to be footsore, sore"; the Niphal participle נוּגֶה (Lamentations 1:4; Zephaniah 3:18) points to an original initial waw supporting this.; BDB, 387, s.v. I. יגה; HALOT, s.vv. יגה, יָגוֹן; Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (Carta, 1987), s.vv. יגה, יגע
  • minorityיגה is a secondary phonetic variant of יגע, so the sense "grief" developed out of an earlier "wearying, exhausting."; Jacob Barth, Etymologische Studien (Leipzig, 1893); L. Delekat, 'Zum hebraischen Worterbuch,' Vetus Testamentum 14 (1964)
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

  • Brown-Driver-Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1907), 387, s.v. יָגוֹן and I. יגהlexicon
  • Koehler-Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Brill, 1994-2000), s.vv. יגה, יָגוֹןlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. IV (Sheffield, 1998), s.vv. יגה, יָגוֹןlexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Handworterbuch uber das Alte Testament, 18th ed. (Springer, 1987-2013), s.vv. יגה, יָגוֹןlexicon
  • Milton C. Fisher, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Moody, 1980), entry #839 (יגה, 839a יָגוֹן)theological-dictionary
  • Reinier de Blois (ed.), Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (United Bible Societies), s.v. יגוןlexicon
  • Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (Carta, 1987), s.vv. יגה, יגון, יגעlexicon
  • William L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1 and Jeremiah 2, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1986, 1989), ad locc.commentary
  • Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20 and Jeremiah 37-52, Anchor Bible 21A, 21C (Doubleday, 1999, 2004), ad locc.commentary
  • Jon D. Levenson, Esther, Old Testament Library (Westminster John Knox, 1997), 128-30commentary
  • Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1-59: A Continental Commentary (Fortress, 1988), ad Psalm 13commentary
  • Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1979), on Ezekiel 23; Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 21-37, Anchor Bible 22A (Doubleday, 1997), ad Ezekiel 23:33commentary
  • Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (JPS, 1989), ad Genesis 42:38commentary
  • Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah 40-66: Translation and Commentary (Eerdmans, 2012), ad 51:11commentary
  • T. Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Peeters, 2009), s.vv. ὀδύνη, λύπη, πένθοςlexicon

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

All attested forms of יָגוֹן

m s absolute

יָגוֹן, יָּגוֹן

Gen 42:38, Gen 44:31, Psa 13:2, Psa 31:10, Psa 107:39, Psa 116:3, Isa 35:10, Isa 51:11

m s construct

מִיגוֹנָם

Jer 31:13