StrongerBible

yaphah

יָפָה

HebrewH3302“beautiful, beautify, ...”

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Psa 45:2(3)Sng 4:10Sng 7:1(2)Sng 7:6(7)Jer 4:30Jer 10:4Ezk 16:13Ezk 31:7
Root family
Word studyyaw-FAHverb

What yaphah means

to be beautiful, or to make beautiful: to have a loveliness that draws the eye, or to put that loveliness on something else

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is the verb behind the Bible's ordinary family of beauty words. The adjective (יָפֶה) labels a person or thing as beautiful, and the noun (יֳפִי) names beauty itself, but the verb puts beauty in motion: something is beautiful, grows beautiful, or is made beautiful by somebody. It is rare, only eight verses in the whole Hebrew Bible, and every one of them is memorable.

Half of those verses are praise spoken out loud to another person's face. Three times in the Song of Songs a lover breaks off to exclaim how beautiful the other is: once about her love, once about her feet in sandals, once about her whole self. A royal wedding song goes further and doubles the word, a way of saying the king is not merely beautiful but the most beautiful man alive.

The other half is beauty received or handed out rather than simply possessed. In Ezekiel an abandoned baby girl grows into a beautiful woman because someone took her in and cared for her, and a towering cedar becomes beautiful because underground water keeps feeding it. Then twice in Jeremiah somebody sets out to make something beautiful and the effort collapses: workmen cover a wooden idol with silver and gold so it will look like a god, and a city already under sentence paints her eyes for lovers who now want her dead.

Holding those two halves together is the point of the word. Beauty here is not a fixed property but something that can arrive, be given, or be faked, which is why one verb can carry a lover's delight and a prophet's contempt.

Nuances

1ato be beautiful: to be lovely to look at or to take in
TranslatabilityDirect
Sng 4:10Sng 7:1(2)Sng 7:6(7)Ezk 31:7
1bto grow beautiful: to become lovely as someone or something develops
Ezk 16:13
1cto be beautiful beyond anyone else: the word doubled to raise the praise to its highest pitch
Psa 45:2(3)
Psa 45:2

Whether the reduplicated (pealal) form at Ps 45:3 MT (Eng. 45:2) is a genuine intensive of יפה or a corruption to be emended to the ordinary form.

  • majorityThe reduplicated form is a legitimate intensive, comparable to the reduplicated adjective יְפֵה־פִיָּה at Jer 46:20, and the consonantal text should stand.; HALOT, s.v. יפה I; DCH, s.v. יפה; Joüon and Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, §88Mb
  • minorityThe form is corrupt and should be emended to the ordinary form of the verb.; BDB, s.v. יפה (following Gesenius, Thesaurus Linguae Hebraeae)
1dto make something beautiful: to decorate or dress it up
Jer 10:4
1eto make oneself beautiful: to dress up and paint one's own face
Jer 4:30

What scholars say about yaphah

The standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH) treat יפה as one verbal root with stem-conditioned senses: qal "be, become beautiful" (Song 4:10; 7:2, 7 MT; Ezek 16:13; 31:7), piel "make beautiful, adorn" (Jer 10:4), hithpael "make oneself beautiful" (Jer 4:30), plus the reduplicated (pealal) יָפְיָפִיתָ at Ps 45:3 MT. The verb is rare (8×) beside the far commoner adjective יָפֶה (42×) and noun יֳפִי (19×). The lexica diverge over etymology and semantic priority: BDB, following Gesenius, posits an original "shine, be bright" and links יפה to the neighbouring root יפע, whereas HALOT and the TDOT article (standardly attributed to Ringgren) take the primary sense to be "fitting, complete, perfect," comparing Arabic wafā "fulfil, pay in full" and cognates in Geʿez, Sabaic, and Modern South Arabian; TLOT (Gerleman) tracks the same threefold field of physical attractiveness, the splendour of place and tree, and a wisdom extension into fittingness. That disagreement concerns derivation, not denotation, on which the lexica agree. The one textual crux is Ps 45:3 MT, where BDB (after Gesenius) emends the reduplicated form as corrupt while HALOT and DCH accept it as a legitimate intensive, comparable to יְפֵה־פִיָּה at Jer 46:20 (so also Joüon and Muraoka §88Mb). Versification note: Hebrew Ps 45:3 is English 45:2, and Hebrew Song 7:2 and 7:7 are English 7:1 and 7:6.

Sources

  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. יפהlexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), s.v. יפה Ilexicon
  • DCH (Clines, ed.), vol. 4, s.v. יפהlexicon
  • TDOT vol. VI, article on יפה (standardly attributed to Helmer Ringgren)theological-dictionary
  • TLOT (Jenni and Westermann, eds.), vol. 2, article on יפה by Gillis Gerlemantheological-dictionary
  • Joüon and Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, §88Mbgrammar

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

All attested forms of יָפָה

qal perfect 3cp

יָּפוּ

Sng 4:10, Sng 7:1

hithpael imperfect 2fs

תִּתְיַפִּי

Jer 4:30

piel imperfect 3ms

יְיַפֵּ

Jer 10:4

piel perfect 2ms

יָפְיָפִיתָ

Psa 45:2

qal consecutive-imperfect 2fs

וַתִּיפִי

Ezk 16:13

qal consecutive-imperfect 3ms

וַיְּיִף

Ezk 31:7

qal perfect 2fs

יָּפִית

Sng 7:6