StrongerBible

yeqad

יְקַד

AramaicH3345burning, blazing, ...

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Dan 3:6Dan 3:11Dan 3:15Dan 3:17Dan 3:20Dan 3:21Dan 3:23Dan 3:26
Root family
Word studyyeh-KAHDverb

What yeqad means

to blaze: of a fire that is alight and burning fiercely, said of the fire itself and never of what the fire destroys

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This word survives in the Bible inside a single stock phrase, repeated eight times in one chapter. Daniel 3 tells of the furnace Nebuchadnezzar heats for three men who will not bow to his golden statue, and every mention of that furnace is worded the same way: "the furnace of blazing fire." The phrase sounds through the chapter like a drumbeat. It is in the herald's threat, in the accusation brought against the three, in the king's ultimatum, in their own steady answer that their God is able to rescue them from it, in the order given to the soldiers, and finally at the door of the furnace in Daniel 3:26, where the king calls the three back out alive.

The word describes the fire, not the furnace. In Aramaic it attaches to the fire inside, so the phrase reads more exactly as "the furnace of fire, the blazing one." That is not a fussy point. It is the difference between saying an oven is hot and saying the fire in it is roaring, and the chapter presses that harder picture: the furnace is stoked seven times hotter than usual (אֲזָא), and its flames kill the soldiers who carry the three men to its mouth.

The root is at home in both biblical languages and keeps the same shape of meaning in each. Aramaic builds a noun from it for the burning itself (יְקֵדָה), used in Daniel 7:11 of the beast given over to the fire. Hebrew has the matching verb (יָקַד), which likewise describes fire that stays alight, whether on the altar where it must never go out or in the prophets' pictures of anger burning on. Neither word says that something was burned up. That work belongs to other verbs.

Dan 3:6Dan 3:11Dan 3:15Dan 3:17Dan 3:20Dan 3:21Dan 3:23Dan 3:26

What scholars say about yeqad

The Aramaic verb יקד is listed in the standard lexica with the single intransitive sense "to burn, be aflame" (HALOT, Aramaic section; BDB, Biblical Aramaic appendix; Vogt), cognate with Hebrew יקד and attested more broadly in Old and Imperial Aramaic. In Biblical Aramaic it occurs only as a peal participle in the feminine determined form יָקִדְתָּא, agreeing with נוּרָא rather than with the masculine אַתּוּן, within the recurring formula אַתּוּן נוּרָא יָקִדְתָּא, eight times in Daniel 3 (3:6, 11, 15, 17, 20, 21, 23, 26). Commentators on Daniel (Montgomery, ICC; Collins, Hermeneia; Goldingay, WBC) treat the phrase as a fixed narrative formula whose insistent repetition is a deliberate rhetorical feature of the court tale rather than a stylistic accident, and read it alongside the chapter's other repeated lists. The cognate noun יְקֵדָה occurs once, at Daniel 7:11, of the beast consigned to the burning. The Greek versions of Daniel render the participle with καίω. No homonymy is proposed for the root and no sense division is attested in the lexica.

Sources

  • HALOT, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Aramaic section, s.v. יקדlexicon
  • BDB, Biblical Aramaic appendix, s.v. יְקַדlexicon
  • Ernst Vogt, A Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic, trans. J. A. Fitzmyer, s.v. יקדlexicon
  • James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel (ICC), on Daniel 3commentary
  • John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia), on Daniel 3commentary
  • John E. Goldingay, Daniel (Word Biblical Commentary), on Daniel 3commentary

All attested forms of יְקַד

peal participle f s determined

יָקִדְתָּ

Dan 3:6, Dan 3:11, Dan 3:15, Dan 3:17, Dan 3:20, Dan 3:21, Dan 3:23, Dan 3:26