StrongerBible

yeraḥ

יֶרַח

HebrewH3391“month”

Appears 12 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Exo 2:2Deu 21:13Deu 33:141Ki 6:371Ki 6:381Ki 8:22Ki 15:13Job 3:6Job 7:3Job 29:2Job 39:2Zec 11:8
Root family
Word studyYEH-rakhnoun

What yeraḥ means

a month: one turn of the moon, about thirty days (the rarer and older of Hebrew's two words for a month)

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Hebrew has two words for a month. The everyday one (חֹדֶשׁ) appears hundreds of times and is named for the new moon that opens each month. This word is the other one, and it is rare: twelve occurrences in all, mostly in poetry and in a few old records. It is formed like the word for the moon itself (יָרֵחַ), so it names the span of time that one turn of the moon marks out.

Most of the time it simply measures a length of time, counting off months the way we do:

  • three months of hiding the newborn Moses
  • a full month of mourning for a captive woman's parents
  • the single month that Shallum held the throne in Samaria
  • three shepherds swept away in one month
  • the months a mountain goat carries her young before giving birth

Job reaches for the plural to name whole stretches of a life: months of emptiness handed to him, and the months of long ago when God still watched over him.

The other use is on a calendar. Three dated lines in the record of Solomon's temple keep old month names that later Hebrew dropped: Ziv, Bul, and Ethanim. Two of the three come with an explanation for readers who no longer recognized them, since the text adds that Bul is the eighth month and Ethanim the seventh. That small editorial help is a good sign of how old the names already felt when the record was compiled.

One line stands apart. In the blessing of Joseph the harvest is praised as the best of what the sun produces and the best of what the months yield. Because this word and the word for the moon are built alike, translations split here: some read the passing months, others read the moon itself shining on the crops. Either way the point holds, that the fruitfulness of the land follows the rhythm of the sky.

Nuances

1aa month as a length of time: a span of roughly thirty days, counted to say how long something went on
Exo 2:2Deu 21:13Deu 33:142Ki 15:13Job 3:6Job 7:3Job 29:2Job 39:2Zec 11:8
1ba particular month of the year, called by its old name
1Ki 6:371Ki 6:381Ki 8:2

What scholars say about yeraḥ

יֶרַח is the inherited West Semitic term for the lunar month, cognate with Ugaritic yrḫ, Phoenician yrḥ, and Akkadian (w)arḫu, and formed from the same root as יָרֵחַ, "moon." HALOT, BDB, and DCH all record a single lexical sense, "month," subdivided only between the word as a measured period (Exod 2:2; Deut 21:13; 2 Kgs 15:13; Zech 11:8; Job 3:6; 7:3; 29:2; 39:2) and the word introducing a named month of the year (1 Kgs 6:37, 38; 8:2). Its rarity beside the far more frequent חֹדֶשׁ, itself a Hebrew development from the new moon, together with its concentration in poetry (Job) and in archaizing narrative, is generally taken as evidence that it is the older term surviving in elevated and formulaic usage. The three month names it introduces in the Kings temple notices, Ziv, Bul, and Ethanim, are Canaanite-Phoenician names attested epigraphically outside Israel and are glossed in two of the three verses by an ordinal with חֹדֶשׁ, which de Vaux and others read as a later clarification for readers to whom the old names had become opaque. The one contested occurrence is Deut 33:14, where גֶּרֶשׁ יְרָחִים stands in parallel with תְּבוּאֹת שָׁמֶשׁ; the lexica gloss it as the yield of the successive months, while the parallelism with the sun has led a number of translators and commentators, including Tigay in his treatment of the blessing of Joseph, to weigh a reference to the moon. The dispute concerns the referent in that verse, not the lexical value of the noun.

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. יֶרַחlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. יֶרַחlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. יֶרַחlexicon
  • Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions, on the Israelite calendar and the old month namesmonograph
  • Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, JPS Torah Commentary, on Deuteronomy 33:13-16commentary

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

All attested forms of יֶרַח

m s construct

יֶרַח

Deu 21:13, 1Ki 6:37, 1Ki 6:38, 1Ki 8:2, 2Ki 15:13

m p absolute

יְרָחִים

Exo 2:2, Deu 33:14, Job 3:6, Job 39:2

m p construct

יַרְחֵי

Job 7:3, Job 29:2

m s absolute

יֶרַח

Zec 11:8