StrongerBible

yereq

יֶרֶק

HebrewH3418“green plants, greenery, ...”

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 1:30Gen 9:3Exo 10:15Num 22:4Psa 37:2Isa 15:6
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeYEH-reknoun

What yereq means

green growth: everything on the land that is alive and green, taken together as one class

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This word names a category, not a color. Hebrew already had an ordinary word for the tender new grass that comes up after rain (דֶּשֶׁא) and another for the low plants of a field (עֵשֶׂב); this one gathers all of it under a single heading, the green stuff. Its reach is wide: when the locusts strip Egypt in Exodus 10:15, the text says none of it was left on tree or field plant, so it takes in the leaves overhead as well as the cover underfoot.

The root behind it does not follow the line English draws between green and yellow. The same root gives Hebrew its word for the yellowing disease that ruins a crop and drains a frightened face (יֵרָקוֹן), and its word for the greenish or yellowish stain of mildew on cloth and walls (יְרַקְרַק). Scholars increasingly argue that what such a word reports is a plant's condition, fresh and moist and thriving, with the green look being the visible sign of that condition. That is why the one root can swing from lush growth to sickly pallor without changing its subject.

All six appearances fall into a pattern that shows what green growth meant to ancient Israel:

  • it is what God hands over to be eaten, assigned to every animal in Genesis 1:30 and recalled as the older grant in Genesis 9:3 when meat is added
  • it is what an ox licks up off open country, the picture Moab reaches for in Numbers 22:4 to describe an army stripping a land bare
  • it is what vanishes when disaster falls, eaten by locusts in Exodus 10:15 and dried up by drought in Isaiah 15:6
  • it is the emblem of a life that does not last, since Psalm 37:2 says the wicked will fade the way green growth fades
Gen 1:30Gen 9:3Exo 10:15Num 22:4Psa 37:2Isa 15:6

Disputed

Whether the word names a hue (green, or a green-yellow band) or reports the state of the entity it describes, with hue as the visible reflection of that state.

  • contestedThe word is chromatic. It denotes the colour green (extending into yellow-green), applied here to vegetation, which is why the lexica gloss it "green, greenness" before "herbage."; Brown, Driver & Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), s.v. יֶרֶק
  • contestedBiblical Hebrew colour terms are embodied: they never denote an abstract hue but always the state of an entity (fresh, moist, thriving versus withered, sickly, pale), so יֶרֶק denotes vegetation in a living condition, with green as the outward sign. Brenner's earlier work on the graded Hebrew colour field, keyed to brightness and saturation as much as hue, prepares the ground for this reading.; Lourdes García Ureña et al., The Language of Colour in the Bible: Embodied Colour Terms Related to Green, Fontes et Subsidia ad Bibliam pertinentes 11 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022); Athalya Brenner, Colour Terms in the Old Testament, JSOTSup 21 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982)

What scholars say about yereq

The lexica agree on the referent and differ on the framing. BDB glosses יֶרֶק as "green, greenness," catalogues the bound phrases יֶרֶק עֵשֶׂב (Gen 1:30; 9:3), יֶרֶק דֶּשֶׁא (Ps 37:2) and יֶרֶק הַשָּׂדֶה (Num 22:4), and derives the noun from יָרַק "to spit" in the sense of a vacuity of colour. HALOT, with the Ugaritic and Akkadian evidence unavailable to BDB, separates the chromatic root ירק I "be green, be pale" from the homonymous verb "spit"; DCH, which maximizes homonyms, excludes comparative material by editorial policy and covers Ben Sira, Qumran and the inscriptions, lists the yrq forms as distinct numbered entries. Comparative Semitics supports a single yellow-green macro-category: Bulakh reconstructs Proto-Semitic *wrq as an undivided "yellow-with-green" band that the daughter languages later split, Thavapalan shows Akkadian warqu keyed to brightness and saturation rather than hue, and Warburton notes that warqu described both vegetation and gold, while Ugaritic yrq ḫrṣ, "the yellow-green of gold," is the standard comparandum for יְרַקְרַק חָרוּץ in Ps 68:14. On the semantics, Brenner treats the Hebrew colour field as graded and interdependent, and García Ureña's team argues that biblical colour terms are embodied, reporting an entity's state (fresh and moist versus withered and pale) with hue as the visible reflection of that state; her study of χλωρός finds the same double value in the Septuagint. Versional practice corroborates the sense split: χλωρός and its relatives render the colour and vegetation sense, λάχανον renders cultivated יָרָק, and Gen 9:3 is handled with λάχανα χόρτου to mark the food grant, while the Vulgate divides viride/viror, herba and olus. Genesis 1:29-30 carries a separate, theological argument over primeval diet, with Westermann and Bauckham reading an original peaceable order in which neither humans nor animals are carnivorous, and Wenham cautioning that Gen 1 does not forbid the consumption of meat.

Where scholars disagree about yereq

Whether the Hebrew words for green derive from the verb יָרַק "to spit" (one root) or belong to a separate root ירק "be yellow-green, be pale" that merely looks like it (two homonyms).

  • majorityTwo roots. The colour and vegetation words belong to a well-attested Semitic root for the yellow-green band, cognate with Akkadian (w)arqu / warāqu and Ugaritic yrq, and are unrelated to the verb "spit."; Koehler & Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), ed. and trans. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1994-2000), s.v. ירק; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 4: Yod-Lamed (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998)
  • minorityOne root. יֶרֶק derives from יָרַק "to spit" in the sense of a vacuity or emptying out of colour, hence pallor, and from there the yellowish green of young or sickly vegetation.; Brown, Driver & Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), s.v. יֶרֶק
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 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), s.v. יֶרֶקlexicon
  • Koehler & Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), ed. and trans. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1994-2000), s.v. ירקlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 4: Yod-Lamed (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998)lexicon
  • Athalya Brenner, Colour Terms in the Old Testament, JSOT Supplement Series 21 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982)monograph
  • Lourdes García Ureña, Emanuela Valeriani and Anna Angelini, The Language of Colour in the Bible: Embodied Colour Terms Related to Green, Fontes et Subsidia ad Bibliam pertinentes 11 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022)monograph
  • Lourdes García Ureña, "Χλωρός in the Septuagint: Color or State?", Harvard Theological Review 117.2 (2024): 204-227article
  • Maria Bulakh, "Basic Color Terms from Proto-Semitic to Old Ethiopic," in Lexicalization of Colour Terms (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011), 247-261article
  • Shiyanthi Thavapalan, The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia, Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 104 (Leiden: Brill, 2019)monograph
  • David Alan Warburton, "Ancient Color Categories," in Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology (Berlin: Springer, 2014)article
  • Gregorio del Olmo Lete and Joaquín Sanmartín, A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, trans. W. G. E. Watson, 3rd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2015)lexicon
  • Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary, trans. J. J. Scullion (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 159commentary
  • Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary 1 (Waco: Word, 1987), 33-34commentary
  • Nathan MacDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? Diet in Biblical Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008)monograph

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

All attested forms of יֶרֶק

m s construct

יֶרֶק

Gen 1:30, Gen 9:3, Num 22:4, Psa 37:2

m s absolute

יֶרֶק

Exo 10:15, Isa 15:6