StrongerBible

ka'av

כָּאַב

HebrewH3510be in pain, hurt, ...

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 34:252Ki 3:19Job 5:18Job 14:22Psa 69:29(30)Pro 14:13Ezk 13:22Ezk 28:24
Root family
Word studykah-AHVverb

What ka'av means

to hurt: to be in pain, in body or in heart, or to cause that pain in someone else

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Biblical Hebrew builds this verb on one simple idea: hurt. Used one way it describes a person who is hurting. Used another way it describes a person who is doing the hurting. English works the same way with the word "hurt", which is why the two sides of this verb feel less strange to us than they look at first.

What the word does not do is separate the body from the heart. The same verb describes men still sore from a wound (Genesis 34:25) and a heart that aches in the middle of laughter (Proverbs 14:13). Hebrew treats those as one experience at different depths, so the physical edge is meant to be heard even where the pain is clearly inward. The two nouns built on the same root, both of them meaning "pain" (כְּאֵב and מַכְאוֹב), keep exactly the same breadth.

When the hurting is something one party does to another, the word turns weighty. Job 5:18 puts God on the giving end: he is the one who wounds and the one who binds up. Ezekiel 13:22 uses the same verb to separate real grief from manufactured grief, when God says he had not hurt the people the lying prophets were frightening. In both places pain has a source, and it matters who that source is.

One use stands off on its own. In 2 Kings 3:19 the target is not a person but a field: Israel is told to ruin every good plot of ground by covering it with stones. It is the only place the verb is aimed at land rather than a living body, and it works because a field spoiled past use is being handled the way a wound is.

Nuances

1ato be in pain in the body: to ache, to be sore
TranslatabilityDirect
Gen 34:25Job 14:22
1bto hurt inwardly: to ache with grief or misery
Psa 69:29(30)Pro 14:13
1cto cause pain: to hurt or wound another
Job 5:18Ezk 13:22Ezk 28:24
1dto spoil good farmland by covering it with stones
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
2Ki 3:19

What scholars say about ka'av

BDB and HALOT treat this as a single root used in two stems: the simple stem intransitive, to be in pain, and the causative stem transitive, to cause pain. Both lexica divide the intransitive uses between bodily pain (Genesis 34:25, Job 14:22) and mental or emotional pain (Proverbs 14:13; Psalm 69:30 in the Hebrew numbering, 69:29 in English), and both assign 2 Kings 3:19 a separate causative sense of spoiling or marring a field, the verb's only occurrence with an inanimate object. The lexica cite cognates in Aramaic and Syriac covering the same span of bodily and inner pain. The nouns כְּאֵב (H3511) and מַכְאוֹב (H4341) derive from the same root and share its breadth, מַכְאוֹב being roughly three times as frequent as the verb. No live disagreement attaches to the lexical sense of the verb itself; the interpretive weight falls on particular passages, notably the wounding-and-binding pairing of Job 5:18 within the argument of Eliphaz, and the pain of the flesh in Job 14:22.

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. כאבlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. כאבlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. כאבlexicon
  • TDOT, s.v. כָּאַבtheological-dictionary
  • TWOT, s.v. כָּאַבtheological-dictionary

All attested forms of כָּאַב

qal imperfect 3ms

יִכְאַב, יִכְאָב

Pro 14:13, Job 14:22

hiphil imperfect 2mp

תַּכְאִבוּ

2Ki 3:19

hiphil imperfect 3ms

יַכְאִיב

Job 5:18

hiphil participle m s absolute

מַכְאִב

Ezk 28:24

hiphil perfect 1cs

הִכְאַבְתִּי

Ezk 13:22

qal participle m p absolute

כֹּאֲבִים

Gen 34:25

qal participle m s absolute

וְכוֹאֵב

Psa 69:29