to grow dim or fade: to lose brightness, sharpness, or strength without going out altogether.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
The picture behind this word is a light burning low. Something still has substance, but it has lost its edge: the eyes still open, the mark is still on the cloth, the person is still standing, yet each has faded from what it was.
That single image reaches across three very different settings:
old eyes that can no longer make out a son's face (Genesis 27:1)
a patch on skin or cloth that has lost its color after a washing (Leviticus 13:6)
courage that drains out of a whole people when bad news arrives (Ezekiel 21:7)
Because it means fading rather than being snuffed out, it stops short of the word for putting a fire out (כָּבָה). Isaiah 42 turns on exactly that difference. The servant will not snap a bruised reed or put out a wick that is barely alight, and that wick is described with this word's matching adjective (כֵּהֶה). The next line then says the servant himself will not grow dim. What he refuses to do to the weak will not be done to him.
The same restraint runs the other way in Zechariah 11:17, where the shepherd who abandoned his flock is told that his right eye will go completely dim: not struck out, just dimmed until it is useless.
Nuances
1aof eyes: to lose their sharpness, so that a person can no longer see clearly.
TranslatabilityDirect
Gen 27:1Deu 34:7Job 17:7Zec 11:17 (2×)
1bof a spot on skin or cloth: to fade, so that it no longer shows clearly.
TranslatabilityDirect
Lev 13:6*Lev 13:56*
1cof a person's spirit or strength: to give out, to grow faint.
Isa 42:4*Ezk 21:7(12)*
2
to curb someone, to check them so that they stop what they are doing.
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
Once, in 1 Samuel 3:13, the word takes people as its object instead of eyes or a mark, and the sense turns around: not something growing weak, but someone being made to let up. God's charge against Eli is that he knew what his sons were doing and did not curb them.
How this grew out of the first meaning is the natural question. The likeliest answer is that it is the same picture pushed one step further: to make someone dim is to damp them down, to take the heat out of them. Older English Bibles read "restrained them not", newer ones "restrain", and the ancient translators heard a failure to speak to the boys at all.
Because everything rests on one verse, the broad reading is the safest one. Eli did nothing that worked. Whether that means he never spoke, or spoke and never followed through, the verse itself does not settle.
the Hebrew word is not limited to light and sight: the same word covers a mark on cloth losing its color and a people's courage draining away.Lev 13:56Ezk 21:7
Both
both describe something losing brightness so that it is harder to see by or to see with.Gen 27:1Deu 34:7
Only dim
English "dim" mostly belongs to lamps, lighting and eyesight, and in casual speech it can even mean slow-witted, none of which the Hebrew word suggests.
the Hebrew word also carries failing eyesight and failing courage, so a reader meeting only "fade" would not know that the priest's washed garment and Isaac's old eyes share a word.Gen 27:1Ezk 21:7
Both
both describe a mark losing its color until it no longer stands out.Lev 13:6Lev 13:56
Only fade
English "fade" leans on color washing out over time, and in modern use it can mean quietly disappearing altogether, which is more than the Hebrew claims.
everywhere else the word is about something going weak, so what Eli failed to do is closer to damping his sons down than to physically holding them back.1Sa 3:13
Both
both describe stopping someone from carrying on as they are.1Sa 3:13
Only restrain
English "restrain" suggests force or legal constraint, and it can leave the impression that Eli should have laid hands on grown men rather than checked them as a father and a priest.
“rebuke”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“dull”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How kahah differs from similar Hebrew words
כֵּהֶהthe matching adjective, "dim" or "dull": it names the state something is in rather than the slide into it. It is the word for the dull patch a priest inspects in Leviticus 13 and for the barely burning wick of Isaiah 42:3.
Reports the fading as something that happens, and can say what brought it on: old age wearing Isaac's eyes down until he could not see, and grief wearing Job's eyes out. The partner word labels the condition a thing is in; only this one tells you it set in, and why.Gen 27:1Job 17:7
Because it names the slide itself, it can be flatly denied to insist that someone has not weakened at all: Moses at a hundred and twenty with his sight undimmed, and the servant who will not falter until justice is set in the earth.Deu 34:7Isa 42:4
Doubled for emphasis, it can push past dimness to going dark altogether: the worthless shepherd's right eye is promised total darkness, not a low glow. The partner word stays a description of what is still faintly there.Zec 11:17
It carries a second, unrelated meaning that the partner word never has: to check or curb someone. Eli knew his sons were treating God with contempt and did not stop them.1Sa 3:13
Both
Both belong to the priest's working vocabulary in the skin-disease rules of Leviticus 13, where a dull mark is the good result: the brightness has gone out of it and it is not spreading, so the person can be pronounced clean.Lev 13:6Lev 13:56Lev 13:21
Both describe the eyes of an old man that no longer see clearly, and neither says he is blind: Isaac's eyes as he prepares to bless, and Eli's as the lamp of God still burns.Gen 27:11Sa 3:2
Both reach past light and eyesight to a person's inner strength giving out, so either can be rendered "faint" of a spirit rather than "dim" of a lamp.Ezk 21:7Isa 61:3
Works as a verdict of degree taken at a single look, the dull shade of a mark set against a glaring or spreading one: a spot judged dull enough to shut the person up another seven days, or dull enough to clear them, or dull white patches that are only a harmless rash.Lev 13:21Lev 13:28Lev 13:39
Names something faintly alive that is then handled gently instead of being finished off: the smoldering wick the servant will not snuff out, and the crushed spirit given a garment of praise in its place. The dimness is the starting point for mercy, not a decline being reported.Isa 42:3Isa 61:3
כָּבָהto go out, or to be put out: a fire or lamp that is finished. Growing dim stops short of that, since something is still alight, only faintly.
This is the word for eyesight failing, whether from old age or from weeping. The other word is never used of eyes.Gen 27:1Deu 34:7Job 17:7Zec 11:17
It leaves something behind. A priest examining a mark on skin or on cloth after a washing asks whether it has faded, and a faded mark is still visible, only weaker than before.Lev 13:6Lev 13:56
It covers courage draining out of people who are still standing there, a loss of nerve rather than a loss of life.Ezk 21:7Isa 42:4
Once it turns around and takes people as its object, meaning to take the heat out of someone so that they stop: the charge against Eli is that he knew what his sons were doing and never curbed them.1Sa 3:13
Both
Both describe a light failing, and both are most memorable with a simple "not" in front of them: the altar fire that must never go out, and Moses at the end of his life with eyes that had not yet dimmed.Lev 6:13Deu 34:7
Isaiah 42 sets them one line apart on purpose. The servant will not put out a wick that is barely alight, and then the next line says the servant himself will not grow dim. The gentleness he shows the weak is the treatment he receives.Isa 42:3Isa 42:4
Each carries the language of light over to people. A coal or lamp put out stands for a household with no heir left; eyes going dim stand for a man worn down by suffering.2Sa 14:7Job 17:7
This is the word for an actual fire, flame or lamp ceasing to burn, whether it dies for lack of fuel or is put out on purpose. The other word is never used of a fire.Lev 6:121Sa 3:3Pro 26:20Pro 31:18
It describes an ending, not a weakening: after this, nothing is burning at all. That is why it is the word for a life or a family line being finished off, the last coal of a household or the lamp of Israel.2Sa 14:72Sa 21:17Isa 43:17
Something outside can do it: water thrown against a flame, or hands stripping the lamps in the temple. So the word carries the idea of one thing overpowering another.Sng 8:72Ch 29:7
It is the standard word in the prophets' threat of a fire that no one can put out, the picture of God's anger falling on a city or a nation. Nothing in the other word's range touches anger or judgment.2Ki 22:17Jer 7:20Isa 66:24Amo 5:6
רָפָהto go slack or limp, said of hands that drop and of courage that lets go. It pictures lost grip and tension, where growing dim pictures lost light and sharpness. Ezekiel 21:7 lines the two up in one sentence.
This is the word for eyes losing their sharpness, the blurred sight of old age or of long grief. Slackness is never said of eyes; dimness is where sight belongs.Gen 27:1Deu 34:7Job 17:7Zec 11:17
It covers a color or a mark that fades until it no longer shows plainly, which is how a priest ruled on a patch of skin trouble or a stain in cloth. The spot is still there, only faint.Lev 13:6Lev 13:56
It carries the picture of a light burning low, so the promise that God's servant will not burn dim stands beside the smoldering wick he refuses to snuff out. Going slack has no such link to flame or brightness.Isa 42:4
Once it turns outward and means curbing a person, checking someone so that they stop: Eli learned what his sons were doing and did not rein them in. That is the opposite move from loosening a hold on someone.1Sa 3:13
Both
Both name nerve giving way when terrible news lands, and Ezekiel stacks them in one line: every hand goes slack and every spirit grows faint, alongside melting hearts and knees turned to water.Ezk 21:7
Both describe a strength that ebbs by degrees instead of stopping outright, which is why each is a favorite in a flat denial. Saying an eye never blurred, or that a hand will never let the work drop, is a way of claiming unbroken vigor or resolve.Deu 34:7Isa 42:4Job 27:6Neh 6:3
This is the word of the hand and its grip, so it becomes the ordinary way to tell someone to let go, back off, or leave a person alone: God asks Moses to stand aside, the destroying angel is told to stay his hand, Elisha tells Gehazi to let the woman be, and Job asks God to look away from him.Deu 9:142Sa 24:162Ki 4:27Job 7:19
God's faithfulness is pledged with it, as a hold that never loosens: he will not let go of his people or drop them partway. Growing dim is never used for covenant loyalty like this.Deu 4:31Deu 31:6Jos 1:51Ch 28:20
It is the everyday word for being slack at work, so it supplies the vocabulary of idleness: Pharaoh calls the Israelites lazy, Joshua asks the tribes how long they will hold back from taking their land, and Proverbs treats the slack worker as a wrecker's brother.Exo 5:8Exo 5:17Jos 18:3Pro 18:9Pro 24:10
It also fits things rather than people easing off: a day sinking toward evening, or a hot temper cooling once a tactful answer takes the tension out of it.Jdg 19:9Jdg 8:3
עָוַרto blind, or to be blind: sightlessness as a condition or as something done to a person, rather than the slow weakening of sight that still leaves a little.
Names light or strength fading by degrees, with no one doing it to the sufferer. Isaac's eyes had grown too dim for him to see, Moses' eye had still not dimmed when he died at a hundred and twenty, and Job's eye had gone dim from grief.Gen 27:1Deu 34:7Job 17:7
Reaches well past eyesight to anything that loses its intensity, including color. A priest inspects a mark on skin, or on cloth after it has been washed, to see whether it has faded.Lev 13:6Lev 13:56
Used of nerve and resolve giving way, not only of a failing sense. The promised servant will not grow faint before he finishes his work, and at the news of judgment every spirit goes slack.Isa 42:4Ezk 21:7
In one place the word turns outward and means holding someone back: Eli knew what his sons were doing and did not check them.1Sa 3:13
Both
Both are used of eyes that can no longer see, whether the loss creeps in or is inflicted. Isaac could not make out which son stood in front of him, and Zedekiah's eyes were put out.Gen 27:12Ki 25:7
Both stretch from the body to the inner life, naming a failure of nerve or of perception rather than a condition of the eye. Courage drains away at the news of judgment, and a bribe puts out the sight of people who had been seeing clearly.Ezk 21:7Exo 23:8
Someone always does it. Sight is destroyed by an outside hand in a single act, as when Babylon's men killed Zedekiah's sons in front of him and then put out his eyes.2Ki 25:7Jer 39:7
Its most frequent use is moral rather than medical. A bribe blinds people who otherwise see clearly and twists the words of the innocent, so what gets destroyed is a judge's honest sight.Exo 23:8Deu 16:19
What it leaves behind is total and final rather than weakened. Zedekiah, blinded and bound in bronze chains, stayed in prison until the day of his death.Jer 52:11
kahah in the other biblical languages
ἐκλύωGreek“to faint”the Greek verb for strength giving out, used of a crowd close to collapse and of people losing heart. It matches the failing strength side of this word, but not dim eyes or a faded mark.
Covers failing eyesight, which is its most common use: Isaac cannot make out which son is in front of him, Moses dies with his sight undimmed, Job's eye has grown weak from grief, and the worthless shepherd is told his right eye will go dim. The Greek verb is never used of sight.Gen 27:1Deu 34:7Job 17:7Zec 11:17
Works on things as well as people: a priest inspects a mark on skin or on washed cloth to see whether its color has faded. The word can describe a stain losing its definition, where the Greek verb only ever describes living strength or will.Lev 13:6Lev 13:56
Once it is something one person fails to do to another: God's charge against Eli is that he knew what his sons were doing and did not check them, which is closer to damping someone down than to weakening oneself. The Greek verb has no such use.1Sa 3:13
Both
Both name the draining away of courage or strength in a person who is still standing, and English Bibles commonly render each of them "grow faint" or "grow weary" for exactly that reason. When news of the sword reaches Ezekiel's hearers every spirit gives out, and the readers of Hebrews are told not to let their own resolve give out under opposition.Ezk 21:7Heb 12:3
Both describe a decline that has not reached its end, which is why both can be flatly denied. The servant will not fade out before his work is done, and those doing good are promised a harvest if they do not let go first. Neither word means finished or extinguished; each leaves the outcome still open.Isa 42:4Gal 6:9
Used of the body itself giving out for lack of food. Jesus will not send the crowds home hungry in case they drop on the road, so the word names real physical collapse from hunger and distance, something the Hebrew verb is never used for.Mat 15:32Mrk 8:3
Turns up as a warning rather than a description: readers are told not to let their resolve go slack while doing good, not to lose heart when they look at what Jesus endured, and not to go limp under God's correction. The Hebrew verb reports that strength has faded; this Greek verb is used to urge people not to let it happen.Gal 6:9Heb 12:3Heb 12:5
νουθετέωGreek“to admonish”the Greek verb for warning someone in order to correct them. It is how the ancient Greek translators of Samuel understood what Eli failed to do, so it stands closest to this word's second meaning.
Its home ground is not speech at all but fading: eyes that can no longer make out a face, and a mark on cloth that has lost its color after washing.Gen 27:1Deu 34:7Lev 13:56
Said of people, it usually reports that their strength or resolve is burning low, or promises that it will not, with nobody correcting anybody.Ezk 21:7Isa 42:4
Even where it does describe checking someone, it reports the result rather than any words spoken, which is why English versions read "restrained them not" as readily as "rebuked them not": the charge against Eli is that his sons were never damped down.1Sa 3:13
Both
Both can name the corrective word owed to someone who is going wrong by a person with the standing to speak it. The Hebrew word carries that sense once, in the charge that Eli knew what his sons were doing and did not check them, and the ancient Greek translators of Samuel rendered it there with this Greek verb, which the New Testament uses for warning the unruly and for setting a wayward believer straight.1Sa 3:131Th 5:142Th 3:15
Names something people actually do, and keep doing: Paul warned the Ephesian elders night and day with tears, and he took it for granted that ordinary believers were able to correct one another.Act 20:31Rom 15:14
Works on a person's thinking and stands beside teaching, so the aim is a mature believer rather than a silenced one.Col 1:28Col 3:16
Carries with it the relationship the correction is given inside: Paul writes as a father to beloved children, and tells the church to deal with a straying believer as a brother and not an enemy.1Co 4:142Th 3:15
Describes a standing responsibility of those who lead a congregation, owed to particular people: the idle who will not work, and the fainthearted who need steadying.1Th 5:121Th 5:14
What scholars say about kahah
The standard lexicons (BDB, HALOT, DCH) agree on the core sense of כהה: to grow dim, faint, or dull. It is used of failing eyesight (Genesis 27:1;Deuteronomy 34:7;Job 17:7;Zechariah 11:17, where an infinitive reinforces the finite verb), of a lesion on skin or fabric that has faded in the priestly diagnostic procedure of Leviticus 13, and of spirit or strength that gives out (Ezekiel 21:12 in Hebrew numbering, English 21:7; Isaiah 42:4). The cognate adjective כֵּהֶה supplies the corresponding state term, including the smoldering wick of Isaiah 42:3, and commentators on Isaiah 40 to 55 (Blenkinsopp; Goldingay and Payne) observe that 42:4 answers 42:3 by turning the reed and wick imagery onto the servant himself. The one contested occurrence is 1 Samuel 3:13, the sole instance with a personal object marked by the preposition ב. BDB lists rebuke there as a sense of this verb; the Septuagint (οὐκ ἐνουθέτει αὐτούς) and the Targum understood admonition, whereas deriving the usage as a causative of the intransitive sense, to make dim and so to damp down, yields the restrain rendering common in English versions. The verse is textually difficult on other grounds too, including the recognized scribal alteration in מקללים להם, and it is treated at length in the critical commentaries on Samuel (McCarter).
Sources
BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. כההlexicon
HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. כההlexicon
DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. כההlexicon
P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel, Anchor Bible 8 (1980)commentary
Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55, Anchor Bible 19A (2002)commentary
John Goldingay and David Payne, Isaiah 40-55, International Critical Commentary (2006)commentary