to reach a full end, or to bring something to its full end: to finish it, use it up, or wipe it out
This is one picture seen from both sides: something running all the way to its end. Used of a person acting on a thing, it means taking that thing through to completion, finishing the work, building the house, getting all the way through the task. Used of the thing itself, it means arriving at its own end, being finished, running out, being spent down to nothing.
That single idea turns bright or dark depending on what is ending:
- a speech, a task, or a building carried through to completion
- a jar of water, a harvest season, or a stretch of years running out
- anger, arrows, or strength poured out until none is left
- a city, an army, or a whole people brought to nothing
- eyes, flesh, and spirit wearing down under grief or long waiting
The bright uses carry real weight. God "finished" his work at creation, and the same wording returns when Moses finishes setting up the tent of meeting and again when Solomon completes the temple, tying the finished sanctuary back to the finished world. The dark uses are just as fixed: when God threatens to make a full end of a people, this is the verb behind it, and the matching noun for "a full end" (כָּלָה) became a set term in the prophets for total ruin.
One much-asked question is settled. The psalmist whose soul "faints" for God's courts is using this same word, not a second one that merely looks like it. The soul or the eyes are simply spent, worn out with looking and longing. Every standard reference work files that use under the one verb.
Nuances
Whether the Hebrew text of Genesis 2:2, in which God finishes his work on the seventh day, or the "sixth day" of the ancient versions preserves the earlier reading.
- majorityThe Hebrew "seventh day" is the earlier and harder reading, and the "sixth day" of the versions is a later smoothing of the difficulty that God appeared to finish work on the day of rest; whether those versions rested on a different Hebrew text or each solved the problem independently cannot be determined.; Emanuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, 3rd ed. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 88
- minorityThe "sixth day" shared by the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint, and the Syriac Peshitta reflects an older Hebrew text than the Masoretic "seventh day."; Samaritan Pentateuch, Genesis 2:2; Septuagint, Genesis 2:2; Peshitta, Genesis 2:2