StrongerBible

kallah

כַּלָּה

HebrewH3618“bride, daughter-in-law, ...”

Appears 34 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 11:31Gen 38:11Gen 38:16Gen 38:24Lev 18:15Lev 20:12Rut 1:6Rut 1:7Rut 1:8Rut 1:22Rut 2:20Rut 2:22Rut 4:151Sa 4:191Ch 2:4Sng 4:8Sng 4:9Sng 4:10Sng 4:11Sng 4:12Sng 5:1Isa 49:18Isa 61:10Isa 62:5Jer 2:32Jer 7:34Jer 16:9Ezk 22:11Hos 4:13Hos 4:14
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradekal-LAHnoun

What kallah means

the young married woman of a household: a bride toward her husband, a daughter-in-law toward his parents

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

Hebrew uses one word for the woman a marriage brings into a family, and it names her by whichever bond is in view. Face her toward her new husband and the word means bride, the young wife at and around her wedding. Face her toward his father and mother and the same word means daughter-in-law. English has to pick one label or the other, but the Hebrew keeps both in a single term, because to the ancient household they were one person: the woman who has just joined it by marriage.

In that world a son did not leave to start a separate home. His wife moved into his father's house, and from that moment she was at once a bride to him and a daughter-in-law to his parents. So the two meanings are not two different words that happen to sound alike. They are one social role seen from two sides, and which side the text shows depends almost entirely on the kind of writing. Poets and prophets, picturing wedding joy, call her the bride. Law and narrative, tracing a family line or protecting a household, call her the daughter-in-law.

That is why the word can glow in one book and read like a legal term in another. In the Song of Songs and in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Joel she is the bride, adorned and rejoiced over. In Genesis, Leviticus, and Ruth she is the wife of a son, marking Tamar and Ruth and others as members of the family they married into. Micah even sets the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law to picture a home torn apart. The shared thread under every use is the same: the woman received into a household through marriage.

Nuances

1aa bride or young wife: the woman celebrated at and around her marriage
Sng 4:8Sng 4:9Sng 4:10Sng 4:11Sng 4:12Sng 5:1Isa 49:18Isa 61:10Isa 62:5Jer 2:32Jer 7:34Jer 16:9
Sng 4:9

Whether calling the woman "bride" in the Song of Songs marks an actual wedding or is a term of endearment for a beloved who is not yet married.

  • majorityA term of endearment and aspiration: the lovers are not portrayed as married, and "bride" voices hoped-for intimacy rather than a wedding-day status.; M. V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); J. C. Exum, Song of Songs, OTL (Westminster John Knox, 2005), 169-172
  • minorityA literal wedding: the word marks the bride within a wedding-night sequence in the poem.; T. Longman III, Song of Songs, NICOT (Eerdmans, 2001); D. A. Garrett, Song of Songs, WBC 23B (Nelson, 2004)
1ba daughter-in-law: a son's wife, named in relation to his parents and household
Gen 11:31Gen 38:11Gen 38:16Gen 38:24Lev 18:15Lev 20:12Rut 1:6Rut 1:7Rut 1:81Sa 4:191Ch 2:4Ezk 22:11

What scholars say about kallah

The standard lexica treat כַּלָּה as a single lexeme with two socially unified senses, "bride, young wife" and "daughter-in-law," both grounded in the young woman's incorporation into her husband's paternal household by marriage (BDB; HALOT; DCH). Older lexicography (Gesenius, BDB) derived the noun from the root כלל "to complete, be perfect," with an alternative appeal to כלא "enclose"; twentieth-century comparative Semitists (Ringgren in TDOT; Jenni in TLOT; and the cognate list in HALOT) instead reconstruct a primary Proto-Semitic kinship noun *kallat-, attested from Akkadian kallatu (CAD K 79-85; AHw 426) through Ugaritic and Syriac, and regard the Hebrew "perfect/complete" association as an exegetically productive folk etymology rather than a true origin. The distribution of the two senses is genre-shaped rather than lexically split: the suffixed forms carry "daughter-in-law" in legal and narrative texts (Genesis 38; Leviticus 18 and 20; Ruth; 1 Samuel 4:19; Ezekiel 22:11; Micah 7:6; Hosea 4:13-14), while the absolute form clusters in poetic and prophetic celebration of marriage (Song of Songs; Isaiah 49:18; 61:10; 62:5; the fourfold Jeremianic formula 7:34; 16:9; 25:10; 33:11; Joel 2:16). Wolff and Andersen-Freedman argue on philological grounds that the plural in Hosea 4:13-14 means "daughters-in-law," not "brides," against many English versions. In Song of Songs 4:8-5:1 the sixfold concentration, especially the doublet "my sister, my bride," is read by the mainstream (Fox, Exum, Pope) as an aspirational vocative of intimacy rather than a status claim, while Longman, Garrett, and Hess read a literal wedding. The dual range is paralleled by the masculine חָתָן ("bridegroom, son-in-law") and matched in Greek by νύμφη, which the New Testament uses in quoting Micah 7:6.

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

  • BDB, s.v. כַּלָּהlexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. כַּלָּהlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. כַּלָּהlexicon
  • H. Ringgren, "כלה kālāh," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1995), 7:157-164theological-dictionary
  • E. Jenni, s.v. כלה, in Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (Hendrickson, 1997)theological-dictionary
  • The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute (CAD), vol. 8 (K), 79-85lexicon
  • M. V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)monograph
  • H. W. Wolff, Hosea, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1974), 84-88commentary
  • J. Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22, AB 3A (Doubleday, 2000), 1534-1544commentary
  • R. L. Hubbard Jr., The Book of Ruth, NICOT (Eerdmans, 1988), 271-277commentary

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

All attested forms of כַּלָּה

f s absolute

כַּלָּה

Sng 4:8, Sng 4:9, Sng 4:10, Sng 4:11, Sng 4:12, Sng 5:1, Isa 49:18, Isa 61:10

f s construct

כַּלָּתוֹ

Gen 11:31, Gen 38:11, Gen 38:16, Lev 20:12, 1Sa 4:19, 1Ch 2:4, Ezk 22:11

f p construct

כַלֹּתֶיהָ

Rut 1:6, Rut 1:7, Rut 1:8

f s construct

כַּלָּתָהּ

Rut 1:22, Rut 2:20, Rut 2:22

f p construct

כַּלּוֹתֵיכֶם

Hos 4:13, Hos 4:14

f s construct

כַּלָּתְךָ, כַּלָּתֶךָ

Lev 18:15, Gen 38:24

f s construct

כַלָּתֵךְ

Rut 4:15