complete in every part: all of something, with nothing left out or held back
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This word gathers everything under a single idea: total completeness, all of a thing with nothing missing and nothing kept back. That one idea shows up in three everyday uses.
- When it measures extent, it means "all of" something, as with a garment woven entirely of one color or a whole city going up in flames.
- When it praises quality, it means "perfect": complete in beauty, lacking nothing that would make it whole.
- When it names a sacrifice, it is the whole burnt offering, the animal given over completely to God and consumed entirely by fire.
The sacrifice sense flows straight out of the first. A whole offering is called this precisely because it is total: nothing is kept back for the priest or the worshiper, so it differs from the ordinary עֹלָה, which names the offering by the way its smoke rises. The word belongs to the same family as the verb כָּלַל, "to complete" or "to make perfect"; where the verb is the act, this word is the finished state of wholeness.
Nuances
1aall of it, wholly, entirely: made up completely of one thing, or done without remainder
TranslatabilityApproximate
Exo 28:31Exo 39:22Num 4:6Jdg 20:40Isa 2:18
1bperfect: complete in beauty, lacking nothing
TranslatabilityApproximate
Lam 2:15Ezk 16:14Ezk 27:3Ezk 28:12
1cthe whole burnt offering: a sacrifice given over entirely to God and wholly consumed by fire
Lev 6:22(15)Lev 6:23(16)Deu 13:16(17)Deu 33:101Sa 7:9Psa 51:19(21)