to dig out: to hollow a cavity by removing earth or rock, most often a well, a grave, or a pit
This is the verb for making a hole where there was none. It rarely appears without naming what the hole is for, and the list is short and concrete:
- a well sunk down to water, as Isaac's servants and the desert leaders did (Genesis 26:25, Numbers 21:18)
- a grave chamber cut out ahead of time for a body (Genesis 50:5, 2 Chronicles 16:14)
- an uncovered pit in open ground, which the law treats as a hazard (Exodus 21:33)
It is narrower than the general Hebrew verb for digging and searching out (חָפַר), and narrower still than the word for quarrying a cavity out of solid rock (חָצַב). The two digging words sit side by side in Numbers 21:18 and again in Psalm 7:15, where one line's digging is picked up and repeated by the other.
What stands out is where most of the digging happens. Half of the fourteen appearances describe a pit dug to bring somebody down, and the Psalms and Jeremiah use the word almost as a set phrase for plotting: a hidden hole in the path, covered over, waiting for a foot. Three times the trap springs backward on the one who dug it (Psalm 7:15, Psalm 57:6, Proverbs 26:27), and that reversal is how the word became a standing picture of how malice works.
Two places reach past holes in the ground. In Proverbs 16:27 a worthless man digs up harm, working at trouble the way a miner works a seam. In Psalm 40:6 God has dug ears for the worshipper, hollowing out hearing itself, so that listening rather than sacrifice is what is being asked for.