StrongerBible

lat

לָאט

HebrewH3814“secretly, softly, ...”

Appears 2 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Exo 7:11Jdg 4:21
Root family
Names & words formed with this
Word studyResearch-gradeLAHTnoun

What lat means

1

secrecy: the cover under which something is done so that nobody notices it happening

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested

This word names concealment itself. In the Bible it turns up almost only inside a set phrase that uses it to describe how an act was carried out: under cover, unnoticed. Behind it stands a verb for wrapping or muffling something up (לוּט), so the picture is of an act that has been veiled, not of a place a person hides in (which is what סֵתֶר names).

Its one appearance in this spelling is Judges 4:21, where Jael takes a tent peg and a mallet and comes to the sleeping Sisera in secrecy. Translators have divided over that line for centuries. Older English has her go "softly", newer versions have her come "stealthily", and the two great early Greek manuscripts of Judges disagree with each other in exactly the same way, one reading "in secret" and the other "quietly". The reason is simple: an approach that is covered is also an approach that is silent, so the word sits right where hiding and hushing overlap.

A separate small word that plainly means "gently, slowly" (אַט) looks and sounds much like this one, and most scholars now treat the two as different words that happen to resemble each other. That is why "softly" stays a live option at Judges 4:21 even though this word itself is about being hidden rather than being quiet.

Jdg 4:21
Jdg 4:21

Whether the word at Judges 4:21 says that Jael approached Sisera stealthily or only quietly.

  • majorityStealthily, under cover and with intent: the word belongs to the fixed phrase for acting in secret, whose other occurrences (Ruth 3:7; 1 Samuel 18:22; 24:4) all concern concealment.; Codex Alexandrinus, Judges 4:21 (ἐν κρυφῇ); Boling, Judges (Anchor Bible 6A, 1975); Block, Judges, Ruth (NAC 6, 1999); Webb, The Book of Judges (NICOT, 2012)
  • minorityQuietly, softly: the word describes a noiseless approach to a sleeping man rather than a concealed one, taking it with the small word meaning gently or slowly.; Codex Vaticanus, Judges 4:21 (ἡσυχῇ); King James Version, Judges 4:21 (went softly); Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. לאט
2

secret arts: the hidden craft by which trained specialists produce effects nobody can account for

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

In the plural the word stops naming secrecy in general and names a practice: a craft whose workings are kept out of sight. Exodus 7:11 uses it of the experts Pharaoh summons, who match Moses and Aaron by their secret arts. Notice what the word claims and what it does not. It says the working was hidden; it says nothing at all about whether real power was at work. The onlookers see only the result.

That is why English versions split between "enchantments" and "secret arts". The first already assumes genuine spellcraft; the second keeps the Hebrew's own stress on concealment and so leaves open whether the Egyptians did anything more than fool the eye. Other words name the same world from other angles: a whispered spell (לַחַשׁ), or sorcery as a recognized trade (כֶּשֶׁף). Exodus 7:11 itself lines up three groups, the wise men, the sorcerers, and the magicians who work by these hidden arts.

One wrinkle sits on the surface of the text. At Exodus 7:11 the word is written with an extra letter that makes it look like the word for "flame" (לַהַט), while the plague accounts a chapter later spell it plainly (לָט). Most scholars keep the form here with the concealment word and treat the resemblance as a byform or a play on words, but the question is genuinely argued.

Exo 7:11
Exo 7:11

Whether the form at Exodus 7:11 belongs to this word for concealment or to the separate word for flame, since the plague narrative spells the magicians' arts two ways.

  • majorityIt belongs to the concealment word: the Exodus 7:11 spelling is a byform of the plainly written plural in the following chapters, or a deliberate play on the flame word, and the phrase means secret arts or trickery.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. לוט; HALOT, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. לוט; Sarna, Exodus (JPS Torah Commentary, 1991), 37; Propp, Exodus 1-18 (Anchor Bible 2, 1999); Dozeman, Exodus (Eerdmans Critical Commentary, 2009)
  • minorityIt belongs to the word for flame, so the magicians' arts are named as a dazzling display rather than a hidden one.; b. Sanhedrin 67b; Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, s.v. לַהַט; Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, s.v. להט

What scholars say about lat

The etymologizing lexica separate two families of forms here. BDB subsumes the noun לָט / לָאט (secrecy, mystery) and the Exodus plural (enchantments) under the verb לוּט (to wrap closely, envelop), comparing Arabic lāṭa (to adhere, to smear, and so to conceal), and places the adverbial אַט (gently, softly) in a separate entry. Klein goes further, deriving אַט from a root אטט (to slow down), לָט I (enchantment, magic) from לוט, and positing a dedicated verb לאט II (to speak softly, whisper) for Job 15:11 alone. HALOT likewise distinguishes homonymous roots in its comparative Semitic manner, while DCH, which by editorial policy arranges entries alphabetically and supplies no cognates or etymologies, simply glosses אט (gentleness, gently) and לט (secrecy, sorcery) without adjudicating the question. The older Gesenius read לָאט as a participial form of לוּט, a harmonizing account the standard modern etymological lexica do not follow: the comparative base is reasonably secure for the covering root and absent for the adverb, and the distribution differs, since the adverb remains productive into Mishnaic and modern Hebrew while the noun fossilizes in the fixed phrase בַּלָּט. Within STEPBible's tagging this number carries only two of the family's occurrences, Judges 4:21 and Exodus 7:11; the remaining בַּלָּט clauses (Ruth 3:7; 1 Samuel 18:22; 24:4) and the plainly spelled plural (Exodus 7:22; 8:7; 8:18) are filed under לָט. At Judges 4:21 the double Greek text of Judges preserves both construals, Alexandrinus ἐν κρυφῇ against Vaticanus ἡσυχῇ, and Judges commentators (Boling, Block, Webb) favor stealth on the strength of the Samuel parallels and of the Targum of Ruth at the closely echoed Ruth 3:7. At Exodus 7:11 the fuller spelling לְהָטִים stands beside לָטִים in the following chapters; Sarna, Propp and Dozeman derive the phrase from לוט (secret arts, trickery) while noting the phonetic play with להט (flame, whence the flaming sword of Genesis 3:24), against the rabbinic tradition (b. Sanhedrin 67b; Jastrow; Klein) that keeps a single flame root. The old comparison of the concealment root to Greek λανθάνω and Latin lateo is philologically unsound and is rejected by modern Semitists, and proposed Ugaritic and Akkadian cognates are not securely established.

Where scholars disagree about lat

Whether the words for secrecy and for moving gently are one word with a wide range of senses or two different words that merely look alike.

  • majorityTwo distinct words: secrecy comes from a verb meaning to wrap or cover, with a sound cognate base in Arabic, while the word for gently or slowly is an independent adverb that survives as such into later Hebrew.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. לוט and s.v. אט; Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, s.v. לט and s.v. אטט; HALOT, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. לוט
  • minorityOne word: a single image of covering or muffling yields both the concealed sense and the quiet, gentle, slow sense, which is why ancient translators slid so easily between them.; Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. לאט
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, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. לוטlexicon
  • BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. אטlexicon
  • HALOT, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. לוט / לטlexicon
  • DCH, The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. לטlexicon
  • Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, s.v. לטlexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. לאטlexicon
  • Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, s.v. לוטlexicon
  • Boling, Judges (Anchor Bible 6A, 1975)commentary
  • Block, Judges, Ruth (NAC 6, 1999)commentary
  • Webb, The Book of Judges (NICOT, 2012)commentary
  • Sasson, Ruth: A New Translation with a Philological Commentary (1979)commentary
  • Sarna, Exodus (JPS Torah Commentary, 1991), 37commentary
  • Propp, Exodus 1-18 (Anchor Bible 2, 1999)commentary
  • Dozeman, Exodus (Eerdmans Critical Commentary, 2009)commentary
  • b. Sanhedrin 67bprimary-source

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

All attested forms of לָאט

m p construct

לַהֲטֵיהֶם

Exo 7:11

m s absolute

לָּאט

Jdg 4:21