StrongerBible

lo'a

לֹעַ

HebrewH3930throat, gullet

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Pro 23:2
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeLOH-ahnoun

What lo'a means

the throat as the passage food goes down: the gullet, the part of you that swallows

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This word turns up exactly once in the Hebrew Bible, in a proverb about eating at a powerful man's table: notice what is set before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are a person of large appetite (Proverbs 23:2). It names the throat from the eating side, the tube food and drink go down, and it belongs to a small word family built on the idea of gulping. The verb of that family (לוּעַ) shows up in Obadiah 16, where the nations drink and swallow down the cup of judgment.

Hebrew has a more common word for the throat (גָּרוֹן), and it leans the other way: it is where shouting and singing and praise come from, and it also names the outside of the neck that a chain is hung on. This rare word does not do any of that. It is the swallowing throat, which is why one verse about greed is the only place it was ever needed. Later Hebrew kept it, and it is still an ordinary word for a throat or a gaping opening.

The proverb is playing for a laugh, not making a threat. The knife on the table is the one you eat with, and the joke is that a guest who cannot control himself should point it at his own gullet before he points it at the food. The second half of the verse says why: this is advice for the person who is, in Hebrew, an owner of appetite, using the word usually rendered "soul" (נֶפֶשׁ), which in a context like this one means raw hunger.

Pro 23:2

What scholars say about lo'a

This noun is the least disputed member of its family. BDB files it under לוע I "swallow, swallow down," glossing it "throat," and HALOT and DCH treat it the same way; the derivation is secured by Syriac lʿ "lick, chew, swallow" and by inner-Hebrew לָעַט "swallow greedily" and עִלֵּעַ "lick up," with Gesenius (following J. D. Michaelis) proposing that the syllable is onomatopoetic for greedy gulping. In post-biblical and modern Hebrew לוֹעַ "throat, maw, opening" is well established, which further strengthens the swallowing derivation. On Proverbs 23:2 itself, Fox and Clifford read וְשַׂמְתָּ שַׂכִּין בְּלֹעֶךָ as hyperbole about self-restraint at a ruler's banquet rather than a threat, and the NABRE accordingly renders "gullet" and notes that the conventional English "put a knife to your throat" misleadingly suggests a death threat. The live philological argument attached to these consonants (whether Job 6:3 and Prov 20:25 attest a homonymous root II "talk wildly," resting on Arabic laghā, against which Barr's methodological caution about Arabic cognates is regularly invoked) concerns the verbal occurrences and does not touch the sense of this noun.

Where scholars disagree about lo'a

Whether Biblical Hebrew had a second word spelled with these same consonants, meaning "to talk wildly," alongside the "swallow" word that this noun for the throat derives from.

  • majorityTwo separate roots share the consonants: לוע I "swallow, gulp down" (Obad 16), from which the noun לֹעַ "throat" is formed, and לוע II "talk wildly, speak rashly" (Job 6:3; Prov 20:25).; BDB, s.v. לוע; HALOT, s.v. לוע; DCH, s.v. לוע
  • minorityThe postulated root II is methodologically insecure: it rests almost entirely on Arabic laghā "talk idly," whose ghayn does not correspond regularly to Hebrew ayin, exactly the kind of comparative-Semitic inference that must be tested rather than assumed.; J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968)
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. לֹעַlexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. לֹעַlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. לֹעַlexicon
  • M. V. Fox, Proverbs (Anchor Yale Bible)commentary
  • R. J. Clifford, Proverbs (Old Testament Library)commentary
  • B. K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs (NICOT)commentary
  • J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968)monograph

All attested forms of לֹעַ

m s construct

לֹעֶךָ

Pro 23:2