a bed or couch: the framed piece of furniture a body is stretched out on, whether to sleep, recline at a meal, lie ill, be carried, or be laid out in death
This is one word doing many jobs. Underneath them all is a single picture: the frame on which a body is stretched out. From that one idea the Bible draws the ordinary bed people sleep in, the couch the wealthy reclined on at feasts, the sickbed of someone lying ill, the bier that carries a corpse, and the royal litter borne on the shoulders.
Which of these is meant depends entirely on the scene. The same word covers Jacob gathering his feet onto his deathbed, the ivory couches of Samaria's rich, Elisha's simple guest bed, the bier David walks behind in mourning for Abner, and the curtained conveyance that carries Solomon in a wedding procession. English has no single word that fits all of this, so translators choose bed, couch, sickbed, bier, or litter case by case.
Because the object touches sleep, sickness, death, luxury, worship, and love, it carries unusual weight for a piece of furniture. It is where the body rests and where it suffers and dies, where prophets lay the dead they will raise, and where the powerful lounge in the comfort the prophets condemn.
Nuances
Whether Genesis 47:31 means Jacob bowed "on the head of the bed" or "on the top of his staff." The written consonants are identical; only the vowels differ.
- majorityThe Hebrew (Masoretic) vowels read "bed," and this is the older reading; the very next verse uses the same word unambiguously for a bed.; Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (Fortress, 2012), 44, 118; E. A. Speiser, Genesis (AB 1; Doubleday, 1964), 355-358
- minorityThe Septuagint read the same consonants as "staff" and rendered "on the top of his staff," the form Hebrews 11:21 quotes, and the Syriac agrees.; Karen H. Jobes and Moises Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint (Baker Academic, 2000), 24