the fat of something: its rich, thick, choicest part, whether a land's fertility, a table's best food, or the flesh on a well fed body.
Ancient Israel heard "fat" as a good word. Fat meant food that satisfied, ground that produced, and bodies that had come through a hard year strong. This word names that quality in whatever carries it: the fat part, the rich part, the best of it.
The same word therefore attaches to very different things:
- the soil that yields grain and new wine (Genesis 27:28)
- the choice dishes set out on a holy day (Nehemiah 8:10)
- the sturdiest young men in a crowd (Psalm 78:31)
- the flesh on a body that can waste away (Isaiah 17:4)
Because it names what is thickest and best, it is also the first thing God can take away. Isaiah pictures a wasting sent into Assyria's fat, and the fat of Jacob's flesh growing lean, while Psalm 78 has the plague fall on exactly the strongest men. Blessing and judgment use one picture: plenty that can be reduced.
It is not the word for the fat burned on the altar in the sacrifices (חֵלֶב), and it is not the pressed olive oil (שֶׁמֶן) built from the same root. Where those name a substance you could hold, this word names the rich part of a thing, whatever that thing happens to be.