a gift: a concrete thing handed over to seal, secure, or smooth a relationship, with the setting deciding whether it counts as generous, dutiful, or corrupt.
This is the plain Hebrew noun for a gift, the thing handed over. It is the noun built from the ordinary verb "to give," and it names the object rather than the giving. It turns up only five times, but those five places sit in strikingly different worlds.
Two of them are formal and institutional. Shechem tells Dinah's family to name any bride-price and gift they want, treating the gift as an extra payment on top of the one custom already required. In Numbers the word covers what ordinary Israelites donate, a portion of which is lifted out and becomes the priests' food.
The other three are all in Proverbs, where the word has left any single institution behind. There it is simply what changes how people treat you:
- it opens a door and gets a man in front of important people,
- it marks its giver as generous, so that everyone claims his friendship,
- and, slipped over quietly, it takes the heat out of someone's anger.
That last use is why the word repays a second look. In Proverbs 21:14 it stands right beside the ordinary Hebrew word for a bribe (שֹׁחַד), which the law flatly forbids. The two are not the same word, but the proverb lines them up and lets the reader feel how thin the wall between them is. The word itself never rules on whether a gift is clean or dirty. The sentence around it does.
Nuances
Whether the bride-price and the gift named together in Genesis 34:12 are two separate payments or one combined demand.
- majorityTwo separate payments: the bride-price owed to Dinah's family, and an additional gift, most likely intended for Dinah herself, comparable to the personal presents given to Rebekah in Genesis 24:53.; Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, Word Biblical Commentary 2 (1994), 312-313; Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (1989), ad loc.; Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 18-50, NICOT (1995), ad loc.
- minorityOne combined demand, roughly "whatever marriage payment you care to name," with the two words reinforcing each other rather than naming two transfers.; Claus Westermann, Genesis 12-36: A Commentary, trans. J. J. Scullion (1985), ad loc.
Whether the gift in Proverbs 21:14 is morally distinct from the bribe named in the second half of the verse.
- majorityThe two terms sit on one spectrum of informal exchange here, so the discreet gift is functionally the bribe; the proverb describes what works rather than approving it.; Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31, Anchor Yale Bible 18B (2009), on 21:14; Anselm C. Hagedorn, "Bribery and the Informal Economy in the Book of Proverbs," Biblical Interpretation 29 (2021)
- minorityThe gift remains distinct in principle from a bribe, since Hebrew narrative uses gifts of this kind for legitimate peacemaking, even though the parallel line in this verse largely erases the boundary.; Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 15-31, NICOT (2005), on 21:14