StrongerBible

nava

נָבַע

HebrewH5042“pour forth, utter, ...”

Appears 11 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Psa 19:2(3)Psa 59:7(8)Psa 78:2Psa 94:4Psa 119:171Psa 145:7Pro 1:23Pro 15:2Pro 15:28Pro 18:4Ecc 10:1
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradenah-VAHverb

What nava means

to bubble up and gush out, as water from a spring or words from a mouth

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

The picture under this word is a spring. Water finds a weak place in the ground and comes up under its own pressure: nobody pumps it, and nobody easily stops it. Hebrew has a separate verb for water running down a slope, "to flow" (נָזַל); this one is for water pushing up from below. The plain physical use survives once, in Proverbs 18:4, where wise words are called a gushing stream.

The other ten times, the spring has moved into a person's mouth. Speech becomes an overflow: what has been stored inside comes up and out on its own. That is why the same verb covers speech worth hearing and speech worth fleeing:

  • the sky pours out its message day after day, without a sound (Psalm 19:2)
  • a teacher pours out riddles handed down from long ago (Psalm 78:2)
  • lips pour out praise, and a whole congregation pours out the memory of God's goodness (Psalm 119:171, Psalm 145:7)
  • enemies pour out threats while swords are on their lips (Psalm 59:7)
  • a fool's mouth pours out stupidity, and the arrogant pour out boasting (Proverbs 15:2, Psalm 94:4)

The word passes no verdict of its own. Proverbs 15:28 puts the contrast plainly: the good person's heart works an answer over first, in the quiet muttering of someone turning a thought around (הָגָה), while the wicked mouth simply lets what is in it come up. Fluent, abundant, effortless speech is not wisdom. It only shows what has already been poured in.

One use stays with liquid. In Ecclesiastes 10:1 dead flies make a perfumer's oil bubble up and turn, the same welling motion applied to something spoiling rather than to something fresh.

Nuances

1aof water: welling up out of the ground, flowing
TranslatabilityDirect
Pro 18:4
Pro 18:4

Whether the two halves of Proverbs 18:4 contrast two kinds of speech or stack three images of one wise speech.

  • majorityThe lines run in parallel: deep waters, a gushing stream, and a fountain of wisdom are three stacked pictures of the wise person's speech, moving from hidden reserve to active flow.; Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 15-31, NICOT (Eerdmans, 2005), on Prov 18:4; Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31, AYB 18B (Yale University Press, 2009), on Prov 18:4; Crawford H. Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs, ICC (T&T Clark, 1899), on Prov 18:4
  • minorityThe lines stand opposed: the first names human speech as murky and hard to fathom, and the second sets against it the fresh, active stream of wisdom.; Tremper Longman III, Proverbs, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Baker Academic, 2006), on Prov 18:4
1bto make a thick liquid bubble up and turn
Ecc 10:1
1cto pour words out of the mouth the way a spring pours out water
Psa 19:2(3)Psa 59:7(8)Psa 78:2Psa 94:4Psa 119:171Psa 145:7Pro 15:2Pro 15:28
1dto pour out what is inside a person: a mind, a disposition, a spirit
Pro 1:23

What scholars say about nava

The lexicons agree on the sense and differ only in how finely they subdivide it. BDB brackets the lemma because no finite qal is attested, glosses the root "flow, spring, bubble up, in poetry and late," and sorts the ten hiphil forms into figurative pouring out (Prov 1:23), causing to ferment (Eccl 10:1), and the dominant category of speech. HALOT likewise separates the qal participle of Prov 18:4 from the hiphil and, within the hiphil, distinguishes the fermentation of Eccl 10:1 from the figurative outpouring of speech in the remaining nine; DCH adds Ben Sira and Qumran attestations. Coppes in TWOT (1287) formulates the semantic core as an uncontrollable or uncontrolled gushing forth and stresses the antithesis with hagah in Prov 15:28, where the righteous heart meditates before answering. Gesenius took the base syllable to be onomatopoeic (comparing bua, baʿbaʿ, baʿah) and proposed a link with naba, "to prophesy," by softening of the aleph; the differing final consonants make this untenable and it is generally rejected today. Comparative Semitic evidence is unusually consistent: Arabic nabaʿa "to well up, gush," with yanbuʿ and manbaʿ "spring, source"; Aramaic and Syriac nebaʿ, whose aphel means both "to make gush" and "to publish, proclaim," the same causative-of-speech development seen in the Hebrew hiphil; Ugaritic nominal nbk / mbk "source," as in mbk nhrm, El's dwelling at the source of the two rivers; Geʿez nabʿa "to weep," a narrowing to welling tears; and Akkadian nagbu "spring," widely taken as a metathesized reflex of West Semitic n-b-ʿ. The noun mabbuaʿ (Isa 35:7; 49:10; Eccl 12:6) is formed from the same root and ties the verb into the spring vocabulary shared with maqor and maʿyan. In the Septuagint Psalter the translators reached for ereugomai and its compound exereugomai ("belch, disgorge") at Psalms 19:2, 119:171 and 145:7, softening elsewhere to phthengomai, anangello, or apokrinomai; the paraphrastic LXX Proverbs varies its Greek verb in every instance and renders the participle of Prov 18:4 with anapedyei. Matthew 13:35 quotes Psalm 78:2 with ereuxomai rather than the Septuagint's phthenxomai, reaching back for the more physical Greek verb. On the passages themselves, Waltke, Fox, Murphy and McKane read Prov 1:23 as fusing sapiential and prophetic idiom, with Fox resisting a pneumatological reading of ruchi in favor of Wisdom's own mind in parallel with her words; Craigie and Alter emphasize the ceaseless, effortless character of the outflow at Psalm 19:2; Tate and Hossfeld and Zenger read Psalms 59:7 and 94:4 as programmatic inversions of the wisdom ideal; Allen and Goldingay read Psalms 119:171 and 145:7 as the redeemed form of the same image.

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

  • Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1907), 615, s.v. נבעlexicon
  • Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, trans. M. E. J. Richardson (Brill, 1994-2000), 665, s.v. נבעlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 5 (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), s.v. נבעlexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebraisches und aramaisches Handworterbuch uber das Alte Testament, 18th ed., ed. Herbert Donner et al. (Springer, 1987-2010), s.v. נבעlexicon
  • Leonard J. Coppes, "1287 נָבַע," in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke (Moody Press, 1980), 1:548dictionary
  • Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1-15 and Chapters 15-31, NICOT (Eerdmans, 2004, 2005), on Prov 1:23; 15:2, 28; 18:4commentary
  • Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1-9, AB 18A (Doubleday, 2000), 99-100, and Proverbs 10-31, AYB 18B (Yale University Press, 2009), on Prov 15:2, 28; 18:4commentary
  • Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs, WBC 22 (Nelson, 1998), on Prov 1:23commentary
  • William McKane, Proverbs: A New Approach, OTL (Westminster, 1970), on Prov 1:23commentary
  • Tremper Longman III, Proverbs, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Baker Academic, 2006), on Prov 18:4commentary
  • Crawford H. Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs, ICC (T&T Clark, 1899), on Prov 18:4commentary
  • Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50, WBC 19 (Word, 1983), on Psalm 19commentary
  • Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 51-100, WBC 20 (Word, 1990), on Psalms 59 and 94commentary
  • Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51-100 and Psalms 3: A Commentary on Psalms 101-150, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2005, 2011)commentary
  • Leslie C. Allen, Psalms 101-150, rev. ed., WBC 21 (Nelson, 2002), on Psalms 119 and 145commentary
  • Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (Norton, 2007), on Psalm 19commentary
  • E. W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, Book I (Williams and Norgate, 1863-93), 2751, s.v. نبعlexicon
  • Michael Sokoloff, A Syriac Lexicon: A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann's Lexicon Syriacum (Eisenbrauns / Gorgias, 2009), s.v. ܢܒܥlexicon
  • Wolf Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic) (Harrassowitz, 1987), s.v. nab'alexicon
  • Gregorio del Olmo Lete and Joaquin Sanmartin, A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd rev. ed. (Brill, 2015), s.v. nbk, mbklexicon

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

All attested forms of נָבַע

hiphil imperfect 3ms

יַבִּיעַ

Psa 19:2, Pro 15:2, Pro 15:28, Ecc 10:1

hiphil imperfect 3mp

יַבִּיעוּ

Psa 59:7, Psa 94:4, Psa 145:7

hiphil cohortative 1cs

אַבִּיעָה

Psa 78:2, Pro 1:23

hiphil imperfect 3fp

תַּבַּעְנָה

Psa 119:171

qal participle m s absolute

נֹבֵעַ

Pro 18:4