StrongerBible

neharah

נְהָרָה

HebrewH5105“light, daylight, ...”

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Job 3:4
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeneh-hah-RAHnoun

What neharah means

daylight: the light that beams out over a day, set directly against darkness

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This word turns up once in the whole Bible, in Job's curse on the day he was born. Job asks that the day be handed over to darkness: that God overhead not go looking for it, and that no daylight ever break out over it again. The line puts this word squarely opposite darkness, so what it means is not really in doubt, even though we only ever get to see it used once.

Hebrew already had a plain, everyday word for light (אוֹר). Job's poem reaches instead for a rare form built on a root for shining that is far more at home in Aramaic, where the matching word (נְהִירוּ) is simply the ordinary term for light. That suits the book of Job, whose poetry is thick with unusual and foreign-sounding vocabulary. Scholars differ slightly over how narrow the word is: some read it as daylight in general, others as the first light of morning, close to the idea of daybreak (שַׁחַר).

Job 3 reads like creation running backwards. Where Genesis has God say "let there be light," Job says "let there be darkness," and this word names the daylight he wants cancelled. The verb beside it means to beam or shine out, so the picture is of morning light actively breaking over a day, which is exactly what the curse forbids.

Job 3:4

What scholars say about neharah

נְהָרָה is a hapax legomenon at Job 3:4, a feminine abstract noun formed with the -ah ending from the root nhr. BDB glosses it "light, daylight (as Aramaic נְהוֹרָא), opposed to חֹשֶׁךְ"; TWOT narrows the nuance to the first rays of the morning sun. The commentators render "light," "daylight," or "brightness" without proposing emendation (Clines in the Word Biblical Commentary, with Pope, Habel, Dhorme, Gordis, Hartley, Seow, and Newsom agreeing in substance and differing only over whether general daylight or dawn-light is meant). The ancient versions concur: LXX Job 3:4 has φέγγος rather than the commoner φῶς, the Vulgate has lumen, the Peshitta has nuhra with a verb of dawning, and the standard Targumic word for light is נְהוֹרָא. The Qumran Targum of Job (11Q10) preserves only material from Job 17:14 onward and so offers no reading here. The live lexical question concerns roots rather than sense: BDB and HALOT separate nhr I "to flow, stream" (with נָהָר "river," Akkadian naru, Arabic nahr) from nhr II "to shine, beam" (Isaiah 60:5; Psalm 34:6), tagging the latter as Aramaic, while Gesenius and the older etymological tradition derive both from a single image of streaming or gleaming water. The prominence of the shine field in Aramaic and Syriac (נְהוֹרָא at Daniel 2:22, נַהִירוּ at Daniel 5:11 and 5:14, Syriac nuhra) feeds the broader discussion of Job's dialectal coloring and date; Greenstein treats the density of Aramaic in Job as deliberate poetic artistry and as evidence for a Persian-period setting. Fishbane and Perdue read Job 3:3 to 10 as a systematic reversal of Genesis 1, in which the light of Genesis 1:3 is answered by the darkness of Job 3:4 and this word names the daylight the curse annuls.

Where scholars disagree about neharah

Whether the three consonants behind this word belong to a separate root meaning "to shine" or to one root that covers both shining and flowing.

  • majorityTwo distinct roots that happen to share the same consonants: one meaning to flow or stream, which gives Hebrew its word for "river," and a second, Aramaic-colored root meaning to shine, which is where this word for light belongs.; F. Brown, S. R. Driver, C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), s.v. I. נָהַר and II. נָהַר; L. Koehler and W. Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill), s.v. נהר
  • minorityA single root whose two senses spring from one image, the gleam of moving water, so that shining and flowing are two sides of the same word.; W. Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. נהר
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

  • F. Brown, S. R. Driver, C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), s.v. נְהָרָהlexicon
  • F. Brown, S. R. Driver, C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), s.v. I. נָהַר and II. נָהַרlexicon
  • L. Koehler and W. Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill), s.v. נהרlexicon
  • W. Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. נהרlexicon
  • R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, B. K. Waltke, eds., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody, 1980), s.v. נהרtheological-dictionary
  • D. J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary 17 (Dallas: Word, 1989), 69, 80-81commentary
  • M. H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1965)commentary
  • N. C. Habel, The Book of Job, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985)commentary
  • C. L. Seow, Job 1-21: Interpretation and Commentary, Illuminations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013)commentary
  • E. L. Greenstein, "The Language of Job and Its Poetic Function," Journal of Biblical Literature 122, no. 4 (2003): 651-666article
  • M. Fishbane, "Jeremiah IV 23-26 and Job III 3-13: A Recovered Use of the Creation Pattern," Vetus Testamentum 21, no. 2 (1971): 151-167article
  • L. G. Perdue, Wisdom in Revolt: Metaphorical Theology in the Book of Job (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1991)monograph

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

All attested forms of נְהָרָה

f s absolute

נְהָרָה

Job 3:4