to doze: to slip into the light, drowsy edge of sleep, short of sleeping outright
Hebrew keeps a small, careful vocabulary for sleep, and this verb sits at the shallow end of it. It is the nod, the heavy eyelid, the moment someone begins to drift off without having gone under. The ordinary word for sleeping is a different one (יָשֵׁן), the deep sleep that falls on a person has its own word again (תַּרְדֵּמָה), and the drowsiness itself is named by the noun built from this same root (תְּנוּמָה). Reaching for this verb is a deliberate choice, and it is worth asking why a writer made it.
Mostly the answer is watchfulness. All six places the verb appears are poetry or prophecy, and in nearly every one someone is supposed to be awake. Psalm 121 denies dozing and then sleeping of Israel's keeper, in that order, so the promise climbs rather than repeats itself: not even a nod, let alone real sleep. Isaiah 5:27 turns the same pair against Israel, handing the invading army the tireless alertness Israel had counted on from God.
From there the word picks up two further colors:
- Made into a habit, it accuses, as with the leaders of Isaiah 56:10 who "love to slumber".
- Stretched by a poet, it names death, as with the warriors of Psalm 76:5 and the officers of Nahum 3:18 who will not be waking up.
None of that changes the core picture. The word always points to the light edge of sleep. What varies is whether that edge is being denied of God, charged against a person, or used as a quiet way of saying someone has been killed.
Nuances
Whether the slumbering shepherds of Nahum 3:18 are dead or merely negligent.
- majorityThe verb is a euphemism for death: Assyria's officers have been killed, on the analogy of the fallen warriors of Psalm 76:5 and the everlasting sleep of Jeremiah 51:39, 57.; J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, OTL (1991), on Nahum 3:18; Klaas Spronk, Nahum, Historical Commentary on the Old Testament (1997), on Nahum 3:18; Duane L. Christensen, Nahum, Anchor Yale Bible 24F (2009), on Nahum 3:18; Wilhelm Rudolph, Micha, Nahum, Habakuk, Zephanja, KAT XIII/3 (1975), on Nahum 3:18; Marvin A. Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets, Berit Olam 2 (2000), on Nahum 3:18
- minorityThe verb describes culpable inattention: Assyria's leadership has grown carelessly secure rather than been destroyed.; F. J. V. D. Maurer, Commentarius grammaticus criticus in Vetus Testamentum, on Nahum 3:18, cited and rejected by Rudolph, KAT XIII/3
Disputed
How far the light-doze distinction between נוּם and יָשֵׁן should be pressed in the reading of individual verses.
- majorityThe verb lexically names the light, drowsy onset of sleep and is deliberately distinct from the general verb for sleeping, so the pairing at Psalm 121:4 and Isaiah 5:27 is climactic step parallelism rather than flat synonymy.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), 630, s.v. נוּם; Koehler, Baumgartner, Stamm, HALOT, vol. 2, 680, s.v. נוּם; Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, tr. S. P. Tregelles (1857), 542, s.v. נוּם; Elmer B. Smick, TWOT 1325; Thomas H. McAlpine, Sleep, Divine and Human, in the Old Testament, JSOTSup 38 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987)
- minorityIn wisdom poetry the word pair functions as synonymous parallelism intensified for rhetorical urgency, effectively a merism for any sleep at all, so the intensity gradient should not be pressed in the exegesis of particular verses.; Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1-9, Anchor Yale Bible 18A (2000), on Proverbs 6:9-11; Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 1-15, NICOT (2004), on Proverbs 6:4; Richard J. Clifford, Proverbs: A Commentary, OTL (1999), on Proverbs 6; Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs, WBC 22 (1998), on Proverbs 6; Tremper Longman III, Proverbs, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (2006), on Proverbs 6