StrongerBible

saphi'aḥ

סָפִיחַ

HebrewH5599“aftergrowth, what grows of itself, ...”

Appears 5 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Lev 25:5Lev 25:112Ki 19:29Job 14:19Isa 37:30
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradesah-FEE-akhnoun

What saphi'aḥ means

1

aftergrowth: the grain that comes up on its own the year after a harvest, sprouted from seed that fell to the ground when the field was cut

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

Ancient harvesting was wasteful. Cutting grain with a hand sickle shook kernels loose, and enough of them fell that the following spring a thin crop came up on the same field with nobody planting it. This word names that crop. It is not a weed and not a leftover pile in a barn: it is real food, standing in the field, that no one worked for. Leviticus 25:5 calls it the aftergrowth of your harvest (קָצִיר), setting it beside the crop a farmer sows, cuts, and owns.

Two settings use the word, and both turn that fact into a lesson. In the sabbath year of Leviticus 25 the Israelites are told not to reap it, which sits oddly beside the same chapter's promise that the year's growth will feed the household, the hired worker, the foreigner, the livestock, and even the wild animals. The point is not that the food is off limits but that the field is: for one year nobody may treat the crop as a private harvest to cut, bundle, and store. Anyone may walk out and eat.

In the promise to Hezekiah the same word describes a nation living for a year on self sown grain, then on the thinner second year growth (סָחִישׁ), before ordinary sowing and reaping begin again. Whether that wording deliberately echoes the sabbath law or simply pictures farming knocked flat by an invading army is debated, but the effect is the same: for two years Judah eats what it did not plant.

Lev 25:5Lev 25:112Ki 19:29Isa 37:30
2Ki 19:29

Whether the sign given to Hezekiah, two years of self-sown grain before normal sowing resumes, deliberately invokes the sabbath-year and jubilee legislation of Leviticus 25 or simply reflects agricultural disruption caused by Sennacherib's 701 BCE campaign.

  • majorityThe sign is straightforwardly agricultural: the Assyrian presence prevented the autumn sowing, so Judah subsists on volunteer growth for two seasons and resumes normal cultivation in the third year. The oracle contains no sabbatical vocabulary, no year count, and no formula for the land's sabbath.; Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings, Anchor Bible 11 (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 237-38; John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 660-61; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 28-39, Continental Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), on 37:30; J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), on 37:30
  • minorityThe pairing of aftergrowth in year one with the second-year growth in year two mirrors the Levitical requirement that no sowing take place in either the sabbatical or the following jubilee year, which points to an actual jubilee observed in Hezekiah's reign.; Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27, Anchor Bible 3B (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 2265
  • minorityThe Levitical echo is literary and theological rather than historical: the priestly vocabulary shapes the oracle into a sabbath-like season of enforced trust in divine provision, without implying that a sabbatical year actually fell in 700 BCE.; Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), on 37:30; Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1-39, FOTL 16 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 471ff.; Christopher R. Seitz, Isaiah 1-39, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1993)
Isa 37:30

Whether the sign given to Hezekiah, two years of self-sown grain before normal sowing resumes, deliberately invokes the sabbath-year and jubilee legislation of Leviticus 25 or simply reflects agricultural disruption caused by Sennacherib's 701 BCE campaign.

  • majorityThe sign is straightforwardly agricultural: the Assyrian presence prevented the autumn sowing, so Judah subsists on volunteer growth for two seasons and resumes normal cultivation in the third year. The oracle contains no sabbatical vocabulary, no year count, and no formula for the land's sabbath.; Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings, Anchor Bible 11 (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 237-38; John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 660-61; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 28-39, Continental Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), on 37:30; J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), on 37:30
  • minorityThe pairing of aftergrowth in year one with the second-year growth in year two mirrors the Levitical requirement that no sowing take place in either the sabbatical or the following jubilee year, which points to an actual jubilee observed in Hezekiah's reign.; Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27, Anchor Bible 3B (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 2265
  • minorityThe Levitical echo is literary and theological rather than historical: the priestly vocabulary shapes the oracle into a sabbath-like season of enforced trust in divine provision, without implying that a sabbatical year actually fell in 700 BCE.; Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), on 37:30; Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1-39, FOTL 16 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 471ff.; Christopher R. Seitz, Isaiah 1-39, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1993)
2

a rush of water: the flooding that scours the soil off the ground

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyObscure

One verse, Job 14:19, uses this spelling in a picture of erosion rather than farming. Water wears down stones, and the flood it makes washes away the soil of the earth, which is Job's image for the way God grinds out a person's hope. Most lexicons list the word here as a separate noun that happens to look identical, built on a different root meaning "to pour out", and gloss it as an outpouring or a torrent.

The reading is not secure. The line is compressed and difficult, some scholars have proposed correcting the text to a known word for a downpour, and others keep the farming sense here, taking the phrase as what sprouts from the dust and is swept off. English Bibles divide accordingly, so the same half verse can appear as torrents washing away the soil in one version and as growth being washed away in another.

Job 14:19

What scholars say about saphi'aḥ

The lexical sense of the agricultural noun is uncontested; the live debate is etymological. Gesenius and BDB derive it from a root cognate with Arabic safaha and Akkadian sapahu, "to pour out, scatter" (the latter used specifically of scattering grain, oil, and earth), so that the noun denotes grain spilled at harvest. Buhl in the thirteenth edition of the Gesenius Handwoerterbuch derived it instead from the well attested verb spch, "to join, attach" (1 Samuel 2:36; 1 Samuel 26:19; Isaiah 14:1), reading the noun on a passive-product pattern as produce added to the crop without sowing; HALOT and Milgrom follow him, and Ugaritic sph, "family, offspring", is adduced in support by Held, Rainey, and Loewenstamm. The skin-condition nouns of Leviticus 13-14 are variously grouped with the same root or set apart with sibilant variation, but classical Hebrew treats them as functionally independent. BDB lists Job 14:19 as a separate noun, "outpouring", only if the reading is sound, and records Budde's proposed emendation comparing Proverbs 28:3; DCH cross-lists the verse under the same lemma while flagging the textual uncertainty. On Leviticus 25, Milgrom's Anchor Bible commentary is the standard modern treatment: the prohibition bars proprietary, systematic harvest (reaping with a sickle, sheaving, storing) rather than consumption, since 25:6 and 25:7 designate the growth as food for the whole household, resident aliens, cattle, and wild animals, the field becoming ownerless for the year; he also cites Palestinian agronomic data showing that first-fallow-year aftergrowth can yield two or three harvests from one sowing. Levine and Wenham reach compatible conclusions, and Hartley reads Leviticus 25:20-22 as conceding that volunteer growth alone would not suffice, hence the promised sixth-year blessing. On the Hezekiah oracle the word is paired with the hapax shachis (spelled sachish by metathesis in Kings), universally glossed as the aftergrowth of the aftergrowth. The ancient versions are unanimous on the sense and exploit neither etymology: LXX Leviticus and 4 Kingdoms use ta automata anabainonta, the Vulgate quae sponte nascuntur, Targum Onkelos the native Aramaic kitta, while LXX Isaiah paraphrases and so loses the Levitical link.

Where scholars disagree about saphi'aḥ

Whether Job 14:19 attests the same noun as the four agricultural occurrences or a homonymous noun meaning an outpouring or torrent, and whether the text there is sound at all.

  • majorityJob 14:19 attests a separate homonymous noun, "outpouring" (of torrents), listed apart from the agricultural noun and marked as valid only if the reading is correct.; BDB (Brown, Driver, Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. saphiach I and II
  • minorityThe verse can be cross-listed under the single lemma, with the textual uncertainty flagged rather than resolved by positing a homonym.; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press), s.v. saphiach
  • minorityThe consonantal text at Job 14:19 is corrupt and should be emended to a noun for a downpour, on the analogy of the sweeping rain of Proverbs 28:3.; Karl Budde's emendation of Job 14:19, recorded in BDB, s.v. saphiach
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

  • BDB (Brown, Driver, Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. saphiachlexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill), s.v. saphiachlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press), s.v. saphiachlexicon
  • Frants Buhl, Wilhelm Gesenius' hebraeisches und aramaeisches Handwoerterbuch ueber das Alte Testament, 13th ed. (1899), s.v.lexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Thesaurus philologicus criticus linguae hebraeae et chaldaeae veteris testamenti (1829-58), s.v.lexicon
  • Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27, Anchor Bible 3B (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 2158, 2168-72, 2265commentary
  • Baruch A. Levine, Leviticus (Vayikra), JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 170commentary
  • Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 316-20commentary
  • John E. Hartley, Leviticus, WBC 4 (Dallas: Word, 1992), 431-41commentary
  • Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings, Anchor Bible 11 (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 237-38commentary
  • John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 660-61commentary
  • Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 28-39, Continental Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002)commentary
  • J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015)commentary
  • Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001)commentary
  • Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1-39, FOTL 16 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 471ff.commentary
  • Gregorio del Olmo Lete and Joaquin Sanmartin, A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2003), s.v. sphlexicon
  • Isac L. Seeligmann, The Septuagint Version of Isaiah (Leiden: Brill, 1948)monograph

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

All attested forms of סָפִיחַ

m p construct

סְפִיחֶיהָ

Lev 25:11, Job 14:19

m s absolute

סָפִיחַ

2Ki 19:29, Isa 37:30

m s construct

סְפִיחַ

Lev 25:5