StrongerBible

agav

עָגַב

HebrewH5689“lust after, dote on, ...”

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Jer 4:30Ezk 23:5Ezk 23:7Ezk 23:9Ezk 23:12Ezk 23:16Ezk 23:20
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeah-GAHVverb

What agav means

to lust after someone: to be gripped by a craving for a person that has run past all shame

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This is a rare and deliberately shocking word. It shows up only seven times in the whole Hebrew Bible, six of them inside a single chapter of Ezekiel and one in Jeremiah, and it never describes ordinary affection. Hebrew has plenty of warm and neutral words for wanting someone. This is not one of them.

Three things set it apart from its neighbors:

  • It is always an accusation, where the ordinary word for love (אָהֵב) covers everything from family affection to God's love for his people.
  • It names the appetite rather than the deed, where being unfaithful (זָנָה) and committing adultery (נָאַף) name what the appetite goes on to do.
  • It was felt as coarse, and in later Hebrew the same root turns plainly obscene.

In Ezekiel the craving is aimed at foreign soldiers and officials, and the whole picture stands for something political. Two sisters, one of them Samaria and the other Jerusalem, chase after Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon for protection instead of trusting God. The prophet reached for the coarsest word he had so that his hearers would feel their careful foreign policy as something sordid. Alongside the verb he uses two nouns built on the same root for the craving itself (עֲגָבָה in that same chapter, and עָגָב later on), and in one of those later verses the people treat his preaching as a love song: pleasant to sit and listen to, and no reason to change anything.

The single occurrence outside Ezekiel turns the word around. In Jeremiah 4:30 it is used to name people rather than an action, so English versions read "your lovers": the men a doomed city has been craving. There the sting is not her heat but their contempt, since these lovers despise her and are out for her life.

Nuances

1ato lust after someone: to crave a person shamelessly, said of a city pictured as a wife chasing other men
Ezk 23:5Ezk 23:7Ezk 23:9Ezk 23:12Ezk 23:16Ezk 23:20
1blovers: the men a woman has been craving, named by the very word for that craving
Jer 4:30

What scholars say about agav

עָגַב occurs seven times as a verb, all in the Qal: six in Ezekiel 23 (vv. 5, 7, 9, 12, 16, 20) and once as a substantivized participle, עֹגְבִים, in Jeremiah 4:30. The nominal derivatives are confined to Ezekiel: עַגְבָה (23:11) and עֲגָבִים (33:31, 32, the latter in the phrase שִׁיר עֲגָבִים). BDB defines the verb as "have inordinate affection, lust," restricts it to "the figure of the relations of Samaria and Jerusalem (personified) with foreigners," and renders the Jeremiah participle "paramours"; HALOT gives "to desire, to lust (after)"; Clines's DCH, which defines by attested usage rather than comparative etymology, gives "lust after, dote on, be infatuated with," with the noun as "lust, sensuality" or "sensual song"; the Gesenius tradition classes the verb among the more violent affections of the mind, "to love, especially licentiously and voluptuously," pairing it in sense with אָהַב. BDB's cross reference to Levy registers the sensus obscenus the root carries in Mishnaic and later Rabbinic Hebrew, which is one reason the lexica read the biblical occurrences as strongly erotic rather than merely affectionate. The comparative case rests almost entirely on Arabic ʿaǧiba ("to wonder, be amazed, admire"), with a reconstructed drift from admiration through infatuation to sexual craving; no secure Akkadian or Ugaritic cognate is attested, and the narrow, late, figurative distribution offers little internal control on the reconstruction, so the etymology is best presented as plausible rather than demonstrated. Within the semantic field the verb is marked and pejorative over against neutral אָהַב and חָשַׁק and the plain desiderative אָוָה and תָּאַב, and it differs from זָנָה and נָאַף in denoting disposition rather than act: in Ezekiel 23 it typically supplies the motive that זְנוּת then carries out. The versions diverge instructively. LXX declines a lust verb, using ἐπιτίθημι ("set herself upon," 23:5, 7, 20) and ἐρασταί at Jeremiah 4:30, and flattens Ezekiel 33:32 to purely musical vocabulary; Jerome intensifies to insanivit ("she raged with love," 23:5, 11, 20) while rendering the nominal sense amatores; Targum Jonathan de-eroticizes the metaphor into straying after false worship. On Ezekiel 23 the historical critical commentaries (Zimmerli, Greenberg, Block, Allen) read the lusting as a figure for the two kingdoms' Assyrian, Egyptian, and Babylonian alliances and the cults that came with them, while a feminist and rhetorical critical literature (Galambush, Kamionkowski, Weems, Brenner and van Dijk-Hemmes) treats the marriage metaphor itself as ideologically compromised, and Patton, Sloane, and Kalmanofsky argue against the "pornoprophetic" framing. That debate concerns the rhetoric and ethics of the oracle rather than the lexical value of the verb, which is not itself in doubt. Qumran preserves parts of Ezekiel 23 in 4Q73 but none of the עָגַב occurrences.

Where scholars disagree about agav

Whether the wind instrument עוּגָב belongs to this same root, so that the verb's underlying sense is "to breathe, to pant after."

  • majorityThe musical noun is a separate lexeme of uncertain etymology. The supposed root sense "to breathe, to blow" was inferred backward from the instrument's name and so cannot then be used to explain the verb; modern lexicography lists the two words separately.; HALOT (Koehler and Baumgartner), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. עוגב and עגב; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. VI, s.v. עגב
  • minorityThe verb and the instrument are two branches of one root whose basic sense is breathing or blowing, making the pipe the breath instrument and the verb a panting after someone; Klein goes further and glosses the instrument as an instrument of love, named for its insinuating tunes.; Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, s.v. עוגב; Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. עגב
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. עגבlexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler and Baumgartner), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. 2, s.v. עגבlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. VI, s.v. עגבlexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. עגבlexicon
  • Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, s.v. עוגבlexicon
  • Jacob Levy, Neuhebräisches und chaldäisches Wörterbuch über die Talmudim und Midraschim, vol. 3, p. 616lexicon
  • Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel (Hermeneia), on Ezekiel 23commentary
  • Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 21-37 (Anchor Bible), on Ezekiel 23commentary
  • Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel (New International Commentary on the Old Testament), on Ezekiel 23commentary
  • Leslie C. Allen, Ezekiel (Word Biblical Commentary), on Ezekiel 23commentary
  • William L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), on Jeremiah 4:30commentary
  • Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah (Anchor Bible), on Jeremiah 4:30commentary
  • Julie Galambush, Jerusalem in the Book of Ezekiel: The City as Yahweh's Wife (SBL Dissertation Series 130; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992)monograph
  • S. Tamar Kamionkowski, Gender Reversal and Cosmic Chaos: A Study on the Book of Ezekielmonograph
  • Renita J. Weems, Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophetsmonograph
  • Athalya Brenner and Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes, On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the Hebrew Biblemonograph
  • Corrine L. Patton, "Should Our Sister Be Treated Like a Whore? A Response to Feminist Critiques of Ezekiel 23"article
  • Andrew Sloane, "Aberrant Textuality? The Case of Ezekiel the (Porno) Prophet," Tyndale Bulletin 59, no. 1 (2008): 53-76article
  • Amy Kalmanofsky, "The Dangerous Sisters of Jeremiah and Ezekiel," Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 2 (2011): 299-312article

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

All attested forms of עָגַב

qal consecutive-imperfect 3fs

וַתַּעְגְּבָ, וַתַּעְגַּב

Ezk 23:16, Ezk 23:20, Ezk 23:5

qal perfect 3fs

עָגְבָה, עָגָבָה

Ezk 23:7, Ezk 23:9, Ezk 23:12

qal participle m p absolute

עֹגְבִים

Jer 4:30