StrongerBible

adah

עָדָה

HebrewH5710“adorn, deck, ...”

Appears 10 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Job 28:8Job 40:10Pro 25:20Isa 61:10Jer 4:30Jer 31:4Ezk 16:11Ezk 16:13Ezk 23:40Hos 2:13(15)
Names & words formed with this
Word studyResearch-gradeah-DAHverb

What adah means

1

to pass on: to travel across or past a place, or to take a thing off and carry it away

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This is a plain verb of movement. In Job 28:8 it says that no lion has ever passed over the hidden places where miners dig, ground so remote that even the proudest animals have never crossed it. In Proverbs 25:20 the same verb describes making something pass off a person: taking a coat away from someone on a freezing day, which the proverb offers as a picture of clumsy comfort.

Only those two Hebrew verses use the word this way, and both come from wisdom books. The verb is far more at home next door in Aramaic (עֲדָה), where it is ordinary and common: time passes, a royal order is revoked, a king is stripped of his glory. Hebrew's usual way of saying that something passed over or through is a different and much more frequent verb (עָבַר).

The two Hebrew uses sit at opposite ends of one simple idea. Something can pass across a place under its own power, or something can be made to pass off a body. English needs two different words for these, so nothing in a translation shows that one Hebrew verb covers both.

Nuances

1ato pass across or past a place, to traverse it
TranslatabilityDirect
Job 28:8
1bto take a garment off someone, stripping away what covered them
Pro 25:20
2

to deck oneself out: to put on jewelry and finery, or to place ornaments on someone else

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Eight of the word's ten appearances mean this, and almost all of them are in the prophets. What makes them distinctive in Hebrew is that the verb nearly always takes finery itself as its object: the matching noun for ornaments (עֲדִי), or a named piece of jewelry, or a nose ring, or gold and silver. The Hebrew sentence therefore rings with the same sound twice, something like "she jewelled herself with jewelry", and that echo simply disappears in English.

The prophets turn the image both ways. Jerusalem paints her eyes and puts on gold to attract lovers who mean to destroy her, and the woman who stands for Israel dresses up in her ornaments before going after other gods (Jeremiah 4:30; Ezekiel 23:40; Hosea 2:13). Then the same picture is used for restoration: a bride putting on her jewels, a rescued people taking up their tambourines again (Isaiah 61:10; Jeremiah 31:4). The dressing up is never merely about clothes. It is a way of saying where a people's loyalty lies.

Once, in Job 40:10, God tells Job to put on majesty and dignity as if they were finery, a wardrobe he cannot fill. There the verb stands beside the ordinary word for getting dressed (לָבֵשׁ), which is the closest Hebrew comes to treating the two as interchangeable.

Nuances

2ato deck oneself with jewelry and finery
Isa 61:10Jer 4:30Jer 31:4Ezk 16:13Ezk 23:40Hos 2:13(15)
2bto put ornaments on someone else, dressing another person in finery
Ezk 16:11
Ezk 16:11

Whether the Hebrew verb form in Ezekiel 16:11 should be repointed to the plainly causative form, since the received vowels give the shape normally used for adorning oneself while the subject here is God adorning Jerusalem.

  • majorityThe received wording can stand and be read as causative in sense: God adorns Jerusalem, without any change to the text.; Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1 (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1979), on 16:11; Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20 (Anchor Bible 22; Doubleday, 1983), on 16:11
  • minorityThe vowels should be adjusted to the causative form, which would make this a second instance of that form of the verb.; BDB, 726, s.v. II. עדה; Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 1-24 (NICOT; Eerdmans, 1997), on 16:11
2cto put on something that is not clothing at all, wearing it as if it were finery
Job 40:10

Disputed

Whether the adorning verb is an original Hebrew verb or was formed from the noun for ornament. The verb is essentially confined to Hebrew, and in nearly every occurrence it takes that very noun as its object, which is the pattern typical of verbs coined from nouns.

  • contestedThe verb was formed from the noun for ornament, which explains both its isolation among the Semitic languages and its habit of taking that noun as its object.; D. Kellermann, "עֲדִי," in TDOT 10 (Eerdmans, 2000); HALOT, s.v. עדי (cross-reference to עדה II)
  • contestedThe verb is original and the noun for ornament was formed from it.; Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (Carta; Macmillan, 1987), s.v. עדה, עדי

What scholars say about adah

The verb occurs about ten times, and virtually every modern lexicon that numbers homographs splits it the same way: I "pass on, advance" (with a causative "remove") and II "deck oneself, put on ornaments." BDB (725-726), Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm (HALOT), DCH 6, Gesenius 18th ed. (Meyer/Donner/Ruterswoerden), and NIDOTTE (G/K 6335 and 6338) agree in both the split and the numbering. The one classical dissent is the older Gesenius (Thesaurus; Tregelles English edition), who read a single polysemous root in which the Qal "pass by" extended causatively to "make [a garment] pass over," hence "adorn," appealing to German ueberziehen / anziehen and to the parallelism with לבש at Job 40:10.

The comparative evidence is lopsided, and it drives the consensus. Sense I sits in a broad West Semitic family: Ugaritic ʿdy "pass, remove" (DUL; Gordon, UT 19.1826), Biblical Aramaic עדא/עדה with Haphel "remove" (Dan 2:21; 5:20; 7:26), Jewish Palestinian and Babylonian Aramaic ʿdy as a standard Targumic rendering of עבר (Sokoloff, DJPA/DJBA), Syriac ʿda with Aphel "remove," Arabic ʿadā "run, pass by, transgress," Geʿez ʿadawa "cross, transgress" (Leslau, CDG 59), and Phoenician/Punic and Sabaic ʿdw/ʿdy. Akkadian has no cognate (edû "know" and adû "oath" are unrelated), so Kogan's classification treats the root as West Semitic rather than Common Semitic. Sense II, by contrast, has no verbal cognate anywhere: Ugaritic offers the noun ʿdt "ornament, vestment" but no verb, and the Aramaic nouns עידות / עדיתא are marginal and probably show Hebrew influence. Since the Hebrew reflex of sense I appears only in Job 28:8 and Prov 25:20, both in Aramaic-influenced wisdom material, Waltke and Murphy among others suspect an Aramaism, and the Proverbs form directly parallels the Aramaic Haphel/Aphel.

The live question is therefore not the split but the origin of sense II. Its near-invariable figura etymologica (Ezek 16:11 ואעדך עדי; Jer 4:30 תעדי עדי־זהב; Ezek 23:40 ועדית עדי) plus objects that are specific items of jewelry (Isa 61:10; Hos 2:15 MT; Jer 31:4) makes a verb coined from the noun עדי attractive; Kellermann (TDOT 10, s.v. עדי) leans that way and HALOT cross-references accordingly, while Klein derives the noun from the verb. On method, Kogan's principle that homographic senses without a cross-linguistic semantic bridge should be kept apart tells against the Gesenius unification, and Barr's chapter on the distribution of homonyms (Comparative Philology, ch. 6) permits this particular split precisely because each sense has independent support, while warning against multiplying homonyms further. Textually, Job 28:8 is read as "pass over" without emendation by Pope (who cites Ugaritic ʿdy), Clines, Habel, and Seow, and 11QtgJob confirms it with an Aramaic equivalent; Prov 25:20 is retained by Waltke, Fox, and Murphy against an older proposal to emend to מערה; and Ezek 16:11 is read as causative in sense by Zimmerli and Greenberg, with Block preferring BDB's repointing to the causative form.

Where scholars disagree about adah

Whether this is one word with an unusually wide range or two different words that happen to be spelled the same: one meaning to pass on or take away, the other meaning to deck oneself with ornaments.

  • majorityTwo separate words that look alike. The passing sense has cognates across the Semitic languages, the adorning sense has none, and the two senses keep to different parts of the Hebrew Bible.; BDB, 725-726, s.v. I. עדה and II. עדה; Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm, HALOT, s.v. עדה I, עדה II; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 6 (Sheffield Phoenix, 2007), s.v. עדה; Gesenius, Hebraeisches und Aramaeisches Handwoerterbuch, 18th ed., ed. Meyer, Donner, and Ruterswoerden (Springer, 1987-2013), s.v. עדה
  • minorityOne word, in which the sense of making something pass over the body developed into putting ornaments on, with the pairing of the verb with the ordinary word for getting dressed in Job 40:10 as supporting evidence.; Wilhelm Gesenius, Thesaurus philologico-criticus linguae hebraeae et chaldaeae Veteris Testamenti (Leipzig, 1829-1858), s.v. עדה; Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, trans. S. P. Tregelles (1857), s.v. עדה
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, 725-726, s.v. I. עדה and II. עדהlexicon
  • Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm, HALOT, s.v. עדה I, עדה II, עדיlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 6 (Sheffield Phoenix, 2007), s.v. עדהlexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebraeisches und Aramaeisches Handwoerterbuch ueber das Alte Testament, 18th ed., ed. Meyer, Donner, and Ruterswoerden (Springer, 1987-2013), s.v. עדהlexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, trans. S. P. Tregelles (1857), s.v. עדהlexicon
  • Willem VanGemeren, ed., NIDOTTE (Zondervan, 1997), G/K 6335 and 6338theological dictionary
  • D. Kellermann, "עֲדִי," in TDOT 10 (Eerdmans, 2000)theological dictionary
  • Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (Carta; Macmillan, 1987), s.v. עדה, עדיlexicon
  • James Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1968), ch. 6monograph
  • Leonid Kogan, Genealogical Classification of Semitic (De Gruyter, 2015)monograph
  • G. del Olmo Lete and J. Sanmartin, A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd rev. ed. (Brill, 2015), s.v. ʿdy, ʿdtlexicon
  • Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (Bar-Ilan, 1990), s.v. עדיlexicon
  • Wolf Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Geʿez (Harrassowitz, 1987), 59lexicon
  • Marvin H. Pope, Job, 3rd ed. (Anchor Bible 15; Doubleday, 1973), on 28:8 and 40:10commentary
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 21-37 (Word Biblical Commentary 18A; Nelson, 2006), on 28:8commentary
  • Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job (Old Testament Library; Westminster, 1985), on 28:8 and 40:10commentary
  • Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 15-31 (NICOT; Eerdmans, 2005), on 25:20commentary
  • Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31 (Anchor Yale Bible 18B, 2009), on 25:20commentary
  • Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs (Word Biblical Commentary 22; Nelson, 1998), on 25:20commentary
  • Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 56-66 (Anchor Bible 19B; Doubleday, 2003), on 61:10commentary
  • William L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1 (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1986), on 4:30commentary
  • Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 21-36 (Anchor Bible 21B; Doubleday, 2004), on 31:4commentary
  • Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1 (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1979), on 16:11-13commentary
  • Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20 (Anchor Bible 22; Doubleday, 1983), on 16:11-13commentary
  • Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 21-37 (Anchor Bible 22A; Doubleday, 1997), on 23:40commentary
  • Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 1-24 (NICOT; Eerdmans, 1997), on 16:11commentary
  • Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea (Anchor Bible 24; Doubleday, 1980), on 2:15commentary
  • Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1974), on 2:15commentary

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

All attested forms of עָדָה

qal imperfect 2fs

תַּעְדִּי

Jer 4:30, Jer 31:4

hiphil participle m s absolute

מַעֲדֶה

Pro 25:20

qal consecutive-imperfect 1cs

וָאֶעְדֵּ

Ezk 16:11

qal consecutive-imperfect 2fs

וַתַּעְדִּי

Ezk 16:13

qal consecutive-imperfect 3fs

וַתַּעַד

Hos 2:13

qal consecutive-perfect 2fs

וְעָדִית

Ezk 23:40

qal imperative 2ms

עֲדֵה

Job 40:10

qal imperfect 3fs

תַּעְדֶּה

Isa 61:10

qal perfect 3ms

עָדָה

Job 28:8