StrongerBible

inyan

עִנְיָן

HebrewH6045“business, task, ...”

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Ecc 1:13Ecc 2:23Ecc 2:26Ecc 3:10Ecc 4:8Ecc 5:3(2)Ecc 5:14(13)Ecc 8:16
Word studyeen-YAHNnoun

What inyan means

the business that occupies a person: the task, affair, or activity that fills up someone's time and attention

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This noun belongs to one book. All eight of its appearances are in Ecclesiastes, and it is built from a verb meaning "to be kept busy with something." That is its center of gravity: not the sweat of the work, and not the thing produced, but the state of having something on your hands.

Ecclesiastes stretches that single idea across a wide field:

  • what God hands out so that human days are filled (Ecclesiastes 1:13; 3:10)
  • the routine a person is stuck in, and the worry that comes home with it (Ecclesiastes 2:23)
  • the sheer volume of activity that spills over into restless dreams (Ecclesiastes 5:3)
  • one particular deal that goes wrong and takes a fortune with it (Ecclesiastes 5:14)

Three of the eight times, the word is paired with the ordinary adjective for "bad." That pairing is not a moral verdict. It marks the occupation as wearisome and unlucky rather than wicked, much as an English speaker can call something "a bad business" without meaning that anyone sinned.

The book keeps this word in close company with its word for toil (עָמָל), and the two do different jobs: toil is the effort and the trouble that effort produces, while this word is the standing occupation that keeps a person at it. It also sits near the word for a finished deed (מַעֲשֶׂה), which names the product rather than the preoccupation.

Nuances

1aan occupation handed to someone from outside, above all the wearying business God gives people so that their days are filled
Ecc 1:13Ecc 2:26Ecc 3:10
1bthe grind of a person's own daily work, together with the worry it brings home
Ecc 2:23Ecc 4:8
1chuman activity taken as a whole: everything that goes on in the world
Ecc 8:16
1dhaving a great deal on one's mind, enough that it spills over into dreams
Ecc 5:3(2)
1ea piece of business or a venture, here one that goes badly and swallows a fortune
CertaintyContested
Ecc 5:14(13)
Ecc 5:14

Whether the phrase describes a failed business venture or a general misfortune in Ecclesiastes 5:14.

  • majorityA bad venture: the man's wealth is lost in a failed commercial undertaking, in keeping with the economic vocabulary Qoheleth uses elsewhere.; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. ענין; C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes, Anchor Bible 18C (1997)
  • minorityAn unhappy affair: the word keeps its general sense of an occupation or matter, and the loss is an unlucky turn of events rather than a specific business deal.; BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. ענין

What scholars say about inyan

The noun occurs eight times, all of them in Ecclesiastes, and is formed from the root ענה "to be occupied, busied" (the same root supplies the infinitive לענות in 1:13 and 3:10) with the -ān ending that is productive in Late Biblical Hebrew and standard in Aramaic; in Mishnaic Hebrew עִנְיָן becomes the ordinary word for "matter, subject." BDB and DCH gloss it "occupation, task, business"; HALOT adds the more specific sense of a business affair or undertaking, especially at 5:13 in the Hebrew numbering (English 5:14). Seow reads Qoheleth's vocabulary against Persian-period economic usage and renders the phrase there "a bad venture," while the older lexica keep the general sense of an unhappy affair. The recurring collocation with רַע (1:13; 4:8; and 5:13 Hebrew, 5:14 English) is idiomatic rather than moral. The word is one of the standard exhibits in the long argument over the date and dialect of Ecclesiastes, from Delitzsch onward and taken up in detail by Schoors; those who read the form as a colloquial or northern feature rather than a chronological marker dispute the inference to a post-exilic date. That debate concerns the word's provenance, not its sense, which the lexica agree on.

Sources

  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. עניןlexicon
  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. עניןlexicon
  • DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. עניןlexicon
  • C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes, Anchor Bible 18C (1997)commentary
  • Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (1999)monograph
  • Antoon Schoors, The Preacher Sought to Find Pleasing Words: A Study of the Language of Qoheleth (1992, 2004)monograph
  • Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastescommentary

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

All attested forms of עִנְיָן

m s absolute

עִנְיָן

Ecc 2:26, Ecc 3:10, Ecc 5:3, Ecc 8:16

m s construct

עִנְיַן

Ecc 1:13, Ecc 4:8, Ecc 5:14

m s construct

עִנְיָנוֹ

Ecc 2:23