atsom

This is a word about growth that gets out of hand. It describes a people, an army, a run of troubles, or a tally of sins swelling until they are simply too great to reckon with. Sometimes the greatness is a matter of numbers, sometimes of raw power, and often the two run together: a nation that keeps multiplying also becomes hard to defeat.

Because the one Hebrew word can lean either way, translators have to decide in each verse whether the point is "so many" or "so strong." When Israel swells in Egypt the word is paired with the ordinary verb for multiplying (רָבָה), and the two together picture a population exploding past all control. Elsewhere it is a person's enemies, or a king's power, that has grown overwhelming.

The same word can be turned outward. Instead of a people growing strong on its own, God is the one who makes them strong, building them up until they outmatch their rivals.

In a couple of passages the word has nothing to do with strength. It means to shut the eyes, to press the lids closed so that a person cannot, or will not, see.

In one case this is a judgment from God, who closes the eyes of prophets and seers so they no longer perceive what is happening around them. In the other it is a mark of integrity: an upright person deliberately shuts both eyes and ears against evil, refusing even to look at a bribe or at bloodshed. That second passage sets this verb right beside a matching word for stopping up the ears (אָטַם), so the two, seeing and hearing, are sealed off together.

A single, grim verse uses the word in yet another way. Jeremiah pictures Israel as a sheep mauled by lions: first Assyria devoured it, and then Babylon did something worse to what was left. The verb here appears to be built from the ordinary word for bone, so the image is of an animal being gnawed down to the bone or having its bones broken apart.

Because this is the only place the word carries this sense, its exact force is uncertain, but the picture is plainly one of a predator finishing off the little that remained.