StrongerBible

aqav

עָקַב

HebrewH6117“supplant, cheat, ...”

Appears 5 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 27:36Job 37:4Jer 9:4(3) (2×)Hos 12:3(4)
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeah-KAHVverb

What aqav means

1

to come up behind someone and take what was going to be his: to supplant, cheat, or betray

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This verb carries a picture with it: the heel (עָקֵב), and someone close enough behind you to catch hold of it. In Hebrew that picture hardened into an accusation. To do this to a person is to trail him, get a grip on him, and walk away with what was going to be his, and the one on the receiving end is almost always a brother or a neighbor.

The word is rare, and every time it appears it plays on the name Jacob (יַעֲקֹב), which is spelled from the same three letters. The three uses trace a widening arc:

  • Esau throws the word at his brother after the stolen blessing, turning a birth story about a grasping hand into a verdict on Jacob's whole character.
  • Hosea reaches back to the twins in the womb and holds Jacob up as a mirror in which the northern kingdom can see its own dealing.
  • Jeremiah drops the name entirely and doubles the verb for emphasis: every brother now does to his neighbor what Jacob did, so the word alone carries the charge.

That last step is what makes this small word worth noticing. By Jeremiah's day the patriarch's name had become a common term for treachery, and the accusation no longer needed a person to attach to. Hebrew is the only language in its family where these three letters took that dark turn. In the neighboring languages they mean something closer to following, tracing, or even guarding, with no hint of cheating anyone.

Nuances

1ato cheat a person out of what was coming to him and take his place
Gen 27:36
1bto get a grip on someone from behind, holding him back or pulling him down
CertaintyContested
Hos 12:3(4)
Hos 12:3

How to read the verb in Hosea 12:3, where Jacob does something to his brother in the womb.

  • majorityHe supplanted or cheated his brother, so the deceiver's character was set before birth and the nation inherits it.; Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia); Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah (Word Biblical Commentary 31); A. A. Macintosh, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea (ICC)
  • minorityHe attacked his brother, an aggressive act matching the parallel line in which he strives with God.; James L. Mays, Hosea: A Commentary (Old Testament Library); Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea (Anchor Bible); BDB, s.v. עָקַב
  • minorityHe took his brother by the heel, a physical act echoing the birth scene of Genesis 25:26 and leaving the moral judgment open.; Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary
1cto deal treacherously with the people closest to you, as a settled habit
Jer 9:4(3) (2×)
2

to hold something back, keeping it from going forward

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintyObscure

This sense turns up once, in Job's storm poem, where God's thunder rolls and he does not hold back the lightning when his voice is heard. The idea is simple restraint: something is ready to go, and it is not stopped.

Whether this is really the same word is an old question. The Hebrew here looks almost exactly like a common word for delaying or holding something up, differing by a single letter, so some scholars think an early copyist slipped. Others treat it as a separate word that happens to be spelled like the verb about heels and cheating, and note that in several neighboring languages these letters carry the sense of guarding or keeping something in place. What the line itself says is not really in doubt: the lightning is not restrained.

Job 37:4

What scholars say about aqav

The lexicons split over root history. BDB (p. 784) treats עָקַב as a single verb formed from the noun עָקֵב "heel", with the figurative senses "follow at the heel, assail insidiously, circumvent, overreach", and it regards the Job 37:4 form as a corruption of עִכֵּב "hold back"; it also flags the LXX rendering πτερνίζω as dubious. HALOT reverses both judgments, positing two homonymous roots (עקב I "follow at the heel, deceive, supplant"; עקב II "restrain, hold back", cognate with Aramaic and Late Hebrew עכב) and taking the verb as primitive with the noun "heel" derived from it, on the strength of Ugaritic ʿqb "to follow", Akkadian eqēbu, and Arabic ʿaqiba. TDOT XI (Zobel), TLOT, and NIDOTTE side with BDB on derivation and read the biblical occurrences as a self-conscious exploitation of the heel image; DCH lists the sub-senses without ruling on root history, and Gesenius18 leans to BDB while registering HALOT's split.

Comparative evidence complicates the pejorative sense. Geʿez ʿaqaba means "to guard, keep watch, protect" (Leslau), Old South Arabian preserves ʿqbt "watchtower", and Arabic, Aramaic, and Syriac keep a neutral cluster of "follow, trace, investigate"; no branch outside Hebrew carries "supplant, deceive". The Amorite theophoric Yaʿqub-El, attested at Mari, Chagar Bazar, and Kish and documented by Huffmon, together with the Egyptian execration form yʿqbʾr and the Hyksos royal name Yaqub-Har, supports Albright, Cross, de Vaux, Speiser, and Sarna in reading יַעֲקֹב as a shortened birth-name meaning roughly "may El protect", with the "supplanter" sense a Hebrew specialization catalyzed by the Genesis narrative. Garsiel and Marks (JBL 1995) classify Genesis 25:26 as literary rather than historical etymology.

On the individual verses, commentators on Genesis 27:36 are effectively unanimous that Esau's charge is figurative (Wenham, Sarna, Speiser, Hamilton, Waltke, Mathews), with Alter preserving the heel image in translation. Hosea 12:3 is the crux: Wolff, Mays, Stuart, Macintosh, and Whitt (ZAW 103) read Jacob negatively, while Ackroyd (VT 13) and Holladay (VT 16), with Andersen and Freedman mediating, argue that the chapter's structure turns the supplanter into a suppliant. Jeremiah 9:4 draws no dissent: McKane, Lundbom, Holladay, Carroll, and Craigie all read the doubled verb as an emphatic pun that has turned the patriarch's name into a common term for treachery.

Where scholars disagree about aqav

Whether עקב is one word with a wide range or two unrelated words that happen to be spelled alike, one meaning "to follow at the heel, supplant" and one meaning "to restrain".

  • majorityOne word. The figurative senses all grow out of the heel image, and the restraining sense in Job 37:4 is a copyist's slip for the similar verb עִכֵּב "to delay, hold back".; BDB, s.v. עָקַב (p. 784); Hans-Jürgen Zobel, "עָקַב", in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. XI; Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. Jenni and Westermann, s.v. עקב; New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. VanGemeren, vol. 3, s.v. עקב
  • minorityTwo homonymous roots: עקב I "follow at the heel, deceive, supplant" and עקב II "restrain, hold back", the latter cognate with the Aramaic and Late Hebrew verb עכב.; HALOT, s.v. עקב I and עקב II

Whether the verb is formed from the noun עָקֵב "heel" or the noun is formed from the verb.

  • majorityThe noun "heel" is primary and the verb is built from it, which is why the narrative wordplay works on the concrete image of a heel.; BDB, s.v. עָקַב (p. 784); Hans-Jürgen Zobel, "עָקַב", in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. XI; Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. Jenni and Westermann, s.v. עקב
  • minorityThe verbal root "to follow at the heel, come after" is primary and the noun "heel" is derived from it, on the evidence of Ugaritic ʿqb, Akkadian eqēbu, and Arabic ʿaqiba.; HALOT, s.v. עקב I and עקב II
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, s.v. עָקַב (p. 784)lexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. עקב I and עקב IIlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. עקבlexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18th ed., s.v. עקבlexicon
  • Hans-Jürgen Zobel, "עָקַב", in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. XIdictionary
  • Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. Jenni and Westermann, s.v. עקבdictionary
  • New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. VanGemeren, vol. 3, s.v. עקבdictionary
  • Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50 (Word Biblical Commentary 2)commentary
  • Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (JPS Torah Commentary)commentary
  • E. A. Speiser, Genesis (Anchor Bible)commentary
  • Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 18-50 (NICOT)commentary
  • A. A. Macintosh, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea (ICC)commentary
  • Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia)commentary
  • James L. Mays, Hosea: A Commentary (Old Testament Library)commentary
  • Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea (Anchor Bible)commentary
  • P. R. Ackroyd, "Hosea and Jacob", Vetus Testamentum 13 (1963)article
  • William L. Holladay, "Chiasmus, the Key to Hosea XII 3-6", Vetus Testamentum 16 (1966)article
  • William D. Whitt, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 103 (1991), on Hosea's Jacob traditionsarticle
  • Herbert Marks, "Biblical Naming and Poetic Etymology", Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (1995)article
  • Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20 (Anchor Bible)commentary
  • William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah (ICC)commentary
  • Herbert B. Huffmon, Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts (Johns Hopkins, 1965)monograph
  • Wolf Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Geʿezlexicon
  • Moshe Garsiel, Biblical Names: A Literary Study of Midrashic Derivations and Puns (1991)monograph

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

All attested forms of עָקַב

piel imperfect 3ms

יְעַקְּבֵ

Job 37:4

qal consecutive-imperfect 3ms

וַיַּעְקְבֵ

Gen 27:36

qal imperfect 3ms

יַעְקֹב

Jer 9:4

qal infinitive-absolute absolute

עָקוֹב

Jer 9:4

qal perfect 3ms

עָקַב

Hos 12:3