StrongerBible

aqev

עָקֵב

HebrewH6119“heel, footsteps, ...”

Appears 14 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 3:15Gen 25:26Gen 49:17Gen 49:19Jos 8:13Jdg 5:22Job 18:9Psa 41:9(10)Psa 49:5(6)Psa 56:6(7)Psa 77:19(20)Psa 89:51(52)Sng 1:8Jer 13:22
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeah-KAYVnoun

What aqev means

1

the heel: the hard back of the foot on a person or an animal, the low point where the body is most easily caught or struck

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

The heel is the part of the body you cannot see and cannot guard. In the Bible it is where a snake strikes, where a hidden trap closes, and where a newborn hand takes hold. Nothing about the word itself is sinister. The scenes the writers put it in are.

That is why the heel turns up at the hinge of so many stories. Esau's twin is born gripping one, and his name, יַעֲקֹב, sounds like this word. Hebrew went on to build a verb out of it (עָקַב) meaning to grab someone by the heel, and so to trip them up or cheat them. The noun itself never accuses anyone; it simply names the place where a person gets grabbed.

A few passages stretch the plain word into a picture that is easy to miss. Because the heel is low, hidden, and behind you, naming it can be an insult, a sign of ambush, or a discreet way of pointing at a body a conqueror has stripped bare. English "heel" will not carry any of that on its own, so the surrounding scene has to do the work.

Nuances

1athe heel of a person: the back of the foot, low, exposed, and easy to seize
TranslatabilityDirect
Gen 3:15Gen 25:26Job 18:9
1bthe heel or hoof of a horse
TranslatabilityDirect
Gen 49:17Jdg 5:22
1cthe heel raised against someone: a gesture of contempt from a trusted friend
CertaintyContested
Psa 41:9(10)
Psa 41:9

What the unique phrase "he has made his heel great against me" in Psalm 41:9 pictures.

  • contestedA gesture of open contempt performed by a table companion who has broken faith with the psalmist.; Kraus, H.-J. Psalms 1-59: A Continental Commentary. Trans. H. C. Oswald. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1988. Pp. 434, 480.
  • contestedA kicking or trampling image, as an animal lifts its hoof against someone.; Craigie, P. C. Psalms 1-50. WBC 19. Waco: Word, 1983. P. 320.
  • contestedA verbal overtone, so that the friend has supplanted or tripped up the psalmist rather than merely insulted him.; Goldingay, J. Psalms. 3 vols. BCOTWP. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006-2008.
1da veiled way of naming the body of a captive city, stripped and violated
TranslatabilityPartial
Jer 13:22
Jer 13:22

Whether "your heels have suffered violence" in Jeremiah 13:22 speaks literally of bared feet or is a veiled way of describing sexual violence against Jerusalem, pictured as an adulterous woman.

  • majorityA euphemism: the surrounding language of uncovered skirts and exposed shame makes a reference to the body beneath nearly unavoidable.; Holladay, W. L. Jeremiah 1. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986. Pp. 415-16.; McKane, W. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah. Vol. 1: I-XXV. ICC. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986. Pp. 306-08.; Lundbom, J. R. Jeremiah 1-20. AB 21A. New York: Doubleday, 1999. Pp. 685-86.
  • minorityLiteral: the bare heels of captives driven off into exile without sandals.; Calvin, J. Commentaries on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, and other older commentators.
2

footprints: the tracks feet leave in the ground, and by extension the path a person has walked

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

When Hebrew wants to speak of the marks a walker leaves behind, it names the part of the foot that presses hardest. A shepherd girl is told to go out after the prints of the flock. A psalm says God walked through the sea and left none at all.

From tracks it is a short step to a person's course of life. To watch someone's footprints is to shadow them, and enemies in the Psalms do exactly that. To jeer at the footprints of God's anointed king is to mock everywhere he has gone and everything he has done. The word never loses its concrete edge: even used of a king's reign, it still pictures ground that has been walked on.

One of these verses is unsettled. A psalm's line about "the wrong of my heels" surrounding the singer can be read either as his own steps or, with different vowels on the same letters, as the people dogging his heels. The uncertainty is about which word is on the page, not about what footprints are.

Nuances

2athe tracks left by feet or hooves: a visible trail that can be followed
Psa 77:19(20)Sng 1:8
2ba person's steps as the course of their life, watched or mocked by others
Psa 49:5(6)Psa 56:6(7)Psa 89:51(52)
Psa 49:5

Whether the letters in Psalm 49:5 spell the noun "my heels" or, with different vowels, a participle meaning "those who supplant me."

  • majorityRe-read as a participle: "the wrong of those who supplant me surrounds me." No change to the consonantal text is required, and it suits the psalm's polemic against wealthy oppressors.; Goldingay, J. Psalms. 3 vols. BCOTWP. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006-2008.; Hossfeld, F.-L., and E. Zenger. Psalms. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005-2011.
  • minorityKeep the Masoretic vocalization: "the wrong of my heels" stands for the psalmist's own steps and way of life.; Kraus, H.-J. Psalms 1-59: A Continental Commentary. Trans. H. C. Oswald. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1988. Pp. 480-84.
3

the rear: the back end of a moving or fighting force, the part that trails behind

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

An army on the march has a heel: the part that comes last and cannot see behind itself. Hebrew simply uses the body word for it, the way English speaks of the tail of a column.

The picture is the same one running through every other use of the word. The heel is what an attacker reaches first, because the one attacked is facing the other way. So Gad is promised that raiders will come at him and he will come back at their rear, and Joshua posts part of his force behind Ai while the rest draws the city out.

Gen 49:19Jos 8:13

What scholars say about aqev

The concrete noun sits at the etymological center of a productive Semitic root. Proto-Semitic *ʿaqib- "heel" is reflected in Akkadian eqbu, Ugaritic ʿqb, Aramaic and Syriac ʿeqba, Arabic ʿaqib, and Geʿez ʿeqb (Watson; CAD s.v. eqbu; DUL; Leslau). Hebrew and Aramaic developed the "supplant" branch of the verb while Geʿez specialized "guard, keep," a divergence Leslau bridges through the sense "follow closely at the heels," and which Huehnergard and Kogan accept. BDB treats the verb as derived from the noun and splits the adjective into two roots; HALOT organizes the material into explicit homonyms (I "supplant," II "protect"); DCH follows Barr's usage-driven method and declines to adjudicate; TDOT (Seybold) and NIDOTTE unify the field, NIDOTTE cautiously connecting the personal name to the "protect" branch. For the noun itself the lexicons are in substantial agreement, listing heel, footprint or track, and the rear of a body of troops. Onomastic evidence from the second millennium for Yaʿqub-ʾel (Chagar Bazar, Mari, the Thutmose III topographic lists, the Yaqub-Har scarab) supports the reconstruction by Albright and de Vaux of the name as a theophoric hypocoristic, "may El protect," with Genesis supplying a punning re-etymology that Wenham calls typical of Hebrew name-giving and Sarna calls midrashic; Hamilton stresses that Genesis places the negative re-reading in Esau's mouth rather than the narrator's. The Septuagint consistently renders the verbal wordplay with πτερνίζω and Psalm 41:10 (English 41:9) with the abstract πτερνισμόν, while John 13:18 cites the verse with the concrete πτέρναν, standing closer to the Masoretic Hebrew than to the Greek (Michaels; Barrett; Köstenberger). Clines and Habel place Job 18:9 within Bildad's cascade of snare and net imagery. Barr's warning against illegitimate totality transfer applies throughout: the biblical authors' punning is real and deliberate, but the senses do not travel automatically from one occurrence to the next.

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

  • Brown, F., S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907. Pp. 784-86, s.v. עָקֵב.lexicon
  • Koehler, L., and W. Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Trans. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson. 5 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994-2001. S.v. עקב.lexicon
  • Clines, D. J. A., ed. The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Vol. 6. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007. S.v. עקב.lexicon
  • Seybold, K. "עקב." In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. J. Botterweck, H. Ringgren, and H.-J. Fabry, vol. 11. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.theological dictionary
  • VanGemeren, W. A., ed. New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis. Vol. 3. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997. Pp. 502-06.theological dictionary
  • Leslau, W. Comparative Dictionary of Geʿez (Classical Ethiopic). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987. S.v. ʿaqaba.lexicon
  • Watson, W. G. E. "From Hair to Heel: Ugaritic Terms for Parts of the Body." Folia Orientalia 52 (2015): 323-64.journal article
  • Wenham, G. J. Genesis 16-50. WBC 2. Dallas: Word, 1994. Pp. 176-77.commentary
  • Sarna, N. M. Genesis. JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: JPS, 1989. Pp. 179-80.commentary
  • Hamilton, V. P. The Book of Genesis, Chapters 18-50. NICOT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995. Pp. 226-27.commentary
  • Kraus, H.-J. Psalms 1-59: A Continental Commentary. Trans. H. C. Oswald. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1988.commentary
  • Craigie, P. C. Psalms 1-50. WBC 19. Waco: Word, 1983.commentary
  • Goldingay, J. Psalms. 3 vols. BCOTWP. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006-2008.commentary
  • Holladay, W. L. Jeremiah 1: A Commentary on the Book of Jeremiah, Chapters 1-25. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986.commentary
  • Lundbom, J. R. Jeremiah 1-20. AB 21A. New York: Doubleday, 1999.commentary
  • Clines, D. J. A. Job 1-20. WBC 17. Dallas: Word, 1989. Pp. 405, 410-11.commentary
  • De Vaux, R. The Early History of Israel. Trans. D. Smith. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978. Pp. 194-200.monograph
  • Michaels, J. R. "Betrayal and the Betrayer: The Uses of Scripture in John 13.18-19." In The Gospels and the Scriptures of Israel, ed. C. A. Evans and W. R. Stegner. JSNTSup 104. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994. Pp. 459-74.essay
  • Barr, J. The Semantics of Biblical Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961. Pp. 100-160.monograph

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

All attested forms of עָקֵב

m s absolute

עָקֵב

Gen 3:15, Gen 49:19, Job 18:9, Psa 41:9

m p construct

עִקְּבֵי, עִקְבֵי

Gen 49:17, Jdg 5:22, Sng 1:8

m p construct

עֲקֵבַי

Psa 49:5, Psa 56:6

f p construct

עִקְּבוֹת

Psa 89:51

f p construct

עִקְּבוֹתֶיךָ

Psa 77:19

m p construct

עֲקֵבָיִךְ

Jer 13:22

m s construct

עֲקֵב

Gen 25:26

m s construct

עֲקֵבוֹ

Jos 8:13