StrongerBible

aqod

עָקֹד

HebrewH6124“striped”

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 30:35Gen 30:39Gen 30:40Gen 31:8 (2×)Gen 31:10Gen 31:12
Root family
Word studyah-KODEadjective

What aqod means

striped, banded: marked with bands of a second color running across the coat, said of sheep and goats

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This word lives in one story only: Jacob's wage bargain with Laban in Genesis 30 and 31. It describes a flock animal whose coat is crossed by bands or stripes of a second color, against the usual solid white sheep and solid dark goats of that country. Marked animals were the minority, which is exactly what made the pattern useful in a contract. Anyone could look at a goat and say whose it was.

Genesis lines several marking words up in the same sentences, and each is doing separate work:

  • striped or banded, the word here, marks that run across the animal
  • speckled (נָקֹד), small dots sprinkled over the coat
  • spotted or patched (טָלָא), larger blotches of a second color
  • dappled (בָּרֹד), a broken mix of light and dark over the whole body
  • dark (חוּם), one solid off color rather than a pattern at all

The same three letters make a verb meaning "to bind" (עָקַד), used of Abraham binding Isaac on the altar (Genesis 22:9). Many take the color word from that picture: the animal looks as though something had been tied around it. That reading is why older English Bibles coined the word "ringstraked" for a ring-marked beast, and it is why most versions today reach for "streaked" or "striped" rather than a word for scattered dots.

In the story this marking is what the quarrel turns on. Laban sets the marked animals three days' journey away from Jacob (Genesis 30:35), Jacob works the flocks so that banded young are born (Genesis 30:39) and steers the plain animals toward them (Genesis 30:40), and Laban keeps renaming which class counts as wages while the flocks keep bearing whatever he has just named (Genesis 31:8). When Jacob finally explains himself to Rachel and Leah, he tells of a dream in which he saw the banded, speckled and dappled males and heard that God had watched what Laban was doing (Genesis 31:10, 12).

Gen 30:35Gen 30:39Gen 30:40Gen 31:8 (2×)Gen 31:10Gen 31:12

What scholars say about aqod

עָקֹד is a qatol-pattern adjective from the root עקד, occurring seven times in six verses, all within the Jacob and Laban flock narrative (Gen 30:35, 39, 40; 31:8, 10, 12). BDB and HALOT connect it with the verb עָקַד "to bind" (Gen 22:9, the binding of Isaac), and gloss the adjective "striped, banded," the marking construed as bands encircling the animal as though tied; DCH gives "striped" and observes, as with the other terms of this set, that the differentiation among them is inferred largely from their juxtaposition rather than independently attested, which is why commentators resist pressing the distinctions too hard. The word stands in fixed sequences with נָקֹד and טָלוּא (30:35, 39; 31:8) and, in the dream report of 31:10, 12, with בָּרֹד. The Greek tradition renders it διάλευκος, "streaked with white," a rendering that preserves the banded appearance while leaving its contrast with the neighboring terms less sharply drawn than in the Hebrew. Westermann, Wenham and Hamilton note that the husbandry presupposed is realistic for the region, where sheep are predominantly white and goats predominantly dark, so that banded, speckled and spotted animals constitute a genuinely scarce class whose ownership could be settled by inspection; that scarcity is what gives Laban's repeated redefinition of the wage category in 31:8 its force, and what makes the adjective a term of contract as much as a term of color.

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. עָקֹדlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. עָקֹדlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. עָקֹדlexicon
  • Claus Westermann, Genesis 12-36: A Commentary (ET 1985)commentary
  • Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, Word Biblical Commentary 2 (1994)commentary
  • Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 18-50, NICOT (1995)commentary

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

All attested forms of עָקֹד

m p absolute

עֲקֻדִּים

Gen 30:35, Gen 30:39, Gen 31:8, Gen 31:8, Gen 31:10, Gen 31:12

m s absolute

עָקֹד

Gen 30:40