arav

At its core this word means to become the backstop for another person. You give something of your own, your money, your goods, or your very self, as the security that stands behind their obligation. If they fail, you pay. Most of its uses are exactly this: Judah offering himself as the guarantee that Benjamin will come home safely, and the many warnings in Proverbs against rashly backing a neighbor's loan.

The same idea of putting something up in a binding exchange stretches naturally in two directions. It can mean to strike a bargain or take on a wager, where each side stakes something on the outcome, as when the Assyrian officer taunts Judah to make a deal over horses. And it can mean to barter or trade goods, giving one thing to receive another, as with the merchants who exchanged their wares with the trading city of Tyre.

What holds these together is the picture of a pledge changing hands: something valuable is handed over to guarantee, seal, or complete a transaction. The word carries real weight because it always involves genuine risk to the one who pledges.

In this sense the word describes people blending together rather than goods being exchanged. Israel is condemned for mingling with the surrounding nations and taking up their practices, and the returned exiles are charged with intermarrying so that the holy family line became mixed in with the peoples around them. The concern is not neutral company but a merging that dilutes what should stay distinct.

The same word can describe more ordinary association. Proverbs warns against keeping company with a gossip or throwing in your lot with the rebellious, and observes that an outsider cannot share in the private joy of another's heart. Whether the mixing is condemned or simply noted, the underlying picture is the same: two things that were separate become intertwined.

Scholars are not agreed on whether this mingling sense is truly the same word as the surety and exchange sense, or a look-alike that happens to be spelled the same way. Either way, the Bible uses it for the blurring of a boundary that was meant to hold.