a bed or couch, named with the poetic word for it rather than the everyday one
This is a poet's word for a bed. When ordinary Hebrew prose says that someone lay down, it reaches for two other words, the common word for a bed (מִטָּה) and the standard word for the place of lying down (מִשְׁכָּב). This word almost never appears outside poetry and heightened speech, and when it does appear it is usually the second half of a matched pair, the more striking term a poet sets beside the plain one.
Because it is a poetic choice rather than a technical term, it does not name a special piece of furniture. English versions swing between "bed" and "couch," and older reference works pressed further, picturing a canopied or curtained frame. Nothing in the actual passages requires that. In several verses it is simply the bed a sleepless or sick man lies on.
What gives the word its color is the company it keeps. The same object turns up at four corners of human life:
- the bed a weary or ill person cannot rest on
- the ornamented couch of the comfortable rich
- the bed lovers spread and perfume for each other
- the enormous iron bedstead of a defeated giant king
Nothing in the word itself picks out any one of these. The bed is neutral; the scene around it does the work.
Nuances
How to read the damaged clause in Amos 3:12, and therefore whether this occurrence pictures a luxurious couch or merely a broken fragment of furniture.
- contestedThe disputed neighboring word means damask or silk, so the phrase names the silken cushions of a couch.; Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, s.v. דֶּמֶשֶׁק; Heinrich Ewald, Die Propheten des Alten Bundes
- contestedThe letters should be divided and vocalized differently to yield a piece from the leg of a bed, so the salvaged item is a worthless scrap.; Isaac Rabinowitz, revocalization discussed in Henry R. Moeller, Ambiguity at Amos 3:12, The Bible Translator 15 (1964)
- contestedThe received text refers to Damascus, though the spelling is irregular and a reference to Damascus in a threat against Samaria is hard to justify.; William Rainey Harper, Amos and Hosea (International Critical Commentary, 1905)
Whether Og's bed of iron in Deuteronomy 3:11 is an actual bedstead, a basalt sarcophagus, or a megalithic tomb.
- majorityA real bed or bedstead decorated with iron, a prestige object of the kind the ivory beds of Amos 6:4 and the ivory throne of 1 Kings 10:18 also represent, displayed as a war trophy.; Alan R. Millard, King Og's Iron Bed: Fact or Fancy?, Bible Review 6.2 (1990): 16-21, 44; Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary, 1996); Lyle Eslinger, King Og's Bed and Other Ancient Ironmongery, in Ascribe to the Lord: Biblical and Other Studies in Memory of Peter C. Craigie (JSOTSup 67, 1988), 482-484; NIDOTTE, vol. 1
- minorityA sarcophagus of black basalt, the iron standing for the dark, iron-rich stone of the Transjordan.; J. D. Michaelis, whose proposal is traced by S. R. Driver, Deuteronomy (International Critical Commentary, 1895); Gerhard von Rad, Deuteronomy (Old Testament Library, 1966), who reports the view while objecting to the size it requires
- minorityA prehistoric dolmen, that is, a megalithic stone tomb of the sort found across the Transjordan.; Paul Karge, Rephaim: Die vorgeschichtliche Kultur Palastinas und Phoniziens (1917)
Disputed
Whether the word denotes a specifically finer piece of furniture, such as a canopied or curtained bed, or is simply the poetic counterpart of the ordinary words for a bed.
- minorityThe word is best glossed couch or divan, properly a bed with a canopy or hanging curtain, on the strength of a proposed unused root meaning to arch or to cover over.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 793, s.v. עֶרֶשׂ; Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, s.v. עֶרֶשׂ
- majorityThe word simply means bed or couch as the poetry uses it; no passage mentions a canopy, and the canopy gloss rests on a conjectured root rather than on attested usage.; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 6, s.v. עֶרֶשׂ