tsavvar

This is the ordinary word for the human (and sometimes animal) neck, the back of the neck where the head meets the body. Almost every time the Bible names it, though, the neck stands for something larger than anatomy. It is where people fall to embrace each other, where chains of honor and necklaces are hung, where the yoke of a work animal (and so the burden of servitude) rests, and where an enemy plants his foot or lays his sword in conquest. It is also pictured as the seat of pride: a person who refuses to submit is said to have a stubborn or lifted-up neck.

These are not separate words but one word used in vivid, concrete ways. Hebrew tends to locate inner attitudes in the body, so the neck becomes a natural image for both submission and defiance. A neck under a yoke means a people made to serve; a neck held high means a people who will not bow.

The single English word "neck" carries every one of these uses well, because English keeps many of the same pictures: a yoke on the neck, falling on someone's neck, sticking your neck out. What a reader has to supply is the cultural weight. In the ancient world the yoke and the foot-on-the-neck were not metaphors but everyday realities of farming and warfare, which is what makes the images land so hard.

Once, in a love poem, the word shifts from the neck itself to something worn on it. In the praise of the bride in the Song of Songs, the speaker says he is captivated by a single jewel of her necklace. Here the word names the ornament rather than the body part.

This is a closely related use of the same root: the thing that adorns the neck takes its name from the neck. Most translations render it "necklace" or "jeweled chain," and the meaning is not seriously in doubt, even though the exact form is rare. It is listed separately only because the reader should picture a piece of jewelry here, not the neck under it.