StrongerBible

tsuph

צוּף

HebrewH6688“honeycomb”

Appears 2 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Psa 19:10(11)Pro 16:24
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeTSOOFnoun

What tsuph means

a honeycomb, and the fresh honey running out of it, held up in poetry as the measure of sweetness

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This word appears only twice, and both times it is a yardstick. In Psalm 19:10 the Lord's rulings are called sweeter than honey and than what drips from the combs. In Proverbs 16:24 kind words are called a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. In each place something else is being praised, and this word is the standard it is measured against.

It is not the everyday word for honey (דְּבַשׁ), which covers honey as food, as a gift, and in the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey. This is the poetic word, and it points at honey in its best state: still in the wax, or running fresh out of it. That is why Psalm 19 can name honey and then name this and still be raising the bar. The word standing beside it there (נֹפֶת) is honey that runs out of the comb on its own, so the two together describe the choicest grade there is.

Honey in ancient Israel was not only something stumbled on in a rock crevice. Archaeologists working in the Jordan Valley have uncovered rows of clay hives from roughly the tenth century BC, dozens of them, capable of yielding several hundred pounds of honey a year. When a poet reached for this picture, readers knew what fresh comb honey was worth.

A verb spelled with the same letters (צוּף) means to flow over or to float, and the older lexicons explained the noun from it: a comb is the thing honey flows out of. It is a reasonable guess and may well be right, but it has never been shown, and neither of these two verses turns on it.

Psa 19:10(11)Pro 16:24

What scholars say about tsuph

BDB lists the noun separately from the identically spelled verb and defines it "(honey-)comb (as exuding honey)," attested only in figurative expressions: צוּף־דְּבַשׁ in Proverbs 16:24 and the plural in נֹפֶת צוּפִים in Psalm 19:11 of the Hebrew text, which is 19:10 in English Bibles. Gesenius and BDB derive the noun from the verb צוּף "to flow, overflow," and Keil and Delitzsch gloss it as honey flowing from the comb. The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, which by policy defines words from attested Hebrew usage rather than comparative etymology, does not assert that derivation, and the comparative evidence is untidy: the Aramaic and Arabic verbs usually cited for "float" are spelled with tet rather than tsade, which does not match the regular sound correspondences, and no Akkadian verb with the expected consonant is securely glossed "float." The versions treat the noun as a settled item of vocabulary: the Septuagint has κηρίον at Psalm 18(19):11 and κηρία μέλιτος at Proverbs 16:24, and Jerome uses favus, "honeycomb," while the same translators rendered the homonymous verb case by case. On the two passages, Kraus, Craigie, and Hossfeld and Zenger read נֹפֶת צוּפִים as a superlative for the finest dripping honey, sharpening the psalm's claim about the desirability of the Lord's instruction; Fox and Waltke take צוּף־דְּבַשׁ in Proverbs 16:24 as flowing or comb honey and stress the proverb's claim of a genuinely restorative effect for gracious speech, comparing Jonathan's revival in 1 Samuel 14:27. The Iron Age apiary excavated at Tel Rehov by Mazar and Panitz-Cohen, whose bee remains Bloch and colleagues identified as an imported Anatolian subspecies, shows an organized honey industry standing behind the imagery.

Where scholars disagree about tsuph

Whether this noun is formed from the identically spelled verb meaning to flow or overflow, so that a comb is named for the honey that drips out of it, or is an independent word that merely looks the same.

  • majorityThe noun is derived from that verb: the comb is named as the thing that exudes and drips honey.; Brown-Driver-Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. I. צוּף (noun): "(honey-)comb (as exuding honey)"; Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. צוף; C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Proverbs, on Proverbs 16:24
  • minorityThe derivation is an assumption rather than a demonstrated fact, so the noun should be defined from its attested use alone; the Aramaic and Arabic words offered as cognates for the verb are spelled with a consonant that does not regularly correspond to the Hebrew one, which weakens the case for a single root.; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. צוף
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-Driver-Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. I. צוּף (noun)lexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. צוףlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. צוףlexicon
  • C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Proverbs, on Proverbs 16:24commentary
  • Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31 (Anchor Yale Bible 18B), on Proverbs 16:24commentary
  • Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 15-31 (NICOT), on Proverbs 16:24commentary
  • Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1-59: A Continental Commentary, on Psalm 19commentary
  • Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (Word Biblical Commentary 19), on Psalm 19commentary
  • Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 1-50 (Hermeneia), on Psalm 19commentary
  • Amihai Mazar and Nava Panitz-Cohen, "It Is the Land of Honey: Beekeeping at Tel Rehov," Near Eastern Archaeology 70/4 (2007): 202-219article
  • Guy Bloch, Tiago M. Francoy, Ido Wachtel, Nava Panitz-Cohen, Stefan Fuchs, and Amihai Mazar, "Industrial Apiculture in the Jordan Valley during Biblical Times with Anatolian Honeybees," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107/25 (2010): 11240-11244article

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

All attested forms of צוּף

m p absolute

צוּפִים

Psa 19:10

m s construct

צוּף

Pro 16:24