StrongerBible

tsuts

צוּץ

HebrewH6692“blossom, flourish, ...”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Num 17:8(23)Psa 72:16Psa 90:6Psa 92:7(8)Psa 103:15Psa 132:18Sng 2:9Isa 27:6Ezk 7:10
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradetsootsverb

What tsuts means

1

to blossom: to break into flower, and so to burst into growth that everyone can see

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is a word about sudden, visible flowering. It names the moment a plant breaks into bloom: what was bare a moment ago is now covered in flower and impossible to miss. It often stands beside a second word for budding and breaking out (פָּרַח), the two verbs together painting one burst of growth, and the flower it produces is named by the matching noun (צִיץ).

What changes from verse to verse is not the picture but what the picture is asked to prove:

  • that God has chosen someone, when dead almond wood buds and blooms overnight
  • that a human life amounts to very little, since grass that flowers at dawn is dry by evening
  • that a nation God has replanted will thrive until it fills the earth with fruit
  • that the wicked are finished, because their showy flowering has no root under it

That last use is the sharpest. The word normally carries the warmth of blessing, so turning it on the arrogant and the violent makes it a threat: what looks like their best season is the season their ruin is ripening in. Ezekiel takes the very word that once certified Aaron's priesthood and lets insolence blossom with it.

One verse stretches the image further still. When a crown "blossoms" on David's head, a plant word has been laid over a piece of metal, and readers have argued ever since about whether the crown buds like a shoot or gleams like gold.

Nuances

1aof a plant, to put out blossoms
Num 17:8(23)
1bto bloom and be gone: the brief flowering that pictures how short a human life is
Psa 90:6Psa 103:15
1cof a people, to thrive and spread the way healthy plants do
Psa 72:16Isa 27:6
1dto flourish showily when that very flourishing is the sign of ruin about to come
Psa 92:7(8)Ezk 7:10
1eof a crown, to blossom, or to gleam, on the head of the one who wears it
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
Psa 132:18
Psa 132:18

Whether the crown in Psalm 132:18 blossoms or gleams.

  • majorityBotanical: the crown buds like a shoot, matching the previous verse's promise to make a horn sprout for David. The Septuagint renders the verb unambiguously as "shall blossom".; Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 3, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 460-472; John Goldingay, Psalms, vol. 3: Psalms 90-150 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 552-557; Albert Pietersma, "The Psalms," in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 615
  • minorityVisual: since the diadem is metal, the verb here means to shine or sparkle, the sole biblical witness to that sense.; BDB, s.v. צוץ I (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), 847; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60-150: A Continental Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 476-482; Mitchell Dahood, Psalms III: 101-150, Anchor Bible 17A (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 246-247
2

to peer: to look out through a narrow gap or opening

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

In one verse the same three letters do something entirely different: a lover stands outside the wall and looks in through the lattice. The line just before it uses an ordinary word for gazing through the windows (שָׁגַח), which settles what this second verb has to mean, a look sent through a narrow opening from outside.

Whether this is truly the same word as the one meaning "to blossom" is an old question. Most modern lexicons keep them apart as two words that merely look alike, since no related language clearly ties flowering to looking. A minority has always argued for one word whose basic idea is something poking out into view: a bud out of a stem, gold on a forehead, a face at a window. Nothing in the verse itself depends on settling it.

Readers have long enjoyed the overlap anyway. A few lines later the poem fills up with spring and blossom, so the beloved's face framed in the lattice reads a little like a bloom in a hedge, whether or not the poet planned it.

Sng 2:9

What scholars say about tsuts

Modern critical lexicography almost unanimously splits the verb into homonymous roots: BDB prints צוץ I "bloom, blossom, sprout; shine, sparkle" against צוץ II "gaze, peep" (judging the bloom/shine link itself "dubious"), and HALOT, DCH and Gesenius18 divide the same way, the last on the strictly philological ground that no Semitic cognate securely bridges "blossom, shine" with "peer". TWOT (Coppes) replicates BDB; TDOT (Steins) anchors the discussion in the noun צִיץ, treats "blossom / shining ornament" as one polysemous field and sets Song 2:9 aside as a probable separate root; TLOT has no entry. Against this near-consensus, Gesenius's Thesaurus (1853), Jastrow and Josua Blau's methodological essay on supposed homonymous roots (VT 6 [1956]: 242-248; VT 7 [1957]: 98-102) posit one root whose core is "to project outward, come into view", comparing Arabic صِيص "spur, projecting object". The comparative evidence is thin and skewed: Akkadian ṣiṣṣatu "floral ornament, rosette" (CAD Ṣ 218-219) and the ṣṣ of Baal's headdress in KTU 1.101 (Pope and Tigay) anchor the nominal side firmly, while no cross-Semitic verbal cognate supports either "shine" or "peer"; Aramaic alone reproduces the doublet (Jastrow; Sokoloff, JPA and JBA), most plausibly by internal Hebrew development. Within the biblical data the "shine" gloss rests on Ps 132:18 alone and the "peer" sense on Song 2:9 alone, where the parallelism with מַשְׁגִּיחַ is decisive. The Septuagint is strong external evidence for the distribution: nine of ten verbal tokens fall to the ἀνθέω / ἐξανθέω / βλαστάνω family (Wevers on Num 17:23; Ziegler on Isa 27:6 and Ezek 7:10), and Ps 131:18 LXX resolves the crown crux botanically as ἐξανθήσει τὸ ἁγίασμά μου, while only Ps 91:8 LXX (διέκυψαν) and Song 2:9 (παρακύπτων, ἐκκύπτων) reach for the peering family, read either as deliberate exegetical softening (Tov, Pietersma) or as recognition of an already-established homographic doublet (Dines). On the individual cruxes: Milgrom stresses the paronomasia of Num 17:23 with the priestly ציץ of Exod 28:36, so that staff and forehead authenticate each other; Hossfeld-Zenger read Ps 90:6 as exploiting the verb's double motion of sprouting and gleaming, and Ps 92:8 as an ironic echo, with Goldingay drawing the contrast to the deep-rooted palm of v. 13; Zimmerli, Greenberg and Block all read Ezek 7:10 as a deliberate dark inversion of Numbers 17; and Pope, Longman, Exum, Fox and Murphy render Song 2:9 "peer, gaze" as a separate root while allowing an intended soundplay with the poem's flower vocabulary.

Where scholars disagree about tsuts

Whether the blossoming word and the peering word are one word or two that merely look alike.

  • majorityTwo separate words sharing the same letters. Hebrew usage separates them cleanly (nine botanical tokens against one visual one) and no Semitic cognate securely bridges "blossom, shine" with "peer".; BDB, s.v. צוץ I and צוץ II (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), 847; HALOT, s.v. צוץ I, II (Leiden: Brill, 1994-2000); DCH, vol. 7, s.v. צוץ I / II (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010); Gesenius, Handwörterbuch, 18. Aufl., s.v. צוץ I, II (Berlin: Springer, 2013)
  • minorityOne root whose semantic core is "to project outward, come into view", yielding bud, rosette, tassel, sparkle and glance as parallel developments; Arabic صِيص "spur, projecting object" and the Aramaic doublet support it, and Hebrew lexicography has systematically over-multiplied homonyms.; Wilhelm Gesenius, Thesaurus philologicus criticus, vol. 3 (Leipzig, 1853), 1163-1164; Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Judaica Press, 1903), 1273-1274; Josua Blau, "Über Homonyme und angeblich Homonyme Wurzeln," Vetus Testamentum 6/3 (1956): 242-248
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

  • Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), 847lexicon
  • Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann Jakob Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, trans. M. E. J. Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 1994-2000), s.v. צוץ I, IIlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 7 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010), s.v. צוץ I / IIlexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18. Aufl., ed. Rudolf Meyer and Herbert Donner (Berlin: Springer, 2013), s.v. צוץ I, IIlexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Thesaurus philologicus criticus linguae Hebraeae et Chaldaeae Veteris Testamenti, vol. 3 (Leipzig, 1853), 1163-1164lexicon
  • Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Judaica Press, 1903), 1273-1274lexicon
  • Georg Steins, "צִיץ ṣîṣ," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 12:366-373theological-dictionary
  • Leonard J. Coppes, "§1911 צוּץ," in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke (Chicago: Moody, 1980)theological-dictionary
  • Josua Blau, "Über Homonyme und angeblich Homonyme Wurzeln," Vetus Testamentum 6/3 (1956): 242-248; continued VT 7/1 (1957): 98-102article
  • Marvin H. Pope and Jeffrey Tigay, "A Description of Baal," Ugarit-Forschungen 3 (1971): 117-130article
  • Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period, 2nd ed. (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002), 456lexicon
  • Jacob Milgrom, Numbers, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), 140-146, 410-414commentary
  • Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 1-20, Anchor Bible 4 (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 400, 419-429commentary
  • Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51-100, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 415-427commentary
  • Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 3, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 34-40, 460-472commentary
  • Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60-150: A Continental Commentary, trans. Hilton C. Oswald (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 213-219, 476-482commentary
  • John Goldingay, Psalms, vol. 3: Psalms 90-150 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 60-62, 552-557commentary
  • Mitchell Dahood, Psalms III: 101-150, Anchor Bible 17A (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 246-247commentary
  • Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, Anchor Bible 19 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 373-378commentary
  • Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 13-27: A Continental Commentary, trans. T. H. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 583-597commentary
  • Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 199-211commentary
  • Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20, Anchor Bible 22 (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 147-155commentary
  • Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel Chapters 1-24, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 253-258commentary
  • Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible 7C (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 385-390commentary
  • Tremper Longman III, Song of Songs, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 118-121commentary
  • J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 122-129commentary
  • Albert Pietersma, "The Psalms," in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 592, 615translation
  • Emanuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, 3rd ed. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015), ch. 5monograph
  • Jennifer M. Dines, The Septuagint (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 128-130, 143monograph

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

All attested forms of צוּץ

hiphil imperfect 3ms

יָצִיץ

Psa 90:6, Psa 103:15, Psa 132:18, Isa 27:6

hiphil conjunctive-imperfect 3mp

וְיָצִיצוּ

Psa 72:16

hiphil consecutive-imperfect 3mp

וַיָּצִיצוּ

Psa 92:7

hiphil consecutive-imperfect 3ms

וַיָּצֵץ

Num 17:8

hiphil participle m s absolute

מֵצִיץ

Sng 2:9

qal perfect 3ms

צָץ

Ezk 7:10