StrongerBible

tsedah

צֵידָה

HebrewH6720“provisions, food, ...”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 42:25Gen 45:21Exo 12:39Jos 1:11Jos 9:11Jdg 7:8Jdg 20:101Sa 22:10Psa 78:25
Root family
Word studytsay-DAHnoun

What tsedah means

provisions: the food people gather up and take with them when they leave home.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is not a general word for food. It names food in a particular situation: packed in advance, carried along, and eaten by people who are away from home. Wherever it appears, someone is setting out, and the story pauses to say whether they have anything to eat on the road. It belongs to the same family as the word for what a hunter brings home (צַיִד), and the shared idea is food that has to be secured ahead of time rather than food already on the table.

That is why it keeps turning up at the hinge of a departure scene:

  • Joseph has his brothers' sacks filled and food put in for the road before they leave Egypt (Genesis 42:25).
  • Israel leaves Egypt in such a rush that nobody has time to prepare any (Exodus 12:39).
  • Joshua gives the people three days to get theirs ready before they cross the Jordan (Joshua 1:11).
  • The Gibeonites say their elders told them to take food in hand for a long journey (Joshua 9:11).

Armies travel too, so the same word covers what fighting men carry out with them. It appears when Gideon's force is cut down to three hundred and the supplies change hands (Judges 7:8), and when Israel details one man in ten to fetch food for the troops (Judges 20:10). Ahimelech's gift to David is described the same way, alongside Goliath's sword (1 Samuel 22:10): a man heading out into open country is sent off with something to eat.

Psalm 78:25 turns the word around. Looking back on the wilderness years, the psalm says God sent the people provisions until they had enough. Israel is on the march, and the one who packs the rations is God himself. Nothing in the English word "food" carries that, but the Hebrew word does.

Nuances

1afood packed for a journey: what travelers put together and take along to eat on the road.
TranslatabilityDirect
Gen 42:25Gen 45:21Exo 12:39Jos 1:11Jos 9:11
1bsupplies for men in the field: the food an army or an armed band carries out or is issued.
Jdg 7:8Jdg 20:101Sa 22:10
1crations supplied by God to a people on the move.
Psa 78:25

What scholars say about tsedah

The standard lexica agree on the sense and derive the noun from the root צוד: BDB glosses "provision, food" (s.v. צֵידָה, filed under צוד), HALOT "provisions, food for a journey," and DCH "food, provisions." All nine occurrences are feminine singular absolute, and three of them are qualified by לַדֶּרֶךְ, "for the way" (Genesis 42:25; 45:21; Joshua 9:11), which is the firmest anchor for the travel sense; Joshua 1:11 and Judges 20:10 supply it contextually. The relation to the masculine צַיִד (H6718) is treated as morphological rather than semantic: BDB and HALOT file both under צוד, צַיִד itself carries the provisioning sense at Joshua 9:5, 14 and Psalm 132:15, and the hithpael of צוד at Joshua 9:12 means to supply oneself for a journey. TWOT and NIDOTTE handle the hunting and the provisioning uses under a single root entry, the securing of food, rather than as unrelated homonyms. At Judges 7:8 the syntax is compressed and translators differ over the referent of the taking, but the noun's sense is not in doubt there (Webb).

Sources

  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. צֵידָהlexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. צֵידָהlexicon
  • DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. צֵידָהlexicon
  • TWOT (Harris, Archer, Waltke, eds.), s.v. צודdictionary
  • NIDOTTE (VanGemeren, ed.), s.v. צודdictionary
  • Barry G. Webb, The Book of Judges, NICOT (2012)commentary

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

All attested forms of צֵידָה

f s absolute

צֵדָה, צֵידָה

Gen 42:25, Gen 45:21, Exo 12:39, Jdg 7:8, Jdg 20:10, Jos 1:11, Jos 9:11, 1Sa 22:10