StrongerBible

qodqod

קׇדְקֹד

HebrewH6936“crown, head, ...”

Appears 11 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 49:26Deu 28:35Deu 33:16Deu 33:202Sa 14:25Job 2:7Psa 7:16(17)Psa 68:21(22)Isa 3:17Jer 2:16Jer 48:45
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradekohd-KOHDnoun

What qodqod means

the crown of the head: the very top of the head, the highest point of a person's body.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This word names one exact spot on the body: the very top of the head, what English calls the crown or the pate. It is not the general word for "head" (רֹאשׁ), which covers the whole head and also stretches to mean a leader, a beginning, or the top of anything. This word stays put. It always means the highest point of the head, and Hebrew poetry likes to name the head first and this spot second, so that the line narrows from the whole to its peak.

Because it is the topmost point, the Bible puts it to three jobs:

  • It fixes the far end of a head to toe span, so that "from the sole of the foot to the top of the head" leaves nothing of a person out, whether the whole body is covered in sores or is flawlessly handsome.
  • It marks where a blessing comes to rest, as in the twin blessings of Joseph, where the gift settles on his head and then on the very top of it.
  • It marks the exposed place where a killing blow, a skin disease, or a public shaving lands and can be seen from a distance.

The word is very old, and Israel did not coin it. Nearly the same word turns up in Babylonian and in the poetry of Ugarit on the Syrian coast, where gods and warriors deliver the fatal blow to an enemy's crown, and where "head" and "crown of the head" are paired in verse exactly as Hebrew pairs them. Babylonian had the same head to toe idiom as well. So when Psalm 68 pictures God shattering the hairy crown of his enemies, the picture was already ancient by the time the psalm was sung.

Eleven appearances is a small sample, yet the pattern in them is unusually tidy. Whenever a writer reaches for this word instead of the ordinary word for head, the point is location: something is arriving at, or being stripped from, the highest point of a person.

Nuances

1athe upper limit of the whole body, in the fixed phrase "from the sole of the foot to the top of the head".
TranslatabilityDirect
Deu 28:352Sa 14:25Job 2:7
1bthe highest point of the head as the place where a blessing comes to rest, named right after "head" to press the point that the gift reaches the very top.
Gen 49:26Deu 33:16
1cthe exposed top of the head as the spot where a killing blow, a disease, or a public humiliation lands in plain view.
Deu 33:20Psa 7:16(17)Psa 68:21(22)Isa 3:17Jer 2:16Jer 48:45

What scholars say about qodqod

The standard critical lexicons converge on the gloss "crown of the head, pate, vertex" and diverge only on etymology. HALOT lists Ugaritic qdqd, Akkadian qaqqadu(m) (from older qadqad-), and Jewish Aramaic qodqoda as cognates and treats the Hebrew as a reduplicated primary noun, cross-referenced to but not derived from the verb qdd "bow down". BDB (869) already in 1906 assigned the noun to a separate root II ("meaning dubious") precisely to detach it from qdd I. DCH lists the eleven attestations and the word-pairs with se'ar "hair" (Ps 68:21), ro'sh "head", and pe'ah "side, temple" (Jer 48:45) without deriving it. The picturesque derivation from qdd, current from the Tregelles Gesenius (1857) through Strong, is abandoned in Gesenius18 and in modern comparative work: Butts (JAOS 131) documents the productive Semitic reduplicated nominal pattern, and Militarev and Kogan's Semitic Etymological Dictionary reconstructs Proto-Semitic *qadqad- "top of the head" from Akkadian, Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Aramaic. TDOT/ThWAT gives the noun no standalone article, treating it under ro'sh (ThWAT VII cols. 271ff. = TDOT XIII 248ff.).

The comparative evidence is unusually exact. Ugaritic qdqd preserves the unassimilated base and appears in the same word-pair with r'is that Hebrew keeps in poetry; in the Baal Cycle (KTU 1.2 IV 21-25) Baal's club strikes the qdqd of Prince Yamm, in Kirta (KTU 1.16 VI 54-57) a curse formula pairs r'isk with qdqdk, and in Aqhat (KTU 1.18 IV 22-23, 33-34) Yatpanu strikes Aqhat on the qdqd. Watson and Sivan treat the ro'sh // qodqod pair as inherited Northwest Semitic diction rather than a Hebrew innovation. The Akkadian merism istu qaqqadi adi sepe "from head to foot" (CAD Q 106-108) is the direct ancestor of Hebrew mikkaf regel we'ad qodqod, so the totality idiom of Deut 28:35, 2 Sam 14:25, and Job 2:7 is a shared Semitic literary convention; Clines and Habel read the Job occurrence as a deliberate echo of the Deuteronomic curse.

The Septuagint chose koryphe ("summit, crown of head"), the semantically exact equivalent, in seven of eleven cases. Job 2:7 flattens to kephale in the free style of Old Greek Job; Deut 33:20 renders archonta ("ruler"), a metaphorical reinterpretation that Symmachus corrected back to koryphen; Isa 3:17 paraphrases the clause away entirely, with 1QIsa-a confirming qdqd in the Vorlage; Jer 2:16 loses the noun through a graphic dalet/resh confusion analysed by Tov; and Jer 48:45 falls inside one of the well known LXX-Jeremiah minuses. Ps 68:21 [LXX 67:22] calques the Hebrew as koryphen trichos.

Three exegetical debates touch the word without unsettling its sense. On the Joseph blessings (Gen 49:26 // Deut 33:16) the disputed term is nazir: Speiser, Wenham, Westermann, Christensen, and Tigay read "prince, elect, distinguished one", Waltke and Nelson keep "consecrated, set apart", and Sasson argues both senses stay active, since the nazir's status is marked precisely at the crown of the head by diadem or unshorn hair; the parallelism intensifies rather than chooses. On Ps 68:21, Dahood (following Albright) read qodqod se'ar as a near quotation of Baal Cycle diction; Barr's methodological critique and Craigie's cautions, and the mediating position of Tate, Kraus, Hossfeld and Zenger, Goldingay, and Mark S. Smith, retain the inherited word-pair and the Divine Warrior type-scene while rejecting detailed mythological reconstruction. On Isa 3:17 the hapax verb sippah divides between "smite with a scab" (Wildberger, Blenkinsopp, Oswalt) and "make bald", with Williamson concluding it probably fuses skin disease and hair loss; on Jer 2:16 the verb yir'uk is read as "graze upon" (Holladay) or "shave" (Lundbom, McKane). BDB, following Ewald and Dillmann, proposed emending weqarqar in Num 24:17 to weqodqod on the strength of the Jer 48:45 parallel, but the reading is conjectural and witnessed in no manuscript, so the count of attestations stands at eleven.

Where scholars disagree about qodqod

Where the word comes from: whether it is an old inherited noun for the top of the head, or a noun formed from the verb meaning "to bow the head".

  • majorityIt is a primary noun built by doubling its root, inherited from the common Semitic stock of body-part words, with exact matches in Ugaritic, Akkadian, and Aramaic. Modern lexicons list the verb for bowing as a separate word and derive nothing from it.; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), s.v. קׇדְקֹד; BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), p. 869 (root II, "meaning dubious", detached from קדד I); W. Gesenius, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Handworterbuch, 18th ed., ed. R. Meyer and H. Donner (Springer, 1987-2013), s.v.; A. Militarev and L. Kogan, Semitic Etymological Dictionary, vol. I, AOAT 278/1 (2000), 74-75; Aaron M. Butts, "Reduplicated Nominal Patterns in Semitic," Journal of the American Oriental Society 131 (2011): 83-108
  • minorityIt is named from the verb "to bow", as the part of the body that is bowed lowest, or from the place where the hair parts. This was the standard nineteenth century explanation and still reaches readers through older reference works and concordances.; W. Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, trans. S. P. Tregelles (London: Bagster, 1857), 719, s.v.
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

  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), s.v. קׇדְקֹדlexicon
  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), p. 869, s.v. קׇדְקֹד and קדדlexicon
  • DCH (Clines, ed.), vol. VII (2010), s.v. קׇדְקֹדlexicon
  • W. Gesenius, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Handworterbuch uber das Alte Testament, 18th ed., ed. R. Meyer and H. Donner (Springer, 1987-2013), s.v.lexicon
  • W. Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, trans. S. P. Tregelles (London: Bagster, 1857), 719, s.v.lexicon
  • H.-J. Fabry and F. Stolz, "ראש," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) XIII, 248ff.dictionary
  • Aaron M. Butts, "Reduplicated Nominal Patterns in Semitic," Journal of the American Oriental Society 131 (2011): 83-108article
  • A. Militarev and L. Kogan, Semitic Etymological Dictionary, vol. I: Anatomy of Man and Animals, AOAT 278/1 (Munster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2000), 74-75monograph
  • Joshua Fox, Semitic Noun Patterns, HSS 52 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 72-87monograph
  • G. del Olmo Lete and J. Sanmartin, A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd rev. ed., HdO 112 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), s.v. qdqdlexicon
  • Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, vol. Q (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1982), 100-121, s.v. qaqqadulexicon
  • W. von Soden, Akkadisches Handworterbuch, vol. II (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1972), 899-902lexicon
  • W. G. E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, JSOTSup 26 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984), 128-29monograph
  • Mark S. Smith, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, vol. I, VTSup 55 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 322-61monograph
  • Mark S. Smith, Untold Stories: The Bible and Ugaritic Studies in the Twentieth Century (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2001)monograph
  • Nicolas Wyatt, "'May Horon Smash Your Head!': A Curse Formula from Ugarit," in Word of Tree and Whisper of Stone (Piscataway: Gorgias, 2008), 155-66article
  • James Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968)monograph
  • Peter C. Craigie, Ugarit and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983)monograph
  • Mitchell Dahood, Psalms II: 51-100, AB 17 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1968), 133-52commentary
  • Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 51-100, WBC 20 (Dallas: Word, 1990), ad 68:22commentary
  • Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005)commentary
  • E. A. Speiser, Genesis, AB 1 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1964), ad 49:26commentary
  • Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, WBC 2 (Dallas: Word, 1994), ad 49:26commentary
  • Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: JPS, 1996), ad 33:16commentary
  • Duane L. Christensen, Deuteronomy 21:10-34:12, WBC 6B (Nashville: Nelson, 2002), ad 33:16commentary
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, WBC 17 (Dallas: Word, 1989), ad 2:7commentary
  • Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1-12: A Continental Commentary, trans. T. H. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), ad 3:17commentary
  • H. G. M. Williamson, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 1-5, ICC (London: T&T Clark, 2006), ad 3:17commentary
  • William L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1: Chapters 1-25, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), ad 2:16commentary
  • Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20, AB 21A (New York: Doubleday, 1999), ad 2:16commentary
  • William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, ICC, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986, 1996)commentary
  • Emanuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, 3rd ed. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 78-79monograph
  • J. W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Deuteronomy, SBLSCS 39 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), ad 33:20monograph

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

All attested forms of קׇדְקֹד

m s construct

קָדְקֹד

Gen 49:26, Deu 33:16, Psa 68:21, Isa 3:17, Jer 48:45

m s construct

קָדְקֳדוֹ

2Sa 14:25, Job 2:7, Psa 7:16

m s absolute

קָדְקֹד

Deu 33:20, Jer 2:16

m s construct

קָדְקֳדֶךָ

Deu 28:35