StrongerBible

qun

קִינֵן

HebrewH6969lament, chant, ...

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

2Sa 1:172Sa 3:332Ch 35:25Jer 9:17(16)Ezk 27:32Ezk 32:16 (3×)
Root family
Names & words formed with this
Word studykoh-NENverb

What qun means

to chant a funeral dirge: to perform the composed song of grief over the dead, or over a nation mourned as though it were already dead

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

This verb is not a word for crying. It is a word for performing. It means taking up the composed funeral song and chanting it aloud over the dead. The song itself has its own name, the dirge (קִינָה), and this verb is what a mourner does with one. When David chanted over Saul and Jonathan, the text quotes the whole poem and adds that he had it taught to the people of Judah, which tells you it was a finished piece of work and not a burst of feeling.

Every use of the word sits in public. Someone leads and others follow: the king chants over Abner and the whole army weeps with him, Jeremiah chants over Josiah and the singers keep his laments as a standing custom for generations, and the mourning women are sent for precisely because chanting laments is their trade. Grief here is something a community performs together, with skilled voices at the front of it.

Ezekiel does something startling with the word. He chants the funeral of Tyre and of Egypt while both are still standing, so the song turns into an announcement: the fall is so certain that the mourning can begin already.

It helps to keep the mourning words apart from one another:

  • to shed tears and cry is בָּכָה
  • to wail aloud and beat the breast in ritual mourning is סָפַד
  • to let out the drawn out cry of grief is נָהָה
  • to chant the composed song over the dead is this word

Nuances

1ato chant the funeral dirge over someone who has died
2Sa 1:172Sa 3:332Ch 35:25
1bto chant a dirge over a city or nation still standing, mourning it in advance as already fallen
Ezk 27:32Ezk 32:16 (3×)
1cused of the skilled women whose trade is chanting laments, called in to lead a community's grief
Jer 9:17(16)

What scholars say about qun

The verb qonen is formed from qinah, the funeral dirge, and the lexica define it as chanting or singing that dirge over the dead (HALOT; BDB; DCH). All eight occurrences stand in the intensive stem, and where an object is expressed it is the qinah itself (2 Sam 1:17; Ezek 32:16), so the verb is best construed as the performance of a fixed poetic genre rather than as a general expression of sorrow. Hedwig Jahnow's form-critical monograph on the Hebrew Leichenlied set the classic description of that genre and of its performers, and TDOT follows her in taking the feminine plural participle in Jer 9:17 as a designation for professional wailing women, a class of specialists set beside the "skilled women" of the same verse and paralleled in Ugaritic and Mesopotamian funerary practice. The prophetic appropriation of the dirge over still-living nations (Ezek 27:32; 32:16) is a recognized device of judgment oracles: the target is mourned in advance, its downfall treated as an accomplished death.

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. קוןlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. קוןlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. קוןlexicon
  • TDOT, s.v. קוּן / קִינָהtheological-dictionary
  • Hedwig Jahnow, Das hebräische Leichenlied im Rahmen der Völkerdichtung (BZAW 36; Giessen: Töpelmann, 1923)monograph

All attested forms of קִינֵן

piel consecutive-imperfect 3ms

וַיְקֹנֵן, וַיְקוֹנֵן

2Sa 1:17, 2Sa 3:33, 2Ch 35:25

piel consecutive-perfect 3cp

וְקוֹנְנוּ

Ezk 27:32, Ezk 32:16

piel imperfect 3fp

תְּקוֹנֵנָּה

Ezk 32:16, Ezk 32:16

piel participle f p absolute

מְקוֹנְנוֹת

Jer 9:17