a puncture pricked into the skin: the deep marking that drives pigment in and makes it permanent
This word appears once in the whole Bible, in Leviticus 19:28, and never on its own. It stands in a two-word phrase that reads literally "writing of incision." The other word names the mark that is written (כְּתֹבֶת); this one names how the mark got there, by pricking the skin deeply enough that dye stays under it. Together the phrase describes what we would call a tattoo: not paint that washes off, and not a burn, but a permanent mark punctured into the flesh.
Everything we know about the word comes from that single phrase, from the ancient translations, and from the earliest Jewish definitions, and they all point the same way:
- The oldest Greek translation calls the result "pricked letters," using a word for piercing.
- The old Latin translation borrows a Greek word that Romans used for the tattoo put on runaway slaves and criminals.
- The old Syriac translation calls it "writing of dots," naming the technique outright.
- The earliest Jewish law held a person liable only if he both wrote and pricked, using ink, dark powder, or anything else that leaves a mark.
Where the word came from is less certain, and the major dictionaries admit as much. Most take it as a doubled form of a short root for striking or cutting deeply. The strongest recent proposal links it to an old Semitic word meaning "to strike" or "to puncture," which survives in Arabic for marking a horse and in Ethiopic for striking or wounding. Either way, a deep puncture is what the comparisons support.
The first half of the same verse forbids something different: the gash mourners cut in their own skin for the dead (שֶׂרֶט). Older readers took both halves together as one ban on foreign funeral customs. Many scholars now separate them, because no culture around ancient Israel is known to have tattooed itself for the dead, while marking a person's body to show whose slave he was, or whose god he served, is well documented. On that reading the ban protects a claim: Israel already belonged to the LORD, so no other owner's mark could go on Israelite skin.
Whether the prohibition of incised marks in Leviticus 19:28 continues the mourning prohibition in the first half of the verse or is a separate prohibition against marking the body as the slave or devotee of another deity.
- contestedThe clause is a separate prohibition. Marking the body identified a person as another owner's slave or a deity's devotee, which Israel, already claimed as the LORD's own, could not bear.; Milgrom, Jacob, Leviticus 17-22 (Anchor Bible 3A, 2000), 1694-1695; Huehnergard, John and Harold Liebowitz, "The Biblical Prohibition Against Tattooing," Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013): 59-77; Fox, Nili S., "Marked for Servitude: Mesopotamia and the Bible," in Language and Nature: Papers Presented to John Huehnergard (2011)
- contestedBoth halves of the verse forbid one complex of mourning and foreign religious practice, so the marking belongs together with the gashing for the dead.; Levine, Baruch A., Leviticus (JPS Torah Commentary, 1989), on 19:28; Wenham, Gordon J., The Book of Leviticus (NICOT, 1979), 272; Gerstenberger, Erhard S., Leviticus: A Commentary (OTL, 1996), on 19:26-31
Disputed
What kind of skin marking the noun names: a puncture filled with pigment, that is, a tattoo, or possibly a painted or merely decorative mark.
- majorityThe noun names a deep puncture that carries pigment, so the phrase in Leviticus 19:28 denotes a permanent tattoo rather than paint or a burned brand.; BDB, s.v. קַעֲקַע; Huehnergard, John and Harold Liebowitz, "The Biblical Prohibition Against Tattooing," Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013): 59-77; Milgrom, Jacob, Leviticus 17-22 (Anchor Bible 3A, 2000), 1694-1695
- minorityThe precise meaning cannot be recovered from a single occurrence; the mark may have been painted on the body or simply decorative.; HALOT, s.v. קַעֲקַע; Hartley, John E., Leviticus (WBC 4, 1992), on 19:28