StrongerBible

qetseph

קֶצֶף

HebrewH7110“wrath, indignation, ...”

Appears 29 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Num 1:53Num 16:46(17:11)Num 18:5Deu 29:28(27)Jos 9:20Jos 22:202Ki 3:271Ch 27:242Ch 19:22Ch 19:102Ch 24:182Ch 29:82Ch 32:252Ch 32:26Est 1:18Psa 38:1(2)Psa 102:10(11)Ecc 5:17(16)Isa 34:2Isa 54:8Isa 60:10Jer 10:10Jer 21:5Jer 50:13Zec 1:2
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeKEH-tsefnoun

What qetseph means

1

wrath that breaks out: fierce anger, nearly always God's, that bursts forth and lands on people because of a particular wrong

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This word names anger at the moment it breaks loose and arrives. Other Hebrew anger words picture the feeling itself: the flared nostril of a furious face (אַף), or the heat rising inside a person (חֵמָה). This one names the anger going out and landing, which is why the Bible so often measures it by what it does, whether a plague in the wilderness, a defeat in battle, or the loss of the land.

In the books that describe Israel's worship, and again in Chronicles, the word works almost as a fixed term. Wrath "comes upon" a whole community because of one breach, and the story turns on whether it can be stopped:

  • The Levites camp around the tent so that no wrath will fall on the people.
  • Aaron runs into the middle of the congregation with incense once the wrath has already gone out and the plague has begun.
  • One man's theft of forbidden spoil brings wrath on the entire nation.
  • Judges are warned to instruct their people so that wrath does not come on them and on their relatives.
  • Hezekiah humbles himself, and the wrath does not come in his lifetime.

Because it is always tied to a nameable offense, this is never a mood. It has a cause, a target, and an end. One prophet can even call God's anger at his own people "little" beside the excess of the nations who piled on, and Isaiah calls it a moment's outburst set against a lasting love.

A few late books use the same word for ordinary human anger: the flare of contempt and resentment the king's advisers fear will spread through Persian households, or the bitter vexation that sours the days of a man who spends his life chasing money. The picture does not change. Whether the angry one is God or a person, this is anger that has spilled over into the open.

Nuances

1awrath that comes upon a whole community because of one specific offense, and that faithful action is often said to hold off
Num 1:53Num 16:46(17:11)Num 18:5Jos 9:20Jos 22:202Ki 3:271Ch 27:242Ch 19:22Ch 19:102Ch 24:182Ch 29:82Ch 32:25
1bthe anger behind God's judgments, which uproots Israel, strikes the nations, and which sufferers beg to be spared
Deu 29:28(27)Psa 38:1(2)Isa 34:2Isa 54:8Isa 60:10Jer 10:10Jer 21:5Jer 32:37Jer 50:13Zec 1:2Zec 1:15Zec 7:12
1chuman anger: the flare of resentment, or the bitter vexation a person carries
TranslatabilityDirect
Est 1:18Ecc 5:17(16)

Disputed

Whether the wrath that "goes out" in the Priestly texts of Numbers and in Chronicles is personal divine anger or an almost automatic, quasi-physical danger radiating from the sanctuary.

  • contestedIn the Priestly conception the wrath is a real, near-physical peril emanating from the sancta, which is why the Levites function as a protective cordon around the tabernacle and why Aaron's incense can physically stand between the dead and the living to halt it.; Jacob Milgrom, Numbers, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: JPS, 1990), on Numbers 16 to 18; Baruch A. Levine, Numbers, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday), on the cultic logic of wrath breaking out from the holy center
  • contestedThe wrath is consistently willed, purposeful and relational, so קֶצֶף should not be read as an impersonal force; it remains under God's control and operates within covenantal dynamics.; Bruce E. Baloian, Anger in the Old Testament, American University Studies (New York: Peter Lang, 1992)
2

a snapped-off bit of wood: a twig or chip drifting on the surface of water

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyObscure

This is a different word that happens to be spelled exactly like the word for wrath, and it has nothing to do with anger. It appears once, in Hosea, where Samaria's doomed king is compared to a small broken thing on the surface of the water, carried off by the current and gone.

Two things push readers toward something concrete here. A rare relative of the word turns up in Joel (קְצָפָה), where locusts reduce a fig tree to splinters, and the root behind both means "to break" or "to snap off" in Arabic. The oldest Greek translation of Hosea rendered this verse with a word for a dry stick, so the concrete reading is very old.

What exactly is pictured cannot be settled from a single verse. Older Jewish and Latin readings took it as foam or scum on the water; most modern commentators take it as a snapped twig or a chip of wood. Either way the comparison works the same: the king is a weightless scrap that the current sweeps away without leaving a trace.

Hos 10:7
Hos 10:7

What the noun pictures in Hosea 10:7, where Samaria's king is said to be "like qetsep on the face of the water."

  • majorityA snapped twig or chip of wood swept off by the current, which requires a homonym distinct from "wrath"; the Septuagint's φρύγανον ("dry stick") already reflects this reading, and the cognate noun of Joel 1:7 supports a concrete sense of breaking.; BDB (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), 893, s.v. II. קֶצֶף, "probably splinter"; A. A. Macintosh, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), on 10:7; Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea, Anchor Bible 24 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1980), on 10:7; C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Minor Prophets, on Hosea 10:7
  • minorityFoam or scum on the surface of boiling water, the reading behind the Targum, Rashi, the Vulgate's spuma, and the KJV's "foam."; Targum Jonathan and Rashi on Hosea 10:7; Vulgate, Hosea 10:7 (spuma)
  • minorityThe bark of a tree, floating loose on the water.; David Kimchi and Isaac Abarbanel on Hosea 10:7

What scholars say about qetseph

The standard lexica agree on the dominant gloss "wrath, anger, indignation" but diverge on the root analysis. BDB (893) lists two homonyms, I. קֶצֶף "wrath" (subdivided into wrath of God, the great majority, and wrath "of man (late)" at Esther 1:18 and Ecclesiastes 5:16) and II. קֶצֶף "probably splinter" at Hosea 10:7, derived from a root cognate with Arabic قصف qaṣafa "to break, snap off"; HALOT follows the same two-entry analysis with a fuller comparative-Semitic apparatus, and TWOT reflects the split by double numbering (2058a and 2059b). The Gesenius tradition, by contrast, glosses both "twigs, splinters" and "anger" under a single entry. DCH (vol. 7) declines to adjudicate, excluding etymology and cognates by editorial policy, while TLOT explicitly rejects deriving a word's senses from a reconstructed basic meaning, which would resist the move from "break" to "wrath." Reiterer (TDOT XIII:89 to 96 = ThWAT VII:95 to 104) treats verb and noun together and highlights the formula הָיָה קֶצֶף עַל, "wrath came upon," along with the concentration of the noun in Priestly and Chronistic texts as a near-technical term for divine wrath breaking out against the cultic community. Within the Hebrew anger lexicon (אַף, חֵמָה, חָרוֹן, עֶבְרָה, זַעַם), surveyed in NIDOTTE and analyzed by Baloian, Grant and Kruger, the distinctive profile of קֶצֶף is sudden, out-breaking, often institutional wrath, frequently lethal, rather than the slow heat of חֵמָה or the flared nostril of אַף. The Septuagint renders the wrath sense chiefly with ὀργή and θυμός; at Hosea 10:7 it reads φρύγανον, "dry stick," and at Joel 1:7 it renders the cognate noun קְצָפָה with συγκλασμός, "breakage," which together supply the strongest external and internal support for a concrete sense. On the theology, Milgrom and Levine read the Numbers material as wrath emanating dangerously from the sancta and requiring priestly containment, while Baloian insists the wrath is willed and relational rather than an impersonal force; for Chronicles, Japhet reads the vocabulary as immediate retribution, whereas Williamson and Kelly argue it is deployed to open avenues of repentance, as at 2 Chronicles 32:26, where the wrath does not come.

Where scholars disagree about qetseph

Whether קֶצֶף is one word whose sense "wrath" grew out of a concrete sense "break, snap off," or two unrelated words that happen to share a spelling.

  • majorityTwo separate homonyms: I. קֶצֶף "wrath," and II. קֶצֶף "probably splinter," the latter confined to Hosea 10:7 and derived from a distinct root.; BDB (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), 893; HALOT, s.v. קֶצֶף; Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, entries 2058 and 2059
  • minorityOne root, in which "wrath" is a vivid extension of a concrete "break, snap off" attested in Arabic قصف qaṣafa, so that anger is pictured as a snapping or bursting out; both senses stand under a single entry.; Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, trans. S. P. Tregelles, s.v. קֶצֶף; Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, 4th ed. (1979), s.v. qaṣafa, for the cognate
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 C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), 893, s.v. I. and II. קֶצֶףlexicon
  • Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, rev. Baumgartner and Stamm, trans. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1994 to 2000), s.v. קֶצֶףlexicon
  • The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, ed. David J. A. Clines, vol. 7 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press), s.v. קצףlexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, trans. S. P. Tregelles, s.v. קֶצֶףlexicon
  • Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, ed. J. M. Cowan, 4th ed. (Ithaca: Spoken Language Services, 1979), s.v. qaṣafalexicon
  • Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer and B. K. Waltke (Chicago: Moody, 1980), entries 2058 and 2059theological-dictionary
  • F. V. Reiterer, "קָצַף qāṣap; קֶצֶף qeṣep," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. XIII (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 89 to 96theological-dictionary
  • New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), vol. 3, on qṣptheological-dictionary
  • Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, trans. Mark E. Biddle, 3 vols. (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997)theological-dictionary
  • A. A. Macintosh, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), on 10:7commentary
  • Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea, Anchor Bible 24 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1980), on 10:7commentary
  • Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), on 10:7commentary
  • C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Minor Prophets, on Hosea 10:7commentary
  • Jacob Milgrom, Numbers, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: JPS, 1990), on Numbers 16 to 18commentary
  • Sara Japhet, I & II Chronicles: A Commentary, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993)commentary
  • H. G. M. Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, New Century Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982)commentary
  • Brian E. Kelly, Retribution and Eschatology in Chronicles, JSOTSup 211 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996)monograph
  • Bruce E. Baloian, Anger in the Old Testament, American University Studies (New York: Peter Lang, 1992)monograph
  • Deena E. Grant, Divine Anger in the Hebrew Bible, CBQMS 52 (Washington: Catholic Biblical Association, 2014)monograph
  • Paul A. Kruger, "A Cognitive Interpretation of the Emotion of Anger in the Hebrew Bible," Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 26/1 (2000): 181 to 193journal-article

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

All attested forms of קֶצֶף

m s absolute

קֶצֶף, קָצֶף, קֶּצֶף

Num 1:53, Num 18:5, Deu 29:28, Jos 9:20, 2Ki 3:27, 1Ch 27:24, 2Ch 19:10, 2Ch 24:18

m s construct

קֶצֶף, קֶּצֶף

2Ch 29:8, 2Ch 32:26, Jer 50:13

m s construct

קִצְפֶּךָ, קֶצְפְּךָ

Psa 102:10, Psa 38:1

m s construct

קִצְפִּי

Isa 60:10

m s construct

קִּצְפּוֹ

Jer 10:10