StrongerBible

qarah

קָרָה

HebrewH7136“befall, meet, ...”

Appears 27 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 24:12Gen 27:20Gen 42:29Gen 44:29Exo 3:18Num 11:23Num 23:3Num 23:4Num 23:15Num 23:16Num 35:11Deu 25:18Rut 2:31Sa 28:102Sa 1:62Ch 34:11Neh 2:8Neh 3:3Neh 3:6Est 4:7Est 6:13Psa 104:3Ecc 2:14Ecc 2:15Ecc 9:11Isa 41:22Dan 10:14
Word studyResearch-gradekah-RAHverb

What qarah means

1

to meet or befall: for a person or an event to come to someone, whether by design or by chance

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This verb covers the whole distance from two people crossing paths to an event landing on someone's life. At its center is the simple idea of one thing coming to another. A traveler comes upon another on the road, God comes to a prophet, or trouble arrives at a family's door. English needs several different words for this (meet, befall, happen, come to pass, grant), but Hebrew uses the one word.

What holds the senses together is that the coming is often unplanned, or at least looks unplanned. The same word can describe a real accident and a moment the writer wants us to feel was quietly arranged. That tension is deliberate. When Ruth happens onto the field of Boaz, or when a servant asks God to make the right woman appear, the word lets chance and providence sit side by side without deciding between them.

When the word is used to say that someone caused a thing, it means to bring it about or to grant it: to make an encounter or an outcome happen. Ecclesiastes pushes the word the other way, toward the bare fact that one and the same end comes to everyone alike, wise and foolish together.

Nuances

1ato meet or come upon someone; of God, to come to a person
Exo 3:18Num 23:3Num 23:4Num 23:15Num 23:16Deu 25:18
1bto befall or happen to someone: for an event or circumstance to come upon a person
Gen 42:29Gen 44:29Num 11:23Rut 2:31Sa 28:102Sa 1:6Est 4:7Est 6:13Isa 41:22Dan 10:14
1cto come to pass; the one event or end that comes to all alike
CertaintyContested
Ecc 2:14Ecc 2:15Ecc 9:11
Ecc 9:11

In Ecclesiastes the verb and its related noun describe the single outcome that overtakes the wise and the foolish, the righteous and the wicked, alike, above all death. Scholars disagree over whether the book keeps the ordinary meaning what happens or reloads the word into an abstract idea close to a predetermined fate.

  • contestedThe word still means simply an event, what happens. Ecclesiastes narrows the reference to the one great event, death, without importing any power that decrees it; it is what falls out, not a fixed destiny.; Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Eerdmans, 1999)
  • contestedEcclesiastes abstracts the ordinary word into something approaching fate, the predetermined boundary of human and animal life, putting the book in the vicinity of Greek philosophical thought about the accidental and about chance.; Peter Machinist, 'Fate, miqreh, and Reason: Some Reflections on Qohelet and Biblical Thought,' in Solving Riddles and Untying Knots: Biblical, Epigraphic, and Semitic Studies in Honor of Jonas C. Greenfield (Eisenbrauns, 1995); Antoon Schoors, The Preacher Sought to Find Pleasing Words, vol. 2: Vocabulary (OLA 143; Peeters, 2004); Nili Samet, 'Qoheleth's Idiolect and Its Cultural Context,' Harvard Theological Review 114 (2021)
  • contestedThe truth lies between: the word is a way of naming death as the common lot, or a category for how events look to human observation, without any personified Fate standing behind them.; Choon-Leong Seow, Ecclesiastes (Anchor Bible 18C; Doubleday, 1997); Stephen B. Chapman, 'Miqreh and YHWH: Fate, Chance, Simultaneity, and Providence in Qoheleth,' in Divine Doppelgangers (Penn State University Press, 2020)
1dto cause to happen: to bring about, grant, or set in place
Gen 24:12Gen 27:20Num 35:11
2

to lay beams; to roof a building by setting its wooden beams in place

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is a builder's word. It means to set the wooden beams across the top of a structure, the framing that a roof and its floors rest on. It appears in accounts of repairing the temple and rebuilding the gates of Jerusalem, where work crews cut timber and laid the beams over doorways and towers.

Scholars treat this as a separate word from the meet-or-befall verb above, even though the two are spelled the same. It comes from the ordinary noun for a beam. Its most memorable use is a poet's picture of God as a cosmic builder who lays the beams of his upper rooms on the waters of the sky.

2Ch 34:11Neh 2:8Neh 3:3Neh 3:6Psa 104:3

What scholars say about qarah

Since BDB (1906) the standard lexica list two homonymous verbs under this number: קרה I "to meet, encounter, befall, happen" (Qal, Niphal, Hiphil) and קרה II, a denominative Piel "to lay the beams of, roof over," formed from the noun קוֹרָה "beam." HALOT, DCH (Clines), Gesenius 18th ed., and NIDOTTE all keep the split; the older Gesenius-Tregelles tradition treated the two as one entry, explaining the beam sense as making beams "meet" one another. No comparative Semitist retrieves a verbal cognate for the beam sense: קרה II is Hebrew-internal, while the meet-and-befall sense reflects Proto-Semitic *qry "encounter, receive as host" (Ugaritic qry, Arabic qara, Ge'ez qaraya, Akkadian qeru "invite to a banquet"), a Northwest Semitic development of the befall-and-happen sense not shared by Arabic or Ge'ez. קרה I overlaps heavily with the similarly spelled קרא II "to meet, befall," and the two are widely regarded as byforms whose final aleph and final he interchange, especially in Late Biblical and Qumran Hebrew: the internal evidence includes the double form נקרא נקריתי at 2 Samuel 1:6, the same idiom spelled differently at Genesis 42:4 and 44:29, and the Ketiv/Qere at Daniel 10:14, alongside the Samaritan Pentateuch at Numbers 23 and the orthographic studies of Kutscher, Qimron, and Reymond; Clines treats the pair in his study of byforms, while Barr urged general caution about positing byforms. In the Balaam narrative Levine reads the Niphal as a technical divinatory term for the seer's induced encounter with God rather than a chance meeting. The Piel beam sense is stereotyped building vocabulary in the Nehemiah rebuilding accounts (Williamson) and reaches its poetic height at Psalm 104:3, rendered by the Septuagint with the architectural verb for roofing. The most contested question is the weight of the related noun מִקְרֶה and the verb in Ecclesiastes (2:14, 15; 9:11), where Machinist, Schoors, and Samet argue for an abstraction toward "fate," Fox insists it means only "what happens," and Seow and Chapman occupy a middle position; the Septuagint's choice of the rare calque synantema over tyche or heimarmene notably declines to settle the question either way.

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, s.v. קרה Ilexicon
  • BDB, s.v. קָרָה I and II, pp. 899-900lexicon
  • David J. A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 7lexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Handworterbuch, 18th ed. (Meyer/Donner)lexicon
  • Willem VanGemeren (ed.), New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDOTTE)theological-dictionary
  • Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 21-36 (Anchor Bible 4A; Doubleday, 2000)commentary
  • H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah (Word Biblical Commentary 16; Word, 1985)commentary
  • Peter Machinist, 'Fate, miqreh, and Reason: Some Reflections on Qohelet and Biblical Thought,' in Solving Riddles and Untying Knots (Eisenbrauns, 1995)article
  • Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Eerdmans, 1999)monograph
  • Choon-Leong Seow, Ecclesiastes (Anchor Bible 18C; Doubleday, 1997)commentary
  • David J. A. Clines, 'Byforms in Classical Hebrew,' Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society (2022)article
  • E. Y. Kutscher, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (STDJ 6; Brill, 1974)monograph

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

All attested forms of קָרָה

qal imperfect 3ms

יִקְרֶה, יִקְרְ, יִקְרֵ, יִקְּרֵ, יִקְרָה

Ecc 2:14, Ecc 9:11, Num 11:23, Ecc 2:15, 1Sa 28:10, Dan 10:14

qal perfect 3ms

קָרָ, קָרְ

Est 4:7, Est 6:13, Deu 25:18

niphal consecutive-imperfect 3ms

וַיִּקָּר

Num 23:4, Num 23:16

piel infinitive-construct construct

קָרוֹת

2Ch 34:11, Neh 2:8

piel perfect 3cp

קֵרוּ

Neh 3:3, Neh 3:6

hiphil consecutive-perfect 2mp

וְהִקְרִיתֶם

Num 35:11

hiphil imperative 2ms

הַקְרֵה

Gen 24:12

hiphil perfect 3ms

הִקְרָה

Gen 27:20

niphal imperfect 1cs

אִקָּרֶה

Num 23:15

niphal imperfect 3ms

יִקָּרֵה

Num 23:3

niphal perfect 1cs

נִקְרֵיתִי

2Sa 1:6

niphal perfect 3ms

נִקְרָה

Exo 3:18

piel participle m s absolute

מְקָרֶה

Psa 104:3

qal consecutive-imperfect 3ms

וַיִּקֶר

Rut 2:3

qal consecutive-perfect 3ms

וְקָרָ

Gen 44:29

qal imperfect 3fp

תִּקְרֶינָה

Isa 41:22

qal participle f p absolute

קֹּרֹת

Gen 42:29