StrongerBible

resh

רֵאשׁ

AramaicH7217“head, chief, ...”

Appears 14 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Ezr 5:10Dan 2:28Dan 2:32Dan 2:38Dan 3:27Dan 4:5(2)Dan 4:10(7)Dan 4:13(10)Dan 7:1 (2×)Dan 7:6Dan 7:9Dan 7:15Dan 7:20
Word studyrayshnoun

What resh means

the head: the top of a body, and so whoever or whatever stands at the top or comes first

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Biblical Aramaic uses this word much as English uses "head." It is the top of a body, and the body can belong to a person, an animal, or a figure made of metal: the golden head of the great statue in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the unsinged hair of the three men who walked out of the furnace, the four heads of the beast that looked like a leopard, the ten horns crowded onto the head of the fourth beast.

From that plain top the word reaches in two directions a reader may not expect:

  • It marks where a dream takes place. Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar both speak of "visions of my head upon my bed," which is simply their way of saying they dreamed while lying down.
  • It marks the front of something told. When Daniel writes his dream down in Daniel 7:1, he reports the "head of the words," meaning either the gist of the account or its opening lines.

The word also names a person at the top. Nebuchadnezzar is told "you are that head of gold," and the officials in Ezra 5:10 ask for the names of the men at the head of the group rebuilding the temple. That is the same move English makes when it calls someone the head of a company. The closely related Hebrew word (רֹאשׁ) stretches much further, covering beginnings, totals, and whole companies of men, so this Aramaic word should not be assumed to carry everything its Hebrew twin does.

Nuances

1athe head as a body part, on a person, an animal, or a statue
TranslatabilityDirect
Dan 2:32Dan 3:27Dan 7:6Dan 7:9Dan 7:20
1bthe head as the place where a dream is seen, in the recurring phrase about visions coming to someone in bed
Dan 2:28Dan 4:5(2)Dan 4:10(7)Dan 4:13(10)Dan 7:1 (2×)Dan 7:15
1cthe one at the top: a ruler, or the leading men of a group
TranslatabilityDirect
Ezr 5:10Dan 2:38
1dthe head of a report: its main substance, or its opening
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
Dan 7:1 (2×)

What scholars say about resh

The lexica of Biblical Aramaic treat רֵאשׁ as a single entry, cognate with Hebrew רֹאשׁ and with the common Northwest Semitic noun for "head", and they agree on the basic sense. HALOT's Aramaic section and BDB's Biblical Aramaic section both distribute the fourteen occurrences across the same groups: the literal body-part uses (Dan 2:32; 3:27; 7:6, 9, 20), the fixed phrase חֶזְוֵי רֵאשׁ "visions of the head" (Dan 2:28; 4:5, 10, 13; 7:1, 15), the personal use at Dan 2:38, the plural prepositional phrase בְּרָאשֵׁיהֹם "at their head", i.e. their leaders, at Ezra 5:10, and the phrase רֵאשׁ מִלִּין at Dan 7:1, glossed "sum, substance" in the lexica but also taken by commentators as an incipit formula heading the account that follows. Vogt and Rosenthal treat the noun as morphologically unremarkable, the singular with pronominal suffixes alternating with a determined form and a masculine plural; the sole lexical question of substance is the Dan 7:1 phrase. Note that Daniel 4 is numbered three verses lower in the Aramaic text than in the English tradition, so English 4:5, 4:10, and 4:13 correspond to Aramaic 4:2, 4:7, and 4:10.

Sources

  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament), Aramaic section, s.v. רֵאשׁlexicon
  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament), Biblical Aramaic section, s.v. רֵאשׁlexicon
  • E. Vogt, A Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic, trans. and rev. J. A. Fitzmyer (Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2011), s.v. רֵאשׁlexicon
  • F. Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, 7th expanded ed. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006)grammar
  • J. J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), on Daniel 7:1commentary
  • J. A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, ICC (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1927), on Daniel 7:1commentary

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

All attested forms of רֵאשׁ

c s construct

רֵאשִׁי

Dan 4:5, Dan 4:10, Dan 4:13, Dan 7:15

c s construct

רֵאשֵׁהּ

Dan 2:32, Dan 7:1, Dan 7:9

c s construct

רֵאשׁ

Dan 7:1

c s construct

רֵאשָׁךְ

Dan 2:28

c s construct

רֵאשַׁהּ

Dan 7:20

c s construct

רֵאשְׁהוֹן

Dan 3:27

c s determined

רֵאשָׁה

Dan 2:38

m p absolute

רֵאשִׁין

Dan 7:6

m p construct

רָאשֵׁיהֹם

Ezr 5:10