StrongerBible

reḥit

רָהִיט

HebrewH7351“rafters, panels, ...”

Appears 1 time · tap a cell to see the verses

Sng 1:17
Root family
Word studyResearch-graderah-HEETnoun

What reḥit means

rafter: a wooden crosspiece laid overhead between the main beams of a roof

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested

This word turns up exactly once in the whole Hebrew Bible, in a love song where the two lovers lie outdoors and picture their green resting place as a grand house. The line pairs the word with the main beams (קוֹרָה) of that imagined house: the beams are cedar, and these are cypress. Because Hebrew poetry works by pairing one line against another, that pairing is the single best clue we have. Whatever the word names, it is something overhead that belongs with beams.

The name most likely comes from a root meaning "to run" or "to flow." A rafter is a length of timber that runs across a gap, and the same root gives a word for the channel that water runs along (רַהַט), and, later in the same song, for hair that flows loose down the head. So the picture behind the word is a slender piece of wood that runs from one heavy beam to the next.

The oldest translators saw something more finished than bare timber. The Greek and Latin versions read the line as a coffered ceiling, the grid of sunken decorative panels that graced expensive buildings, which is why a few English Bibles still print "panels" or "ceiling" here. Either picture fits the scene equally well, since the lovers are borrowing the vocabulary of a cedar and cypress palace to describe a shelter of living trees.

Sng 1:17

Disputed

Whether the word denotes bare structural roof timbers (rafters) or the sunken panels of a finished, coffered ceiling.

  • majorityRafters: the timbers running between the main beams, a sense derived from the root rhṭ "to run" and supported by the parallelism with qorot "beams" in the same couplet.; BDB, s.v. רָהִיט ("strips running between beams"); Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs (Anchor Bible 7C; Doubleday, 1977), on 1:17; Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation (Random House, 1995), Introduction; Scott B. Noegel and Gary A. Rendsburg, Solomon's Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song of Songs (SBL, 2009)
  • minorityA coffered or paneled ceiling, the reading of the earliest versions, which render the word with terms for the recessed panels of an ornamented ceiling.; Septuagint, Song 1:17 (φατνώματα); Symmachus, Song 1:17 (φατνώσεις); Vulgate, Canticum 1:16 (laquearia); C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 6: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, on Song 1:17

What scholars say about reḥit

רָהִיט is a true hapax legomenon, attested only in Song 1:17 in the couplet קֹרוֹת בָּתֵּינוּ אֲרָזִים רַהִיטֵנוּ בְּרוֹתִים. Its sense is reconstructed from three converging lines of evidence: the parallelism with קֹרוֹת "beams"; the root רהט "to run, flow," which also underlies רַהַט "trough, water channel" (Gen 30:38, 41; Exod 2:16) and, on the usual explanation, רְהָטִים "flowing tresses" (Song 7:6); and the survival of the word in Rabbinic Hebrew with the sense "rafter." BDB accordingly glosses "rafters," explaining them as strips running between beams; HALOT and DCH carry the word within the range rafter / beam / panel. Against this etymology-driven consensus stand the ancient versions, which uniformly render an ornamented ceiling (LXX φατνώματα, Symmachus φατνώσεις, Vulgate laquearia), while the Peshitta simply employs the cognate Syriac root. Keil and Delitzsch attempt to reconcile the two by taking the word as a collective for the recessed panels of a wainscoted ceiling, and they reject the older emendation of Ewald and Hitzig to חֲרִיטֵנוּ from חרט "to carve." The Masoretic Ketiv רחיטנו against the Qere רהיטנו is generally judged a dialectal ḥet/he interchange of northern character rather than a substantive variant, and Song 1:17 is not preserved among the Qumran Song fragments (4Q106 to 4Q108, 6Q6), so no Second Temple witness controls the reading. Bloch and Bloch treat the form as an Aramaism (Syriac rehṭā) and adduce it, with בְּרוֹתִים, as evidence for a late date for the Song; Noegel and Rendsburg link 1:17 to 7:6 as two specializations of "runner." Whether רַהַט, רְהָטִים and רָהִיט all issue from one root is disputed: the derivation from רהט "run" is mainstream, but BDB itself flags the "tresses" sense as uncertain, and Klein declines to connect the modern "furniture" word to that root.

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

  • BDB (Brown, Driver, Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. רָהִיטlexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler, Baumgartner, Stamm), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. רָהִיטlexicon
  • DCH (David J. A. Clines, ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. רָהִיטlexicon
  • Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs (Anchor Bible 7C; Doubleday, 1977)commentary
  • Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation with an Introduction and Commentary (Random House, 1995)commentary
  • C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 6: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomoncommentary
  • Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs (Continental Commentaries; Fortress, 1994)commentary
  • Scott B. Noegel and Gary A. Rendsburg, Solomon's Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song of Songs (Society of Biblical Literature, 2009)monograph
  • Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (Carta, 1987)lexicon

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

All attested forms of רָהִיט

m s construct

רַהִיטֵנוּ

Sng 1:17