StrongerBible

riq

רִיק

HebrewH7385“in vain, vanity, ...”

Appears 12 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Lev 26:16Lev 26:20Job 39:16Psa 2:1Psa 4:2(3)Psa 73:13Isa 30:7Isa 49:4Isa 65:23Jer 51:34Jer 51:58Hab 2:13
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeREEKnoun

What riq means

emptiness that yields nothing: a container with nothing in it, and so work, strength, or scheming that comes back with no result

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

Behind this word stands a plain household picture: a sack or a jar tipped up and turned out, with nothing falling from it. Every use grows from that image. When the Bible says a farmer sowed his seed for emptiness, the point is not that his work was silly or meaningless; it is that the harvest never came. This is the Bible's vocabulary for wasted work.

So the word is usually less a description of a thing than a verdict on an outcome, and it keeps company with verbs of hard effort: sowing, spending strength, wearing oneself out. Its close relatives hold the same picture in different shapes: רֵיק says that a pit or a jar is empty, and רֵיקָם says that someone went away empty-handed.

Its twelve appearances trace one line through the Bible:

  • The covenant curses of Leviticus 26 threaten that Israel will sow seed and spend strength with nothing to show for it.
  • The servant of Isaiah 49 takes that same curse language onto his own lips, saying he has labored for nothing.
  • Isaiah 65 cancels it, promising a people who will never again labor for nothing.

Hebrew has a crowded vocabulary for nothingness, and this is the narrowest member of it. It is not the vapor that thins out and vanishes (הֶבֶל), not the lie with nothing true behind it (שָׁוְא), and not the shapeless waste of the world before God ordered it (תֹּהוּ). It is the sack turned upside down.

Nuances

1ain vain: labor or strength spent with nothing to show for it
TranslatabilityApproximate
Lev 26:16Lev 26:20Job 39:16Psa 73:13Isa 49:4Isa 65:23Jer 51:58Hab 2:13
Isa 49:4

Whether the three emptiness terms stacked in Isaiah 49:4 (רִיק, תֹּהוּ, הֶבֶל) function as near-synonyms piled up for rhetorical force, or each retains a distinct semantic core.

  • majorityRhetorical accumulation: a lament formula in which the three terms work as near-synonyms, with only residual semantic tint distinguishing them.; Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40-66, OTL, pp. 209-10; Klaus Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, Hermeneia, pp. 307-13; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55, Anchor Bible 19A, pp. 300-302; Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah 40-66, Eerdmans Critical Commentary, pp. 325-28
  • minorityA crescendo rather than a redundancy: each term keeps its own core, רִיק the unfilled result, תֹּהוּ the Isaianic wasteland and unreality, הֶבֶל vaporous evanescence.; John Goldingay and David Payne, Isaiah 40-55, ICC, vol. 2, pp. 158-63
1ban empty thing: a scheme, a promise, or a pursuit with nothing in it, so that it delivers nothing
Psa 2:1Psa 4:2(3)Isa 30:7
Psa 2:1

Whether רִיק in Psalm 2:1 is the direct object of the verb (the peoples mutter an empty thing) or an adverbial accusative (the peoples mutter in vain).

  • majorityA noun serving as the object of the verb, so the nations plot something empty. The ancient versions read it this way, and the New Testament citation follows them.; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1-59, Continental Commentary, pp. 124-32; Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Die Psalmen I, NEchtB 29, p. 50; Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms (Norton, 2007), p. 5; Samuel Terrien, The Psalms, Eerdmans Critical Commentary, pp. 82-84
  • minorityAn adverbial accusative, so the nations plot in vain, on the analogy of the adverbial usage in Isaiah 30:7 and 49:4.; Mitchell Dahood, Psalms I, Anchor Bible 16, pp. 6-7; Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50, WBC 19, pp. 63-68; Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley, Hebrew Grammar, 118q
1cempty: a container with nothing left in it
TranslatabilityDirect
Jer 51:34

What scholars say about riq

BDB fixed the core observation that no later lexicon has disputed: the noun occurs chiefly in the adverbial phrase לְרִיק / לָרִיק, "in vain," of labour without benefit, and its concrete base is the emptying of a vessel (the Hiphil הֵרִיק empties a sack in Genesis 42:35, pours out oil in Zechariah 4:12, and draws a sword from its sheath in Exodus 15:9). HALOT, Gesenius (18th ed., Meyer and Donner), DCH and Zorell lemmatize the root as II-waw רוק on comparative grounds (Akkadian riāqu "to be empty, idle," with the adjective rêqu documented in CAD R; Arabic Form IV arāqa "pour out"; Ugaritic rq / ryq in del Olmo Lete and Sanmartín; Jewish Aramaic and Syriac rîq), while BDB arranges the family under a II-yod root; the two classes merge morphologically in Hebrew, so the divergence is presentational. The TDOT article on רוק / רִיק develops the same semantic profile: the container image, the overwhelmingly adverbial function, and the specialization for frustrated effort rather than for insubstantiality (הֶבֶל), falsity (שָׁוְא), formlessness (תֹּהוּ) or absolute negation (אֶפֶס). Milgrom situates Leviticus 26:16, 20 within the ancient Near Eastern futility-curse pattern alongside Deuteronomy 28:30-33 and Amos 5:11; Andersen and Lundbom agree that the fixed formula בְּדֵי־רִיק originated in Habakkuk 2:13 and was taken up in Jeremiah 51:58. Blenkinsopp, Goldingay, Childs and Paul read Isaiah 65:23 as a deliberate overturning of Leviticus 26:20, with the servant's lament in Isaiah 49:4 as the pivot, and Clines notes the striking transfer of the same curse vocabulary to an animal, without disapproval, in Job 39:16. Two narrower questions remain live: whether the three emptiness terms of Isaiah 49:4 are rhetorical accumulation (Westermann, Baltzer, Blenkinsopp, Paul) or retain distinct cores (Goldingay and Payne), and whether רִיק at Psalm 2:1 is the object of the verb (Kraus, Hossfeld and Zenger, Alter, Terrien, with LXX ἐμελέτησαν κενά, the Vulgate, Peshitta, Targum and the citation at Acts 4:25) or an adverbial accusative (Dahood, Craigie, GKC 118q). Behind both stands the methodological question raised by Barr and pressed by Silva and Clines: whether "vanity" is lexically resident in the root or generated in each proposition.

Where scholars disagree about riq

Which root the noun and its family should be listed under: the II-waw root רוק or a II-yod root following the long i vowel of the derived Hebrew nouns. The two classes merge morphologically in Hebrew, so the question is one of lexicographic arrangement rather than of meaning.

  • majorityFile the family under the II-waw root רוק, following the weight of the comparative Semitic evidence (Akkadian riāqu, Arabic arāqa).; HALOT (Koehler and Baumgartner), s.v. רוק; Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 18th ed., ed. Meyer and Donner, s.v. רוק; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew; Franz Zorell, Lexicon Hebraicum Veteris Testamenti
  • minorityFile the family under a II-yod root, following the surface vocalization of the derived Hebrew nouns.; BDB (Brown, Driver and Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), s.v. רִיק
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 and Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. רִיקlexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler and Baumgartner), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. רוק / רִיקlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. רִיקlexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18th ed., ed. Meyer and Donner, s.v. רוקlexicon
  • Franz Zorell, Lexicon Hebraicum Veteris Testamenti, s.v. רִיקlexicon
  • TDOT (Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament), vol. 13, article on רוק / רִיקtheological-dictionary
  • The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), vol. R (1999), s.v. riāqu, rēqulexicon
  • G. del Olmo Lete and J. Sanmartín, A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, s.v. rqlexicon
  • Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27, Anchor Bible 3B, pp. 2314-19commentary
  • Francis I. Andersen, Habakkuk, Anchor Bible 25commentary
  • Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 37-52, Anchor Bible 21Ccommentary
  • Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55, Anchor Bible 19A, pp. 300-302commentary
  • Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 56-66, Anchor Bible 19B, pp. 291-92commentary
  • John Goldingay and David Payne, Isaiah 40-55, ICC, vol. 2, pp. 158-63commentary
  • John Goldingay, Isaiah 56-66, ICC, pp. 471-74commentary
  • Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40-66, OTL, pp. 209-10commentary
  • Klaus Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, Hermeneia, pp. 307-13commentary
  • Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL, pp. 538-41commentary
  • Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah 40-66, Eerdmans Critical Commentary, pp. 622-24commentary
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 38-42, WBC 18B, pp. 1108-15commentary
  • Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1-59, Continental Commentary, pp. 124-32commentary
  • Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60-150, Continental Commentary, pp. 84-88commentary
  • Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2, Hermeneia, pp. 224-30commentary
  • Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50, WBC 19, pp. 63-68commentary
  • Mitchell Dahood, Psalms I, Anchor Bible 16, pp. 6-7commentary
  • James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961)monograph
  • Moisés Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning (Zondervan, 1983)monograph

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

All attested forms of רִיק

m s absolute

רִיק

Lev 26:16, Lev 26:20, Job 39:16, Psa 2:1, Psa 4:2, Psa 73:13, Isa 30:7, Isa 49:4