sevenfold: in full and complete measure, with seven standing for the whole of something rather than a counted seven
In the Bible seven is the number of wholeness, and this word turns that number into a measure. It says that something has been done or given back to the full: nothing missing, nothing still owed, nothing left to add. English Bibles nearly always print "sevenfold", but the point is almost never arithmetic.
Proverbs 6:31 shows this most plainly. A thief who is caught pays "sevenfold", and the next line says what that amounts to: all the wealth of his house. Israel's law asked a thief for double, four times, or five times the value of what he took, never seven, so the number is a picture of paying to the limit rather than a rate of repayment.
The same full measure runs in opposite directions, and that is what makes the word worth noticing:
- Genesis 4:15 and Psalm 79:12 use it of a wrong paid back completely, the first as God's own guarantee of protection for Cain, the second as a prayer after Jerusalem was ruined.
- Genesis 4:24 puts it in Lamech's mouth, where he takes that divine guarantee and inflates it into a boast of seventy-sevenfold revenge of his own.
- Psalm 12:6 and Isaiah 30:26 use it of good things brought to their limit: words refined until nothing false is left in them, and sunlight restored to full brightness.
This is not the ordinary number "seven" (שֶׁבַע), which simply counts seven of something. Hebrew has only one other word shaped the same way, "fourfold" (אַרְבַּעְתַּיִם), used of the repayment David demands in 2 Samuel 12:6, and that one carries no comparable weight of completeness.
Nuances
Whether the sevenfold restitution of Proverbs 6:31 reflects an actual legal penalty or is hyperbole for total loss.
- majorityHyperbole. The parallel colon, "all the wealth of his house", itself interprets sevenfold as complete dispossession, and the argument then moves from the ruined thief to the far worse position of the adulterer in vv. 32 to 35. Mosaic restitution law (Exod 22:1 to 4) knows double, fourfold, and fivefold, never sevenfold.; Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1-9, Anchor Yale Bible, at 6:31; Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1-15, NICOT, at 6:31; Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs, WBC, at 6:31; Richard J. Clifford, Proverbs, OTL, at 6:31
- minorityThe sevenfold figure preserves an actual restitution penalty from a legal tradition outside the Mosaic multiples of Exodus 22:1 to 4.; Abraham Ibn Ezra, Commentary on Proverbs, at 6:31
Whether the appositional phrase "like the light of seven days" in Isaiah 30:26 is original to the verse or a later explanatory gloss on the word sevenfold.
- majorityOriginal to the passage, supplying the prophet's own measure for the sevenfold light within a proto-apocalyptic promise of reversed creation-darkness.; John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 1-39, NICOT, at 30:26; Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL, at 30:26
- minorityA marginal gloss on שִׁבְעָתַיִם later absorbed into the text; the Greek evidence is mixed. Williamson and Wildberger discuss the proposal without adopting it.; Bernhard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia, at 30:26; H. G. M. Williamson, Isaiah 28-39, ICC, at 30:26
Disputed
How the dual ending on the feminine numeral came to function as a multiplicative, and whether it retains any sense of "two". Both analyses agree the word means sevenfold, not fourteen.
- majorityA morphological dual grammaticalized as an adverbial multiplicative, most plausibly by analogy with פַּעֲמַיִם ("twice"), the genuine dual of פַּעַם; the ending no longer counts two.; BDB, 988, s.v. שִׁבְעָתַיִם; HALOT, s.v. שִׁבְעָתַיִם; GKC, Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, ed. Kautzsch, trans. Cowley, §§97h, 134r; Paul Joüon and Takamitsu Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, §100o-q; Bruce K. Waltke and M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, §15.2.4
- minorityThe ending belongs with lexicalized -ayim forms such as מַיִם ("water") and שָׁמַיִם ("heavens"), where it never denoted two at all, so the form is an intensive rather than a true dual.; Joshua Blau, Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew, §4.5.10.5