StrongerBible

sheḥarḥoret

שְׁחַרְחֹר

HebrewH7840“dark, black, ...”

Appears 1 time · tap a cell to see the verses

Sng 1:6
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradesheh-khar-KHO-retadjective

What sheḥarḥoret means

blackish: dark of skin, tanned by the sun rather than black outright

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This word appears once in the Bible, in the mouth of the young woman of the Song of Songs. She tells the women of Jerusalem to stop staring at her because she is dark, and she gives the reason in the same breath: the sun has looked on her, since her brothers sent her out to guard the vineyards. The word describes weathered, sun-darkened skin, not the color she was born with.

Its form is a softened version of the ordinary word for black (שָׁחֹר), which she has just used of herself one verse earlier. Hebrew builds a small family of color words this way, by doubling sounds at the end of the word, and the results are usually shades rather than absolutes: the words for "greenish" and "reddish" are made the same way. Most scholars therefore hear a slight qualification here, something like "dark-ish", as though she is easing the flat statement she has just made. A minority hears the doubling as emphasis instead, "very black".

In the ancient world a suntan was a mark of social class. People who had to work outdoors were dark; people wealthy enough to stay under a roof stayed pale. The stare the woman is deflecting is about status and labor, and she answers it by naming the vineyards she was made to keep and the vineyard of her own that she did not keep.

Sng 1:6

Disputed

Whether the doubled form of this color adjective attenuates or intensifies the color, yielding "blackish, somewhat dark" or "very black".

  • majorityThe repetition weakens the color term, so the woman calls herself dark or swarthy rather than flatly black. The parallel formations יְרַקְרַק "greenish" (Lev 13:49; 14:37) and אֲדַמְדָּם "reddish" (Lev 13:19, 24, 42, 43) name shades, and the Vulgate's fusca ("dusky, tawny") reflects the same weakened sense.; BDB, s.v. שְׁחַרְחֹר ("blackish", citing Gesenius §84b); Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley, Hebrew Grammar, §84b
  • minorityThe doubling of the radicals strengthens rather than diminishes the adjective, so the word means "very black" and heightens rather than qualifies the שְׁחוֹרָה of 1:5.; John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, on Song of Songs 1:6

What scholars say about sheḥarḥoret

שְׁחַרְחֹרֶת is a hapax legomenon at Song 1:6, the feminine of a reduplicated adjective built on the root שׁחר "be black", whose ordinary adjective שָׁחֹר the same speaker uses of herself in 1:5. BDB glosses it "blackish" and refers the formation to Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley §84b, the class of stems formed by repetition of the final radicals; the controls are יְרַקְרַק "greenish" (Lev 13:49; 14:37) and אֲדַמְדָּם "reddish" (Lev 13:19, 24, 42, 43). Most lexicographers and grammarians read the repetition as attenuating ("somewhat dark, swarthy"), while an older exegetical strand represented by Gill argued that it intensifies ("very black"); the question is not settled on grammatical grounds alone. Because the parallel forms cluster in the diagnostic texts of Leviticus 13-14, a mottling or pathology sense has occasionally been floated, but Song commentators reject it since 1:6 supplies its own non-pathological cause (שֶׁשֱּׁזָפַתְנִי הַשָּׁמֶשׁ). The dominant modern reading (Fox, Pope, Exum, Murphy, Keel, Longman, Garrett, Bloch and Bloch) takes the tan as a marker of agricultural labor and low social standing rather than ethnicity; Job 30:30 is the closest verbal parallel for skin turning dark, though there the cause is affliction. The versions point toward a diminished darkness: LXX μεμελανωμένη ("having been darkened") and Vulgate fusca ("dusky, tawny"). Whether שׁחר "be black" and שַׁחַר "dawn" (compare Ugaritic Šḥr in KTU 1.23) belong to one root or are homonyms bridged by the darkness before daybreak remains an open lexical question. The reception history of 1:5-6, especially the Vulgate's nigra sum sed formosa and the allegorical readings of Origen, the Targum, and Song of Songs Rabbah, and the racialized readings they fed, is treated by Goldenberg, Weems, Sadler, Byron, and Gafney.

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, s.v. שְׁחַרְחֹרlexicon
  • Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley, Hebrew Grammar, §84bgrammar
  • Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)monograph
  • Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs (Anchor Bible 7C; Doubleday, 1977)commentary
  • J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs (Old Testament Library; Westminster John Knox, 2005)commentary
  • Roland E. Murphy, The Song of Songs (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1990)commentary
  • Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs (Continental Commentaries; Fortress, 1994)commentary
  • Tremper Longman III, Song of Songs (NICOT; Eerdmans, 2001)commentary
  • Duane Garrett, Song of Songs (Word Biblical Commentary 23B; Nelson, 2004)commentary
  • Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation (Random House, 1995)monograph
  • David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton University Press, 2003)monograph
  • John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, on Song of Songs 1:6commentary

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

All attested forms of שְׁחַרְחֹר

f s absolute

שְׁחַרְחֹרֶת

Sng 1:6