to find or come upon someone or something; in the passive, to be found, to be present, or to turn out a certain way once looked into.
This is one of the everyday verbs of the Aramaic chapters of Daniel and Ezra. In its active use it simply means to find, discover, or come upon something, whether by hunting for it or stumbling onto it: Arioch finds Daniel among the exiles, Daniel's rivals try to find a charge against him, a treasurer is told to find silver and gold in the province, and clerks are ordered to find a decree in the royal archives.
In the passive the same verb turns around: instead of a person finding a thing, the thing is found, that is, it turns out to be there or not there. Sometimes this is plain presence or absence, as when a scroll is found in the fortress or no place is found for the shattered idol. But the word does its most memorable work when someone is examined, weighed, or put on trial, and what the search turns up becomes a verdict:
- Belshazzar is "weighed in the balances and found wanting" (Daniel 5:27).
- The officials hunting for a charge can find no fault or error in Daniel (Daniel 6:4).
- After the night with the lions, "innocence was found" in him before God (Daniel 6:22).
The Hebrew verb מָצָא does the same double duty across the rest of the Old Testament, and this Aramaic word matches it closely. Both cover the plain act of finding and the passive sense of proving to be present or absent once a matter is looked into.