a corrective rebuke: words (or the discipline behind them) meant to confront a person and set them right
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This is the noun of correction. At its gentlest it is the honest word a wise teacher, friend, or parent speaks to steer someone away from a mistake, the reproof that goes hand in hand with training and instruction. The book of Proverbs returns to it again and again: the person who welcomes it grows wise, and the person who hates it stays a fool.
The same word stretches to cover correction that is no longer just spoken but carried out. When God is the one correcting, his rebuke can take the form of affliction or punishment, the hard experience that disciplines a person or a nation. So a day of trouble can be called a day of rebuke, and God's furious judgments on the nations are named with this same word.
What holds the range together is the aim: not to wound but to put right. Whether it arrives as a plain-spoken warning or as a painful consequence, it is confrontation with a corrective purpose.
Nuances
1aa spoken reproof or corrective warning: the honest word that steers a person away from folly
an argument: the reasoned case a person lays out to defend a position in a dispute
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
In a handful of places the word points the other direction: not the correction aimed at you, but the case you make for yourself. It is the reasoning a person marshals when pressing a complaint or defending a claim, the answer readied for a hearing.
Job uses it this way as he prepares to plead his cause before God, filling his mouth with arguments. The sense is close to the everyday meaning of an argument in English: the considered reasons you set out to win a point. It belongs to the same world of dispute and adjudication as the corrective sense, but here the speaker is the one making the case rather than the one being corrected.
Names a spoken correction aimed at a fault, the reproof one person says to another to set them right, weighted toward the words themselves rather than a course of training.Pro 27:5Pro 1:23Pro 15:31
Stretches into the courtroom and the dispute, the reasoned case or argument one makes to prove a point, even when no one is being corrected.Job 13:6Job 23:4Hab 2:1
Both
In the wisdom poems both name the loving correction that grows a person, paired so closely that to refuse one is to refuse the other.Pro 3:11
Both describe the response that marks the wise: the person who welcomes correction gains life, while the one who hates it stays a fool.Pro 12:1Pro 15:10
Names the whole formative training that shapes a person, the upbringing and moral instruction a child or learner receives, not just a single corrective word.Pro 1:2Pro 1:8Pro 4:1
Covers correction that lands physically, the painful chastening or the rod that drives folly out, where the point is to train through hardship.Pro 22:15Pro 13:24Deu 11:2
גְּעָרָהgeharah is a sharp, often angry blast of rebuke or threat (frequently God's); tokhechah leans toward reasoned correction meant to instruct
Names reasoned correction that teaches and leads to life: the discipline of wisdom that a person accepts to grow wise, not a shout but instruction.Pro 6:23Pro 10:17Pro 15:31
Can mean a case or argument pressed in a dispute, the reasoned complaint one lays out to state one's side.Job 13:6Job 23:4Hab 2:1
Both
Both name the spoken reproof a wise person takes to heart and a fool rejects, the correction that separates the teachable from the stubborn.Pro 17:10Pro 15:5
Names the sheer force of the shout itself: a blast or roar that scatters, dries up, and makes creation flee. It is most at home as God's cry that lays bare the sea and drives back the waters.Psa 104:7Isa 50:22Sa 22:16
Carries the menace of a threat that puts people to flight, the terrifying shout before which armies scatter and men are left helpless.Isa 30:17Isa 51:20
tokhaḥat in the other biblical languages
ἔλεγχοςGreek“rebuke”the Greek word for reproof or proof that exposes and convicts; tokhechah covers a wider span, from gentle correction to enacted punishment to a case argued
Reaches into corrective discipline: the loving correction that trains and matures a person, prized by the wise and resented by the fool.Pro 3:11Pro 12:1
Also carries angry chastisement and punishment: the rebuke that falls in judgment, a weight the Greek word's one occurrence never touches.Psa 39:11Ezk 5:15
Both
Both name a proving that brings conviction: an argument or piece of evidence laid out so that a matter is established and the hearer is compelled to acknowledge it. The Hebrew word renders this idea in an Old Testament courtroom of words, and the Greek word carries it in the New Testament as the proof that persuades.Job 13:6Heb 11:1
Names the inner conviction or proof that something unseen is real: a settled assurance that grasps what the eye cannot verify. In its single New Testament appearance the word is a positive certainty about hidden reality, not a reproof aimed at correcting anyone.Heb 11:1
What scholars say about tokhaḥat
The noun (spelled both תּוֹכֵחָה and תּוֹכַחַת) derives from the root יכח, whose forensic force runs from arguing and deciding a case to reproving and correcting. Standard lexica (BDB; HALOT) distribute the occurrences across a corrective band (reproof in the wisdom literature; chastisement or punishment, especially of God, in Psalms, Ezekiel, and the day-of-rebuke idiom) and an argumentative band (the reasoned case one pleads, as in Job and Habakkuk). The wisdom usage is the densest, concentrated in Proverbs where תּוֹכַחַת pairs repeatedly with מוּסָר (discipline). The forensic background of the root is treated in TDOT (s.v. יכח) and TWOT.
Sources
BDB, s.v. תּוֹכֵחָה, תּוֹכַחַתlexicon
HALOT, s.v. תּוֹכַחַתlexicon
TDOT (Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament), s.v. יכחtheological-dictionary
TWOT (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament), s.v. יכחtheological-dictionary