to explore or search something out by moving through it, whether scouting a land on foot or searching a matter out in the mind
The word pictures someone moving through a place in order to find out what is there. Its most famous use is the twelve scouts sent to explore Canaan (Numbers 13 to 14), who traveled the length of the land and came back with a report on its people and its produce. From that concrete picture the word reaches in several directions.
It can describe scouting ahead for a good place to stop, as when the ark of the covenant went before Israel to find them a resting place (Numbers 10:33). It can leave the ground entirely and describe a mind working over a question, as the Teacher in Ecclesiastes sets out to search out everything done under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:13). It can picture a wild donkey ranging the hills for anything green to eat (Job 39:8).
A warning in Numbers 15:39 turns the picture inward: Israel is told not to go exploring after their own heart and eyes, the way the scouts had chased a faithless report. And one form of the word stopped describing an action and became a name for a class of people, the traveling merchants who made their living going from place to place (1 Kings 10:15).
Underneath the whole range many scholars see an older idea of going around and coming round again. That is what ties this verb to two nouns spelled exactly like it: the word for a person's appointed turn in a sequence, as each young woman in Esther waits for her turn to go in to the king (תּוֹר), and the word for a plaited or encircling ornament worn at the cheeks and neck in the Song of Songs (תּוֹר). The root is still productive in modern Hebrew, where one word from it means a queue or one's turn and another means "tourist."
Nuances
The opening verb of Proverbs 12:26 is textually and lexically uncertain, and it is unclear whether it even belongs to this word.
- contestedIt is a form of this verb meaning to guide or scout out the way, so the righteous person points a neighbor in the right direction.; HALOT, s.v. תּוּר
- contestedThe text is corrupt or the verb belongs to another root, and it should be emended or rendered differently (for example "the righteous is spared trouble" or "turns from evil").; Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31 (Anchor Yale Bible)
- contestedIt derives from a separate word meaning to have more or be superior, giving "the righteous has more than his neighbor."; Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1-15 (NICOT)