StrongerBible

tor

תּוֹר

AramaicH8450“ox, bull, ...”

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Ezr 6:9Ezr 6:17Ezr 7:17Dan 4:25(22)Dan 4:32(29)Dan 4:33(30)Dan 5:21
Word studyResearch-gradeTOHRnoun

What tor means

an ox or bull: the cattle animal of the herd, the largest and costliest beast a person could keep or offer

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This is the Aramaic word for cattle, and it is the very same word as the Hebrew name for an ox (שׁוֹר). The two languages simply say one old sound differently: where Hebrew has an "sh", Aramaic regularly has a "t". The same swap turns the Hebrew number three, "shalosh", into Aramaic "telat". So a reader who already knows the Hebrew ox knows this word too; it is that word in Aramaic dress.

Written out, it looks exactly like several unrelated Hebrew words: the verb for scouting out a land (תּוּר), the noun for a turn that comes round to someone in a sequence (תּוֹר), and the name of the turtledove (תֹּר). None of them has anything to do with cattle. The match is an accident of spelling, and the thing that settles it is the language of the passage: this word turns up only in the Aramaic stretches of Ezra and Daniel.

All three appearances in Ezra are about sacrifice, and in each one the bulls head the list, ahead of the rams and the lambs. The Persian crown agrees to supply them (Ezra 6:9), a hundred of them are offered when the rebuilt house of God is dedicated (Ezra 6:17), and Ezra is told to buy more with the king's silver (Ezra 7:17). Ezra 6:9 asks for "sons of bulls", which is simply how Aramaic says young ones.

The other four appearances are one sentence about Nebuchadnezzar, repeated as the sentence is announced, confirmed, carried out, and later recalled: driven away from people, he ate grass like cattle (Daniel 4:25, Daniel 4:32, Daniel 4:33, Daniel 5:21). Put beside Ezra, the effect is sharp. The animal at the head of the offering list, the costliest gift a king could bring to God, is also the animal that stands in a field with its head down, and the proud king ends up living the second life instead of presenting the first.

Ezr 6:9Ezr 6:17Ezr 7:17Dan 4:25(22)Dan 4:32(29)Dan 4:33(30)Dan 5:21

What scholars say about tor

Biblical Aramaic תּוֹר is the regular reflex of Proto-Semitic *ṯawr- "bull, ox", among the most stable animal names in the family. The Proto-Semitic interdental *ṯ yields š in Hebrew but t in Aramaic, so Hebrew שׁוֹר and Aramaic תּוֹר are one etymon in different phonological dress (compare שָׁלוֹשׁ / תְּלָת "three"). The cognate set includes Ugaritic ṯr, Arabic ṯawr, Syriac tawrā, Akkadian šūru, Phoenician šr, Sabaean ṯwr and Ge'ez sōr; Militarev and Kogan present it as textbook in the animal-name volume of the Semitic Etymological Dictionary, and Huehnergard's survey of Proto-Semitic phonology sets out the reflexes. The lexica are unanimous that this lexeme is unrelated to the Hebrew homographs spelled תור: the onomatopoeic bird name תֹּר "turtledove", the noun תּוֹר "turn, succession" in Esther together with the disputed ornament of Song 1:10-11, and the verb תּוּר "to reconnoiter, explore". Usage is confined to the Aramaic portions of Ezra and Daniel and is always plural. In Ezra the word heads the standard sacrificial sequence with דְּכַר "ram" and אִמַּר "lamb" (Ezra 6:9, 6:17, 7:17); in Daniel it supplies the fixed comparison עִשְׂבָּא כְתוֹרִין for Nebuchadnezzar's reduction to animal existence (Daniel 4:25, 4:32, 4:33 [Aramaic 4:22, 29, 30]; 5:21), a motif commentators on Daniel connect to Mesopotamian portrayals of royal humiliation. The term remains the ordinary word for the animal in later Aramaic, where Targumic and Syriac tawrā render Hebrew שׁוֹר. No live disagreement about the sense of the Aramaic word is recorded in the standard reference works.

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. תּוֹר (Biblical Aramaic)lexicon
  • HALOT, Aramaic section, s.v. תּוֹרlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. תורlexicon
  • A. Militarev and L. Kogan, Semitic Etymological Dictionary, vol. 2: Animal Names (AOAT 278/2; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2005)etymological dictionary
  • John Huehnergard, "Proto-Semitic," in The Semitic Languages, 2nd ed., ed. John Huehnergard and Na'ama Pat-El (London: Routledge, 2019), 49-79reference
  • Michael Sokoloff, A Syriac Lexicon (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2009), s.v. tawrālexicon
  • John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993)commentary
  • H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah (Word Biblical Commentary 16; Waco: Word, 1985)commentary

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

All attested forms of תּוֹר

m p absolute

כְתוֹרִין, תּוֹרִין

Dan 4:25, Dan 4:32, Dan 4:33, Dan 5:21, Ezr 6:9, Ezr 6:17, Ezr 7:17