a razor: the small keen blade held in the hand to shave hair, or to cut and trim.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is a small blade kept sharp enough to scrape hair off skin. Hebrew has another word for a razor (מוֹרָה), but this is the ordinary one, and it turns up wherever hair is being taken off for a reason.
The man under a special vow let no blade touch his head until the vow was finished.
The Levites had every hair shaved from their bodies before they began serving at the tabernacle.
Ezekiel was told to take a sword (חֶרֶב) and use it the way a barber uses a razor, then weigh and scatter the hair.
Assyria is pictured as a hired razor with which God will shave Judah bare.
The same blade appears once with no hair in sight, as the small knife a scribe kept at his desk. When a king wanted a scroll destroyed, he cut it into strips with that knife and fed them to the fire.
Because the edge is so keen, the blade also became a picture of speech that wounds. A tongue that plots ruin is compared to a razor honed sharp.
Nuances
1aa razor: the blade that shaves hair from the head, face, or body
Num 6:5Num 8:7Psa 52:2(4)Isa 7:20Ezk 5:1
1ba scribe's small knife, used to cut a written scroll
Jer 36:23*
2
a sheath: the case a sword rests in and is drawn out of.
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
A sword needs somewhere to sit when it is not in use, and this is the word for it: the case strapped at the hip, from which the sword (חֶרֶב) is pulled and into which it is pushed back. Hebrew has one other word for the same object (נָדָן), used a single time.
Drawing the sword out and putting it back are the two moments the Bible cares about. David finishes Goliath by pulling the giant's own sword from its sheath. Joab walks out with his sword strapped on in its sheath, and it falls loose just before he kills Amasa, a detail the storyteller clearly wants noticed.
Ezekiel turns the picture into an oracle. God announces that he is drawing his own sword out of its sheath against his own land, and that it will not go back. Jeremiah, watching the same sword loose among the Philistines, pleads with it to gather itself into its sheath and be still. In both prophets a full sheath means restraint and an empty one means judgment is already running.
The ordinary word for a blade in someone's hand and doing its work: the Levites have every hair shaved off before they serve, and Ezekiel is told to take a sharp blade and pass it over his head and beard the way a barber would.Num 8:7Ezk 5:1
Stretches past hair to any small keen blade, including the knife a scribe kept at his desk, which a king used to slice a scroll into strips and burn it.Jer 36:23
Carries figurative weight. Assyria is a razor God has hired to shave a nation bare, and a scheming tongue is compared to a razor honed sharp.Isa 7:20Psa 52:2
The same spelling also names a sword's sheath, an object with no hair anywhere in view: David draws Goliath's sword from it, and God announces he is pulling his own sword out of it and will not put it back.1Sa 17:51Ezk 21:3Jer 47:6
Both
Both are rendered "razor" and both name the blade that shaves hair off a head, so English Bibles use the same word for either one.Jdg 16:17Num 8:7
Both appear in the same vow language, that no razor is to come up on the head, one in the standing law for anyone taking the vow and the other in the stories of two men set apart from birth.Jdg 13:5Num 6:5
Never names a blade anyone actually picks up. Every use is a promise that no razor will ever touch a particular head: the angel's word about Samson before he is born, Samson's own confession of the secret, and Hannah's vow over the son she is asking for.Jdg 13:5Jdg 16:171Sa 1:11
Belongs to lifelong dedication rather than a vow with a set term. The blade is barred from the head from the womb onward, or for all the days of the child's life, so the unshaved hair is a standing sign that never comes to an end.Jdg 13:51Sa 1:11
נָדָןthe other Hebrew word for a sword's sheath, used a single time, when David puts his sword back.
Also names the blade itself, the razor run over the head or the whole body when a vow ends or the Levites are purified.Num 6:5Num 8:7Ezk 5:1
Stretches to any small sharp blade of that kind, including the knife a scribe kept at hand, which Jehoiakim used to slice up Jeremiah's scroll before burning it.Jer 36:23
Works as a figure of speech as well as an object: a hostile army shaves a land bare like a hired razor, and a treacherous tongue is whetted like one.Isa 7:20Psa 52:2
When it does mean a sheath, it is most often the place a sword comes OUT of, at the opening of a threat rather than at its close.1Sa 17:51Ezk 21:3Ezk 21:5
Both
Both are rendered "sheath", and each names the covering that belongs to one particular sword, spoken of as that sword's own.1Ch 21:272Sa 20:8
Both mark the point where a drawn sword is put back and the killing is called off, whether the angel over Jerusalem or the sword of the LORD told to rest and be still.1Ch 21:27Jer 47:6
Means a sword's sheath and nothing else, so it never doubles as the name of a cutting tool.1Ch 21:27
Appears exactly once in the whole Hebrew Bible, at the moment the destroying angel is told to put his sword away and the plague on Jerusalem stops.1Ch 21:27
מַאֲכֶלֶתthe heavy knife used for slaughtering an animal, a butcher's blade rather than the fine blade that shaves or trims.
This is the razor that takes hair off the body, the blade that vows and purification rites are built around: it must never touch a Nazirite's head, and it is passed over the Levites when they are set apart.Num 6:5Num 8:7
Because shaving strips a person bare and shames him, prophets turn this razor into a picture of God stripping a nation of everything, hiring a blade to shave head, beard and body.Isa 7:20Ezk 5:1
The same word also names the sheath a sword is drawn out of and put back into, a use the butcher's knife never has.1Sa 17:51Jer 47:6Ezk 21:3
It can also name the small blade a scribe kept at hand, used here to slice a scroll into strips and burn it.Jer 36:23
Both
Both name a sharp handheld blade that a person raises and works with deliberately, not a weapon swung in battle.Gen 22:10Ezk 5:1
Both are borrowed as images of human cruelty, where the blade stands for a mouth that tears people apart: teeth like knives that devour the poor, and a tongue that works like a sharpened razor.Pro 30:14Psa 52:2
This is the heavy blade a person takes up to kill and to butcher, the knife carried to the place of sacrifice alongside the fire and the wood.Gen 22:6Gen 22:10
Every literal use is a scene of cutting up flesh, including the grisly dismembering of a body, so "knife" here means a butcher's blade rather than a small everyday tool.Jdg 19:29
חֶרֶבthe sword itself, the weapon drawn out of the sheath, and the blade Ezekiel is told to wield as if it were a razor.
This is the barber's blade, used on hair rather than on people. A Nazirite lets none pass over his head, and the Levites pass one over their whole body to be made clean.Num 6:5Num 8:7
Shaving with it pictures public humiliation rather than death: the Lord takes a hired blade to the head, the legs and the beard of his own people.Isa 7:20
The same word names the case a sword is kept in, so it can mean the blade's opposite: the covering that holds a weapon and keeps it from cutting.Ezk 21:30
It can be the small knife a scribe kept at hand, which a king used to slice a scroll into pieces before burning it.Jer 36:23
Its sharpness is turned into a picture of speech that plots harm, a tongue honed like a blade.Psa 52:2
Both
Both name a sharpened blade, close enough in kind that one can do the other's work: Ezekiel is handed a sword and told to use it as a barber's razor on his own head and beard.Ezk 5:1
The two often describe one weapon between them, the blade and the case it rides in. David pulls Goliath's sword out of its sheath, and a sword worn on the hip sits inside one.1Sa 17:512Sa 20:8
Because a sheathed blade is a blade at rest, the pair carries the whole rhythm of judgment in the prophets: God draws his sword out and will not put it back, and the sword is told to gather itself in and be quiet.Ezk 21:5Jer 47:6
This is the ordinary weapon of war. Armies kill with its edge, and a whole town can be put to it.Num 21:24Jos 6:21Gen 34:26
It also stands for violent death itself, listed beside plague as one of the ways a people is wiped out, with no actual blade in view.Exo 5:3Lev 26:25
It can name a plain cutting tool that kills nobody: the flint blades made for circumcision, or the iron tool a builder must not swing against altar stones.Jos 5:2Exo 20:25
It is the blade God himself is pictured owning and wielding, from the flaming one set at the garden gate to the one he sharpens to settle accounts with his enemies.Gen 3:24Deu 32:41
ta'ar in the other biblical languages
θήκηGreek“sheath”the Greek word for a sword's sheath, used when Jesus tells Peter to put his sword away.
Most often names the blade itself rather than any case: the razor taken to a person's head or beard, whether forbidden to a man under a vow, required of the Levites at their cleansing, or taken up like a barber's tool as a sign of judgment.Num 6:5Num 8:7Ezk 5:1
Stretches to other small cutting tools, such as the knife a scribe used on a scroll, so it is not tied to shaving alone.Jer 36:23
Because it can mean a blade, it works as a picture of something that cuts: a hired razor sweeping a land bare, or a tongue that slices like a sharpened edge.Isa 7:20Psa 52:2
Both
Both name the sheath a sword is kept in, and both turn up at the moment a sword is either pulled out of it or ordered back into it.Jhn 18:111Sa 17:51Jer 47:6
In both, the sheath marks the line between a weapon at rest and a weapon in use, so putting a sword back or keeping it out becomes a way of saying whether the violence is over.Jhn 18:11Ezk 21:5Ezk 21:30
Both can be worn or carried on a person, the sword sitting fastened at the waist in its case rather than held in the hand.Jhn 18:112Sa 20:8
Names only the holder, never the blade. It is built from the ordinary verb for putting something down, so it means the place a thing is kept, and the one time the New Testament uses it, it is the resting place Jesus tells Peter to put his sword back into.Jhn 18:11
Carries no cutting sense at all, so it can never be turned into a picture of sharpness or of a wound. Its whole force is the opposite: it is where a weapon goes to stop being used.Jhn 18:11
ξυράωGreek“to shave”the Greek verb for shaving; the New Testament names the action but never the blade that does it.
What scholars say about ta'ar
The standard lexicons agree on both senses but arrange them differently. BDB files the word under a root meaning to lay bare or strip, so that the razor strips hair and the sheath is what a sword is stripped from, while HALOT and DCH list a razor entry and a sheath entry separately. The two senses are also formally distinguishable in the corpus: the sheath sense occurs only with a feminine pronominal suffix and always alongside חֶרֶב (1 Samuel 17:51;2 Samuel 20:8;Jeremiah 47:6;Ezekiel 21:3, 4, 5, 30), whereas the razor sense stands alone or governs a following noun (the barbers of Ezekiel 5:1, the scribe of Jeremiah 36:23). גַּלָּב "barber" in Ezekiel 5:1 is a hapax usually taken as an Akkadian loan (gallābu). On the legislative texts, Milgrom reads the Nazirite prohibition of Numbers 6:5 as marking the term of the vow rather than sanctifying hair as such, and Numbers 8:7 as a purificatory shaving of the Levites. Block treats Ezekiel 5:1 as a sign act in which a sword serves as the barber's blade, and the Ezekiel 21 oracles as the unsheathing of Yahweh's own sword against his land. Isaiah 7:20's hired razor is generally read as Assyria in divine employ.
Where scholars disagree about ta'ar
Whether the razor sense and the sheath sense belong to one Hebrew word or to two words that happen to be spelled alike.
contestedOne word. Both senses go back to a root meaning to lay bare or strip: a razor strips hair from the body, and a sheath is what a sword is stripped from.; BDB, s.v. תַּעַר
contestedTwo separate words. The razor and the sheath are listed as distinct entries, the shared spelling being treated as coincidence rather than as one semantic range.; HALOT, s.v. תַּעַר; DCH, s.v. תַּעַר
Sources
BDB, s.v. תַּעַרlexicon
HALOT, s.v. תַּעַרlexicon
DCH, s.v. תַּעַרlexicon
Jacob Milgrom, Numbers, JPS Torah Commentary (1990)commentary
Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1-24, NICOT (1997)commentary