tasteless: flat and flavorless food that salt has to rescue, and so anything with nothing in it
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
The starting picture is a plate of food with no taste in it. Job asks it as one of a run of homely questions about appetite: a wild donkey does not bray while it has grass, an ox does not low over good fodder, and nobody swallows flavorless food unless salt is added to it. Something is being set in front of Job that he cannot get down.
From there the word makes one short reach, from food to speech. In Lamentations the city's prophets "saw" for her, and what they saw is called empty and flavorless: there was nothing in it. The line puts this word beside another word for emptiness and falsehood (שָׁוְא), which is the outright charge that a vision is false. This word makes a quieter but no less damning complaint: whatever those prophets served up had no substance in it, and it never named the sin that would have told the city the truth about itself.
What holds the two uses together is an absence. In the bowl it is salt, the one thing that would have made the food worth eating. In the message it is truth, the one thing that would have made the words worth hearing. The same root gives Hebrew a noun for that quality of being unsavory, and so for behavior that is out of order (תִּפְלָה).
Nuances
1afood with no flavor of its own, which needs salt to be edible
TranslatabilityDirect
Job 6:6
1bempty, with nothing in it: said of what a prophet claims to have seen
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
Lam 2:14*
2
whitewash: the thin coat smeared over a wall to make it look finished and sound
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
Ezekiel puts the false prophets on a building site. Someone throws up a flimsy partition wall, and the prophets follow along behind and smear this over it, so the surface looks finished and the wall looks safe. God's answer is weather: a driving downpour, hailstones, a gale that splits the wall open. When it comes down, the coating goes with it, and the prophets are asked where the plastering has gone (טִיחַ).
The second oracle compresses the same picture into one line. The city's prophets have smeared this over things for her, announcing peace God never spoke. The coating is what lets something unsound pass inspection.
What the coating actually was is where translations part company:
one reading takes it as a thin white lime wash, close to the whitewashed tombs and whitewashed wall of the New Testament (κονιάω), which makes the prophets' fault a cosmetic cover-up
the other takes it as a mud daub with no binder mixed into it, the "untempered morter" of older English Bibles, which makes their fault shoddy workmanship on something that was never going to hold
Either way the charge is the same. The covering has no strength of its own, and the moment real weather arrives it is the first thing to go.
the same Hebrew spelling elsewhere describes food with no taste in it, so the word can hint that the coating has no substance of its ownEzk 13:10
the coating is put on a wall that was already flimsy, so the failure belongs to the whole job and not only to the surfaceEzk 13:14
Both
both name a thin surface coating spread over a wall to make it look soundEzk 13:11
Only whitewash
in modern English "whitewash" mostly means a deliberate cover-up of wrongdoing, a courtroom or newsroom sense the Hebrew word does not carry on its own
the word reaches past food to a prophet's message, calling it flavorless because there is nothing in itLam 2:14
Both
both describe food with no flavor, which needs salt before anyone will eat itJob 6:6
Only tasteless
English "tasteless" is now used mostly of bad manners or a crude joke, a sense of poor judgment that is not in view here
“plaster”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“worthless”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How taphel differs from similar Hebrew words
שִׂידburnt lime, the white material that plaster and a prepared writing surface are made from. This word names the coat that gets smeared on rather than the substance it is made of.
This word never says what the coat is made of, and that silence is why translations part company. Where Ezekiel says the builders smear it over their flimsy wall, some versions read a thin white wash and give "whitewash," while older ones read a daub with no binder mixed in and give "untempered morter." The lime word carries no such doubt, because it names the substance rather than the covering.Ezk 13:10Ezk 13:14
Every wall verse here is an accusation. The ones doing the smearing are prophets announcing peace God never spoke, and their coat is what lets an unsound wall pass inspection until the storm takes it down. Lime is never spread on anything in order to deceive.Ezk 13:11Ezk 22:28
The same spelling leaves the building site altogether. Job uses it of food with no flavor in it, the kind nobody swallows unless salt is added, and Lamentations uses it of what the city's prophets saw, a message with nothing in it. The lime word stays a physical material and never becomes a way of saying "empty."Job 6:6Lam 2:14
Both
Both words belong to the plasterer's work: each is spread over built stonework to finish its surface. Israel coats the great stones at Mount Ebal with lime, and Ezekiel's prophets smear their coating over the wall someone has thrown up. Whatever is in the bucket, the point of the covering in each case is the face it leaves on the stone.Deu 27:2Ezk 13:14
Lime is what a fire leaves behind, so this word can name the product of burning with no wall anywhere in view. Isaiah pictures whole peoples reduced to the burnings that make lime, and Amos charges Moab with burning the bones of Edom's king to lime. The other word never names something a fire produces.Isa 33:12Amo 2:1
The coating work this word does is commanded and honest. Israel is told to set up great stones once the Jordan is crossed and coat them with lime, so that the words of the law can stand written on the finished surface. Nothing is being covered up, and nobody is being fooled. The other word's coating is always someone hiding something.Deu 27:2Deu 27:4
This word names a known material, so a reader is never left guessing what it is. It is burnt lime, the white stuff a kiln makes, and every English version renders it "lime" or "plaster" without argument. The other word gives no such information about itself.Amo 2:1Deu 27:2
טִיחַthe plastering itself, the coat of daub already on a wall. Ezekiel sets it beside this word in the same oracle, asking where the plastering has gone once the wall has fallen.
Also describes food with no flavor in it, the kind nobody will swallow until salt is added, which has nothing to do with walls or building.Job 6:6
Serves as a verdict on what a prophet claims to have seen, saying there was nothing in it.Lam 2:14
Names the stuff that gets smeared on, the coating as the workers apply it, and it runs through the whole oracle and returns in a later charge against the city's prophets.Ezk 13:10Ezk 22:28
Carries the charge that the covering has no strength of its own, which is why the storm takes it and the wall with it.Ezk 13:11Ezk 13:15
Both
Both belong to the same building picture in one oracle against the false prophets: a thin covering spread over a flimsy wall, which a driving storm strips off.Ezk 13:12Ezk 13:11
Both name the covering rather than the wall under it, so English versions can render either one "plaster" within a few verses of each other.Ezk 13:12Ezk 13:10
Names the plastering as finished work already on the wall, the coat that has to be accounted for once the wall has come down and the builders are asked where it went.Ezk 13:12
Stays with building work and nothing else: it never describes food, speech, or a message, and it carries no verdict of its own about the quality of the coat.Ezk 13:12
שָׁוְאemptiness or falsehood outright, the usual charge laid against a false vision. Where the two stand side by side, that word says the vision was false and this one says there was nothing in it.
Its plain sense is physical and about food: something with no taste, which nobody can get down until salt is added.Job 6:6
It names the coating a builder smears over a flimsy wall, the plaster that makes shoddy work look sound. When the rain comes, the wall goes down and the coating with it.Ezk 13:10Ezk 13:11Ezk 13:14Ezk 13:15
Both of its pictures are complaints about thinness rather than about a statement being untrue: a meal with no salt in it, and a smooth surface with nothing solid underneath.Job 6:6Ezk 13:11
In the wall scenes it is never the lie itself. The false promise is spoken by someone else ("Peace," where there is no peace) and this word is only the smear laid over the crack.Ezk 13:10Ezk 13:15
Both
Both are used to condemn Israel's prophets, and where they stand side by side they are stacked into one charge: the vision was empty, and there was nothing in it.Lam 2:14
Neither one tells you what the prophets actually said. Each is a verdict on the message rather than a summary of it, which is why one verse can pile them up together with "lies" against the same men.Ezk 22:28
Both are commonly handed to English readers as "false," so the two very different complaints they make can end up looking like one word repeated.Lam 2:14Ezk 22:28
Covers effort that comes to nothing, even honest effort: builders and watchmen working on a house God is not building, piles of medicine that cannot heal, discipline that never took hold.Psa 127:1Jer 46:11Jer 2:30
It is the courtroom and oath word: carrying God's name for nothing, spreading a report that is not so, standing up as a witness who lies.Exo 20:7Exo 23:1Deu 5:20
It labels idols, and the worship aimed at them, as nothing at all: the "worthless" things people guard, incense burned to a nobody, offerings God refuses to take.Psa 31:6Jon 2:8Jer 18:15Isa 1:13
It can be pinned on people and on their speech, marking a whole character as hollow: the "men of falsehood" a righteous person will not sit with, mouths that talk emptiness to a neighbor.Psa 26:4Job 11:11Psa 144:8
תִּפְלָהthe matching noun from the same root, naming unsavoriness, and so conduct or speech that is out of order. It names a fault someone can be charged with, while this word stays at the level of what has no taste or substance in it.
Describes ordinary physical things and how they taste: food nobody can swallow because there is no salt in it. The other word never touches food or flavor.Job 6:6
Names a building material, the flimsy coating smeared over a wall that washes off the moment the rain and hail come. Ezekiel returns to this picture again and again: the prophets slap the coating on, and God tears the wall down.Ezk 13:10Ezk 13:11Ezk 13:14Ezk 13:15Ezk 22:28
Always hangs on some other thing it is describing, whether that is the coating on the wall or the visions Jerusalem's prophets saw, rather than standing on its own as the name of a wrong.Lam 2:14Ezk 13:15
Both
Both are used to condemn prophets who speak in God's name with nothing behind the words. Lamentations calls the visions of Jerusalem's prophets empty and worthless, and Jeremiah uses the matching word for what he saw among the prophets of Samaria.Lam 2:14Jer 23:13
Both are blunt verdicts of worthlessness rather than neutral descriptions, and both surface mostly in accusations about speech, what people claim in God's name or say about God.Ezk 22:28Job 1:22
Names the wrong itself as something that can be laid to a person's account. Job keeps his mouth shut and does not lay it against God, and God does not lay it against the dying who cry out.Job 1:22Job 24:12
Points only to moral and religious fault, never to a physical object: it is what Job refuses to charge God with, and what Jeremiah says he saw in prophets who spoke for Baal and led Israel astray.Job 1:22Jer 23:13
taphel in the other biblical languages
ἄναλοςGreek“unsalty”the Greek word for food that has lost its saltiness, from the saying about salt in the Gospels. It matches the flavorless sense here, and is never used of anything spread on a wall.
In the food picture the dish is at fault and salt is still the cure: Job takes for granted that flavorless food can be made edible if salt is added to it.Job 6:6
Most of its uses have nothing to do with taste at all: it names the thin coating smeared over a wall, the plaster that makes a weak structure look sound until wind and rain bring it down.Ezk 13:10Ezk 13:11Ezk 13:14Ezk 13:15Ezk 22:28
Describes a prophet's message as having no substance, the empty visions Jerusalem's prophets offered her instead of exposing her guilt.Lam 2:14
Both
Both name the collapse of flavor, food or salt that no longer does the one thing taste is for, and both are the natural word to reach for when something meant to be savory has gone flat.Job 6:6Mrk 9:50
Neither is really a complaint about a meal: Job uses tasteless food to judge the counsel his friends have been feeding him, and Jesus uses salt gone flat to judge a life that has stopped making any difference.Job 6:6Mrk 9:50
The fault sits in the salt itself, not in the dish: Jesus asks what can be done once the salt has gone flat, so the thing that was supposed to fix the food is the thing that has failed.Mrk 9:50
Its one use is about people rather than cooking: the flat salt pictures followers of Jesus who have lost what set them apart, and the saying ends by telling them to keep peace with one another.Mrk 9:50
κονιάωGreek“to whitewash”the Greek verb for coating something with white lime, used of whitewashed tombs and of a whitewashed wall in the New Testament. It names the act of coating, while this word names the coating itself.
Names the coating itself, the plaster smeared over a wall, so the word is the material rather than the work of putting it on.Ezk 13:10Ezk 22:28
The picture runs on to a collapse: the rain and hail strip the coating away and the wall it hid falls, with the coaters buried under it.Ezk 13:11Ezk 13:14Ezk 13:15
Applied to prophecy itself: the visions the prophets announce are called worthless coating, empty talk dressed up as a word from God.Lam 2:14
Carries a second, unrelated meaning that has nothing to do with coating a wall: food with no taste, the sort nobody would eat unsalted.Job 6:6
Both
Both come from the same building trade, the lime plaster spread over a wall to make it look sound, and both use a wall as the target of the image.Ezk 13:10Act 23:3
Both carry the same charge: a bright, respectable surface put over something rotten or unsound, so what people see is exactly the opposite of what is there.Ezk 13:10Mat 23:27
Both are aimed at religious leaders who look trustworthy, the prophets who tell the people what they want to hear and the teachers who keep an admired public face.Ezk 22:28Mat 23:27
The Greek word is the standard way of saying in Greek what the Hebrew word names, so an English Bible reaches for "whitewash" or "whitewashed" in both places.Ezk 13:11Act 23:3
Names the act of coating something with white lime, so the word describes what someone has done to a surface rather than the stuff spread on it.Mat 23:27Act 23:3
Its picture is a burial place: a tomb kept bright and clean on the outside while the bones and decay stay inside.Mat 23:27
Used as a direct insult to a person's face, aimed at one man presiding over a hearing.Act 23:3
What scholars say about taphel
The lexica divide the seven occurrences between two entries: an adjective "tasteless, insipid" (Job 6:6, and figuratively of prophetic visions in Lamentations 2:14), and a substantive used in Ezekiel for a coating of plaster or whitewash (Ezekiel 13:10, 11, 14, 15; 22:28). HALOT and DCH list them as separate lexemes, whereas root-organized treatment such as BDB keeps the Ezekiel usage under the same head and explains the coating as one that is unseasoned, that is, lacking a binding agent. That analysis lies behind the Vulgate's rendering "mud without straw" at Ezekiel 13:10 and the King James Version's "untempered morter." Modern commentary on Ezekiel 13 (Zimmerli, Greenberg, Block) generally renders the term "plaster" or "whitewash" and reads the oracle as an indictment of prophets who make an unsound wall presentable, with the storm imagery of 13:11 to 13:13 supplying the reversal; the same accusation reappears in compressed form at 22:28 alongside the standard vocabulary of false vision and lying divination. The cognate noun תִּפְלָה (H8604), "unsavoriness, impropriety," supports tastelessness as the semantic base of the adjective.
Where scholars disagree about taphel
Whether the seven occurrences belong to one word or two: an adjective meaning "tasteless" plus a separate noun for a wall coating, or a single word whose Ezekiel usage means an unmixed and therefore worthless daub.
majorityTwo distinct words: an adjective "tasteless, insipid" in Job and Lamentations, and a noun naming a coat of plaster or whitewash in Ezekiel.; HALOT, s.v. תָּפֵל; DCH, s.v. תָּפֵל; Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1 (Hermeneia), on Ezekiel 13:10-16
minorityOne word: the Ezekiel occurrences are the same word used of a daub that lacks a binding agent, so the wall's covering is as useless as unsalted food. This is the reading behind the Vulgate's "mud without straw" and the King James Version's "untempered morter."; BDB, s.v. תָּפֵל
Sources
HALOT, s.v. תָּפֵלlexicon
BDB, s.v. תָּפֵלlexicon
DCH, s.v. תָּפֵלlexicon
Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1 (Hermeneia), on Ezekiel 13:10-16commentary
Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20 (Anchor Bible), on Ezekiel 13:10-16commentary
Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1-24 (NICOT), on Ezekiel 13:10-16commentary