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“Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel” (Amos 4:12). This verb infrequently may represent
an “accidental meeting,” so it is sometimes translated “befall” (Gen. 42:4).
END
A. Nouns.
(
!
, 657), “end; not; nothing; only.” The 42 occurrences of this word appear
in every period of biblical literature. It has a cognate in Ugaritic. Basically, the noun
indicates that a thing “comes to an end” and “is no more.”
Some scholars suggest that this word is related to the Akkadian
$
(Gk.
$
),
the chasm of fresh water at the edge of the earth (the earth was viewed as a flat surface
with four corners and surrounded by fresh water). But this relationship is highly unlikely,
since none of the biblical uses refers to an area beyond the edge of the earth. The idea of
the “far reaches” of a thing is seen in passages such as Prov. 30:4: “Who hath gathered
the wind in his fists? Who hath bound the waters in a garment? Who hath established all
the ends [boundaries] of the earth?” (cf. Ps. 72:8). In other contexts,
means the
“territory” of the nations other than Israel: “… With them he shall push the people
together to the ends of the earth …” (Deut. 33:17). More often, this word represents the
peoples who live outside the territory of Israel: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee the
heathen for thine inheritance, and the [very ends] of the earth for thy possession” (Ps.
2:8). In Ps. 22:27, the phrase, “the ends of the world,” is synonymously parallel to “all
the [families] of the nations.” Therefore, “the ends of the earth” in such contexts
represents all the peoples of the earth besides Israel.
,
is used to express “non-existence” primarily in poetry, where it appears chiefly
as a synonym of
(“none, nothing”). In one instance,
is used expressing the
“non-existence” of a person or thing and is translated “not” or “no”: “Is there not yet any
of the house of Saul, that I may show the kindness of God unto him?” (2 Sam. 9:3). In
Isa. 45:6, the word means “none” or “no one”: “That they may know from the rising of
the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me” (cf. v. 9).
In a few passages,
used as a particle of negation means “at an end” or
“nothing”: “And all her princes shall be nothing,” or “unimportant” and “not exalted” to
kingship (Isa. 34:12). The force of this word in Isa. 41:12 is on the “non-existence” of
those so described: “… They that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of
nought.”
This word can also mean “nothing” in the sense of “powerlessness” and
“worthlessness”: “All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less
than nothing, and [meaningless]” (Isa. 40:17).
In Num. 22:35,
means “nothing other than” or “only”: “Go with the men: but
only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou shall speak” (cf. Num. 23:13). In
such passages,
(with the Hebrew particle ) qualifies the preceding phrase. In 2
Sam. 12:14, a special nuance of the word is represented by the English “howbeit.”
In Isa. 52:4,
preceded by the preposition (“by; because of”) means “without
cause”: “… And the Assyrian oppressed them without cause.”