Basic HTML Version
Another meaning of the word is “famine,” or the lack of food in an entire
geographical area: “And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into
Egypt …” (Gen. 12:10—the first occurrence). God used a “famine” as a means of
judgment (Jer. 5:12), of warning (1 Kings 17:1), of correction (2 Sam. 21:1), or of
punishment (Jer. 14:12), and the “famine” was always under divine control, being
planned and used by Him.
was also used to picture the “lack of God’s word”
(Amos 8:11; cf. Deut. 8:3).
B. Verb.
(
, 7456), “to be hungry, suffer famine.” This verb, which appears in the
Old Testament 14 times, has cognates in Ugaritic ( ), Arabic, and Ethiopic. The first
biblical occurrence is in Gen. 41:55: “And when all the land of Egypt was famished.…”
C. Adjective.
(
, 7456,
, 7457), “hungry.” This word appears as an adjective 19
times. The first biblical occurrence is in 1 Sam. 2:5: “… And they that were hungry
ceased: …”
FAR
%
(
, 7368), “far.” A common Semitic term, this word was known in ancient
Akkadian and Ugaritic long before the Hebrew of the Old Testament.
%
is a
common word in modern Hebrew as well. The word is used about 55 times in the
Hebrew Old Testament and it occurs for the first time in Gen. 21:16.
%
is used to express “distance” of various types. It may be “distance” from a
place (Deut. 12:21), as when Job felt that his friends kept themselves “aloof” from him
(Job 30:10). Sometimes the word expresses “absence” altogether: “… The comforter that
should relieve my soul is far from me …” (Lam. 1:16). “To be distant” was also “to
abstain”: “Keep thee far from a false matter” (Exod. 23:7).
Sometimes
%
implies the idea of “exile”: “… The Lord [removes] men far
away” (Isa. 6:12). “To make the ends of the land distant” is “to extend the boundaries”:
“… thou hast increased the [borders of the land]” (Isa. 26:15).
FATHER
( , 1), “father; grandfather; forefather; ancestor.” Cognates of this word occur
in Ugaritic, Akkadian, Phoenician, and other Semitic languages. Biblical Hebrew attests
it about 1,120 times and in all periods.
Basically,
relates to the familial relationship represented by the word “father.”
This is the word’s significance in its first biblical appearance: “Therefore shall a man
leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife …” (Gen. 2:24). In poetical
passages, the word is sometimes paralleled to
, “mother”: “I have said to corruption,
Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister” (Job 17:14). The
word is also used in conjunction with “mother” to represent one’s parents (Lev. 19:3).
But unlike the word
is never used of animals.
*
also means “grandfather” and/or “greatgrandfather,” as in Gen. 28:13: “I am the
Lord God of Abraham thy [grand]father, and the God of Isaac.…” Such progenitors on