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can mean to “allow someone to do something,” as in 2 Chron. 32:31, where
“God left [Hezekiah], to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart”; God “let”
Hezekiah do whatever he wanted. “Letting an activity go” may also signify its
discontinuance: “I pray you, let us leave off this usury” (Neh. 5:10).
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is sometimes used in a judicial technical sense of “being free,” which is the
opposite of being in bondage. The Lord will vindicate His people, and will have
compassion on His servants “when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none
shut up, or left” (Deut. 32:36).
FRIEND
(
, 7453), “friend; companion; fellow.” This noun appears about 187 times in
the Bible. The word refers to a “friend” in 2 Sam. 13:3: “But Amnon had a friend, whose
name was Jonadab.” The word may be used of a husband (Jer. 3:20) or a lover (Song of
Sol. 5:16).
In another sense,
may be used of any person with whom one has reciprocal
relations: “And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots …” (Jonah
1:7). The word also appears in such phrases as “one another,” found in Gen. 11:3: “And
they said one to another …” (cf. Gen. 31:49).
Other related nouns that appear less frequently are
, which means “friend” about
5 times (e.g., 1 Kings 4:5); and
, which means “companion or attendant” (Judg.
11:38; Ps. 45:14).
FRUIT
A. Noun.
(
#
, 6529), “fruit; reward; price; earnings; product; result.” Cognates of this
word appear in Ugaritic and Egyptian.
8
appears about 120 times in biblical Hebrew
and in every period.
First,
represents the mature edible product of a plant, which is its “fruit.” This
broad meaning is evident in Deut. 7:13: “He will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the
fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine and the
flocks of thy sheep.…” In its first biblical appearance, the word is used to signify both
“trees” and the “fruit” of trees: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb
yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind …” (Gen. 1:11). In Ps.
107:34, the word is used as a modifier of land. The resulting term is “a fruitful land” in
the sense of a “land of fruit.”
Second,
means “offspring,” or the “fruit of a womb.” In Deut. 7:13, the word
represents “human offspring,” but it can also be used of animal “offspring” (Gen. 1:22).
Third, the “product” or “result” of an action is, in poetry, sometimes called its “fruit”:
“A man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that
judgeth in the earth” (Ps. 58:11). Isa. 27:9 speaks of “the full price of the pardoning of his
sin” (
KJV
, “all the fruit to take away his sin”), i.e., the result of God’s purifying acts
toward Israel. The wise woman buys and plants a field with her earnings or the “fruit of
her hands” (Prov. 31:16). In other words, she is to be rewarded by receiving the
“product” of her hands (Prov. 31:31). The righteous will be rewarded “according to his