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from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the Lord your God will
come, and all the holy ones [
KJV
, “saints”] with him” (Zech. 14:5,
RSV
). The seraphim
proclaimed to each other the holiness of God: “And one cried unto another, and said,
“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:3).
In the Septuagint the word
(“holy”) stands for the Hebrew
%
!
B. Verb.
%
(
$
, 6942), or
%
(
$
, 6942), “to be holy; to sanctify.” This verb,
which occurs 175 times, can mean “to be holy” (Exod. 29:37; Lev. 6:18) or “to sanctify”:
“Hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the Lord God of
your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place” (2 Chron. 29:5).
C. Nouns.
%
(
$
, 6944), “holiness; holy thing; sanctuary.” This noun occurs 469 times
with the meanings: “holiness” (Exod. 15:11); “holy thing” (Num. 4:15); and “sanctuary”
(Exod. 36:4).
Another noun,
%
, means “temple-prostitute” or “sodomite”: “There shall be no
whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel” (Deut. 23:17). The
noun is found 11 times.
TO HONOR
A. Verbs.
(
$
, 3513), “to honor.” This verb occurs about 114 times and in all periods
of biblical Hebrew. Its cognates appear in the same languages as those of the noun
!
One occurrence of
is in Deut. 5:16: “Honor thy father and thy mother, as
the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.…”
(
$
, 1921), “to honor, prefer, exalt oneself, behave arrogantly.” This verb,
which appears 8 times in biblical Hebrew, has cognates only in Aramaic although some
scholars suggest cognates in Egyptian and Syriac. The word means “to honor” or “to
prefer” in Exod. 23:3: “Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause.” In Prov.
25:6 |hadarmeans “to exalt oneself” or “to behave arrogantly.”
B. Nouns.
(
$
, 3519), “honor; glory; great quantity; multitude; wealth; reputation
[majesty]; splendor.” Cognates of this word appear in Ugaritic, Phoenician, Arabic,
Ethiopic, and Akkadian. It appears about 200 times in biblical Hebrew and in all periods.
refers to the great physical weight or “quantity” of a thing. In Nah. 2:9 one
should read: “For there is no limit to the treasure—a great quantity of every kind of
desirable object.” Isa. 22:24 likens Eliakim to a peg firmly anchored in a wall upon which
is hung “all the [weighty things] of his father’s house.” This meaning is required in Hos.
9:11, where
represents a great crowd of people or “multitude”: “As for Ephraim,
their [multitude] shall fly away.…” The word does not mean simply “heavy,” but a heavy
or imposing quantity of things.
often refers to both “wealth” and significant and positive “reputation” (in a
concrete sense). Laban’s sons complained that “Jacob hath taken away all that was our
father’s; and of that which was our father’s hath he gotten all this [wealth]” (Gen. 31:1—