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The motif that God “gave birth” to Israel is picked up by Jeremiah. In Jer. 31:20, God
states that His heart yearns for Ephraim His son (
). Ezekiel develops this motif in
the form of an allegory, giving the names Aholah and Aholibah to Samaria and Jerusalem
respectively, to those whom He “bore” (Ezek. 23:4, 37).
The Septuagint renders
with words connoting “giving birth” (
) and
“begetting” (
).
B. Noun.
(
$ &
, 3206), “boy; child.” The noun
differs from
(“son”), which
more exactly specifies the parental relationship. For example, the child that Naomi nursed
was a “boy” (Ruth 4:16).
'
which appears 89 times in the Bible, is rendered by several different Greek
words. Other nouns built on the verb
include
(“girl”; 3 times),
(“son”
or “slave”; 3 times),
(“newborn”; 5 times),
(
(“child”; once),
(“bringing
forth” or “birth”; 4 times),
(“offspring, kindred, parentage”; 22 times), and
(“descendants, contemporaries, generation, genealogy, record of the family”; 39
times).
BEAST
(
, 929), “beast; animal; domesticated animal; cattle; riding beast;
wild beast.” A cognate of this word appears in Arabic. Biblical Hebrew uses
about 185 times and in all periods of history.
In Exod. 9:25, this word clearly embraces even the larger “animals,” all the animals
in Egypt: “And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field,
both man and beast.…” This meaning is especially clear in Gen. 6:7: “I will destroy man
whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping
thing, and the fowls of the air.…” In 1 Kings 4:33, this word seems to exclude birds, fish,
and reptiles: “He [Solomon] spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and
of fishes.”
The word
can be used of all the domesticated beasts or animals other than
man: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle,
and creeping thing, and [wild] beast of the earth after his kind …” (Gen. 1:24, first
occurrence). Psalm 8:7 uses
in synonymous parallelism with “oxen” and
“sheep,” as though it includes both: “All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field.”
The word can, however, be used of cattle only: “Shall not their cattle and their substance
and every beast of theirs [
NASB
, “animals”] be ours?” (Gen. 34:23).
In a rare use of the word, it signifies a “riding animal,” such as a horse or mule: “And
I arose in the night, I and some few men with me; neither told I any man what my God
had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem: neither was there any beast with me, save the
beast that I rode upon” (Neh. 2:12).