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a banquet of him [Leviathan]? Shall they part him among [give each a part] the
merchants?” (Job 41:6). In Job 34:37, the word means “in the midst of,” in the sense of
“one among a group”: “For he addeth rebellion unto his sin, he clappeth his hands among
us.…”
The area separating two particular objects is indicated in several ways. First, by
repeating
before each object: “And God divided the light from the darkness”
[literally, “between the light and between the darkness”] (Gen. 1:4); that is, He put an
interval or space between them. In other places (more rarely), this concept is represented
by putting
before one object and the preposition before the second object: “Let
there be a firmament in the midst [ ] of the waters, and let it divide the waters from [ ]
the waters” (Gen. 1:6). In still other instances, this idea is represented by placing
before the first object plus the phrase meaning “with reference to” before the second (Joel
2:17), or by
before the first object and the phrase “with reference to the interval of”
before the second (Isa. 59:2).
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is used in the sense of “distinguishing between” in many passages: “Let there be
lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from [ ] the night” (Gen. 1:14).
Sometimes
signifies a metaphorical relationship. For example, “This is the token
of the covenant which I make between [ ] me and you and every living creature …”
(Gen. 9:12). The covenant is a contractual relationship. Similarly, the Bible speaks of an
oath (Gen. 26:28) and of goodwill (Prov. 14:9) filling the metaphorical “space” between
two parties.
This word is used to signify an “interval of days,” or “a period of time”: “Now that
which was prepared for me was … once in ten days [literally, “at ten-day intervals”] store
of all sorts of wine …” (Neh. 5:18).
In the dual form,
represents “the space between two armies”: “And there went out
a champion [literally, “a man between the two armies”] out of the camp of the Philistines,
named Goliath …” (1 Sam. 17:4). In ancient warfare, a battle or even an entire war could
be decided by a contest between two champions.
TO BIND
(
, 631), “to bind, imprison, tie, gird, to harness.” This word is a common
Semitic term, found in both ancient Akkadian and Ugaritic, as well as throughout the
history of the Hebrew language. The word occurs around 70 times in its verbal forms in
the Hebrew Old Testament. The first use of
in the Hebrew text is in Gen. 39:20,
which tells how Joseph was “imprisoned” after being wrongfully accused by Potiphar’s
wife.
The common word for “tying up” for security and safety,
is often used to
indicate the tying up of horses and donkeys (2 Kings 7:10). Similarly, oxen are
“harnessed” to carts (1 Sam. 6:7, 10). Frequently,
is used to describe the “binding”
of prisoners with cords and various fetters (Gen. 42:24; Judg. 15:10, 12-13). Samson