Hebrew word · H1172
בַּעֲלָה
ba'alat
mistress
Feminine of baʿal: owner, possessor, mistress. In a phrase with a following noun it marks a woman who has or controls something: baʿălat hab-bayit 'mistress of the house' (1 Kgs 17:17), baʿălat ʾôb 'owner of a ghost-spirit', i.e. a medium (1 Sam 28:7).
Appears 4 times in 3 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
1) mistress, female owner
2) sorceress, necromancer (noun of relationship)
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
Feminine of baʿal: owner, possessor, mistress. In a phrase with a following noun it marks a woman who has or controls something: baʿălat hab-bayit 'mistress of the house' (1 Kgs 17:17), baʿălat ʾôb 'owner of a ghost-spirit', i.e. a medium (1 Sam 28:7).
- Against the English
'Mistress' (KJV, BSB, WEB) can mislead modern readers, since it now usually means a man's lover. Here it means 'mistress' in the older sense of a woman in command, the female master of a craft. YLT's 'lady of witchcrafts' avoids the confusion.
- How it drifted
In modern English 'mistress' has narrowed toward 'extramarital lover'. Next to 'harlot', readers can easily take the phrase as a second sexual title, when it actually describes her expertise and power over magic.
- Used elsewhere in the period
1 Samuel 28:7 is the closest parallel in construction and subject matter (a woman who controls occult power). Compare also Nahum 1:2, baʿal ḥēmâ, 'master of wrath', used of YHWH, which shows the same idiom meaning 'possessor of a quality'.
Similar words
Where it appears
1 Samuel · 2
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1 Samuel 28:7 בַּעֲלַת־ בַּֽעֲלַת־ [the] owner of, an owner of
Then Saul said to his servants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, so I can go and consult her.” “There is a medium at Endor,” his servants replied.
1 Kings · 1
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1 Kings 17:17 בַּעֲלַ֣ת [the] mistress of
Later, the son of the woman who owned the house became ill, and his sickness grew worse and worse, until no breath remained in him.
Nahum · 1
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Nahum 3:4 בַּעֲלַ֣ת a mistress of
because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the seductive mistress of sorcery, who betrays nations by her prostitution and clans by her witchcraft.
Here: The feminine of baʿal, 'owner, master'. 'Owner of sorceries' means a woman who has and commands magic: a master practitioner. It is the same construction used for the medium at Endor, 'owner of a ghost' (1 Sam 28:7).
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.