Hebrew word · H1262

בָּרָה

ve'evreh

to eat

From bārâ, 'to eat,' a rare verb. It appears in 2 Samuel 3:35, where the people urge David to eat food while he mourns Abner, and in 2 Samuel 12:17, where the elders try to make David eat while his child is dying. The form here means 'food,' or, read as an infinitive, 'for eating.'

Appears 6 times in 6 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

1) to eat, consume

1a) (Qal) to eat

1b) (Piel) for eating, devouring

1c) (Hiphil) to cause to eat

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

From the study of Lamentations 4:10

Range of meaning

From bārâ, 'to eat,' a rare verb. It appears in 2 Samuel 3:35, where the people urge David to eat food while he mourns Abner, and in 2 Samuel 12:17, where the elders try to make David eat while his child is dying. The related noun biryâ (2 Samuel 13:5, 7, 10) is the food Tamar prepares for the supposedly sick Amnon. The form here means 'food,' or, read as an infinitive, 'for eating.'

Against the English

English versions give 'food' (BSB, ESV, NASB, WEB, YLT) or 'meat' (KJV). None can easily show the word's link to food brought to the grieving and the sick.

How it drifted

KJV 'meat' meant food of any kind in 1611 (see drift list).

Used elsewhere in the period

The word group is rare and is concentrated in 2 Samuel, in scenes of mourning and sickness. HALOT and BDB list bārôt here as 'food.' The Septuagint has eis brōsin, 'for food,' and the Vulgate cibus, 'food.'

Where it appears

1 Samuel · 1

  1. 1 Samuel 17:8 בְּרוּ־ commission

    And Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and array yourselves for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servants of Saul? Choose one of your men and have him come down against me.

2 Samuel · 4

  1. 2 Samuel 3:35 לְהַבְר֧וֹת to make to eat

    Then all the people came and urged David to eat something while it was still day, but David took an oath, saying, “May God punish me, and ever so severely, if I taste bread or anything else before the sun sets!”

  2. 2 Samuel 13:5 וְתַבְרֵ֣נִי and let her cause to eat me

    Jonadab told him, “Lie down on your bed and pretend you are ill. When your father comes to see you, say to him, ‘Please let my sister Tamar come and give me something to eat. Let her prepare it in my sight so I may watch her and eat it from her hand.’”

  3. 2 Samuel 13:6 וְאֶבְרֶ֖ה so I may eat

    So Amnon lay down and feigned illness. When the king came to see him, Amnon said, “Please let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight, so that I may eat from her hand.”

  4. 2 Samuel 13:10 וְאֶבְרֶ֖ה so I may eat

    Then Amnon said to Tamar, “Bring the food into the bedroom, so that I may eat it from your hand.” Tamar took the cakes she had made and went to her brother Amnon’s bedroom.

Lamentations · 1

  1. Lamentations 4:10 לְבָרוֹת֙ for eating

    The hands of compassionate women have cooked their own children, who became their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

    Here: A rare word for food from the verb bārâ, 'to eat.' Elsewhere this word group is used for food given to someone who is grieving or sick (2 Samuel 3:35; 12:17; 13:5–10). If that association is heard here, it adds a grim irony: the meal of survival is made of the children being grieved.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.