Hebrew word · H1488
גֵּז
gez
fleece
Something sheared or cut: the fleece taken from a sheep (Deut 18:4; Job 31:20), or grass that has been cut, a mown meadow (Ps 72:6). It comes from the root gazaz, "to shear, cut."
Appears 4 times in 4 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
1) a shearing, mowing
1a) shearing, that sheared off
1b) a mowing, mown grass
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
Something sheared or cut: the fleece taken from a sheep (Deut 18:4; Job 31:20), or grass that has been cut, a mown meadow (Ps 72:6). It comes from the root gazaz, "to shear, cut."
- Against the English
KJV/ESV/NASB/YLT "mowing(s)." BSB/WEB "harvest." NIV/NLT turn it into "the king's share" being harvested. "Harvest" suggests grain. "Share" spells out a tax arrangement that the Hebrew only implies.
- How it drifted
"Harvest" is not exactly wrong, but readers hear grain harvest, when the word is about cutting green growth, most likely for fodder.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Psalm 72:6 ("like rain on the mown grass," ʿal-gez) is the closest parallel. Israelite kings kept large numbers of horses and chariots. 1 Kings 4:28 has Solomon's district officers supplying barley and straw for the royal horses, and 1 Kings 18:5 has Ahab searching the land for grass to keep his horses alive. The phrase "the king's mowings" is not found as a technical term anywhere else.
- Range of meaning
Formed from the verb gāzaz, 'to shear, cut'. It means (1) a shearing: the fleece or wool shorn from sheep (Deut 18:4; Job 31:20), and (2) a mowing: grass or hay that has been cut (Amos 7:1, 'the king's mowings').
- Against the English
KJV, WEB, YLT, ESV and NASB have 'mown grass'. NIV has 'a mown field' and BSB 'freshly cut grass'. Ancient Greek and Latin have 'fleece'. All the English renderings follow sense (2), and that fits the farming picture of the parallel line, which ends in 'land'.
- How it drifted
The English has not drifted. The overlay came through translation instead: the Septuagint's 'fleece' (pokos) and the Vulgate's 'vellus' became the basis of a long Christian reading that linked this verse to Gideon's fleece (Judges 6) and to the Incarnation.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Amos 7:1 shows the farming sense. Locusts come 'after the king's mowings', when the 'latter growth' was starting to come up. This suggests the crown took the first cutting of hay, and the second growth depended on late rain. Deut 18:4 and Job 31:20 use the word for wool. Gideon's fleece in Judges 6:37–40 uses a related but different word (gizzâ).
Where it appears
Deuteronomy · 1
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Deuteronomy 18:4 גֵּ֥ז [the] fleece of
You are to give them the firstfruits of your grain, new wine, and oil, and the first wool sheared from your flock.
Job · 1
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Job 31:20 וּמִגֵּ֥ז and from [the] fleece of
if his heart has not blessed me for warming him with the fleece of my sheep,
Psalms · 1
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Psalm 72:6 גֵּ֑ז mown grass
May he be like rain that falls on freshly cut grass, like spring showers that water the earth.
Here: It comes from the verb 'to shear or cut'. Here it means a field that has just been mown. Its first growth has been cut, and it needs rain to grow again. It can also mean a sheep's shorn fleece, which is how the Greek and Latin took it.
Amos · 1
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Amos 7:1 גִּזֵּ֥י [the] mowings of
This is what the Lord GOD showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts just after the king’s harvest, as the late spring crop was coming up.
Here: "The mowings of." The word for cutting off fleece is used here for cutting grass or fodder, as in Psalm 72:6 ("rain on the mown grass"). It is a cutting of green growth, not a grain harvest.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.