גֹּ֫לֶם

From the study of Psalm 139:16

Range of meaning

Used only here in the Hebrew Bible. It comes from the root g-l-m, "to roll up, wrap together". The verb appears in 2 Kings 2:8, where Elijah rolls up his cloak. The noun means something rolled or wrapped up and not yet given its final shape: an embryo, a lump that has not been worked.

Against the English

BSB and NIV: "unformed body". ESV and NASB: "unformed substance". KJV: "my substance, yet being unperfect". YLT: "unformed substance". NLT: "You saw me before I was born", which drops the image altogether. Every one of these needs several English words for one Hebrew word. "Embryo" is the closest single word, but it sounds clinical in a way the Hebrew does not.

How it drifted

The English renderings are basically accurate. The word itself took on new meanings in later Hebrew, and in the end it became the name of the clay creature in Jewish folklore (the "golem"). That later meaning has nothing to do with the psalm.

Used elsewhere in the period

In rabbinic Hebrew, golem means anything raw or unfinished. The Mishnah (Kelim 12:6) uses it for metal vessels that are not yet finished. Avot 5:7 contrasts the golem, an uncultivated or unformed person, with the sage. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 38b) says that in the second hour of his creation Adam was a golem, a shapeless mass. Genesis Rabbah 24:2 reads this verse as Adam speaking about his own unformed body. The Greek translation renders it to akatergaston mou, "my unworked [thing]".