Hebrew word · H1640
גָּרַף
gerafam
to sweep away
To sweep away or wash away. It appears only here in the Hebrew Bible, so its meaning comes from related languages and later Hebrew: in Mishnaic Hebrew (the Hebrew of the early rabbis) gāraf means "sweep, scrape out", and a megrefah is a shovel or rake.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
(Qal) to sweep away, sweep
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
To sweep away or wash away. It appears only here in the Hebrew Bible, so its meaning comes from related languages and later Hebrew: in Mishnaic Hebrew (the Hebrew of the early rabbis) gāraf means "sweep, scrape out", and a megrefah is a shovel or rake. Arabic jarafa means "to sweep away" (of a torrent carrying off soil).
- Against the English
English versions agree on "swept them away". This is accurate. The Vulgate expands it to "dragged their corpses".
- Used elsewhere in the period
HALOT and BDB both base the sense on these later Hebrew and Arabic cognates. The Greek versions use exebalen ("cast out") or exesyren ("swept/dragged away").
Where it appears
Judges · 1
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Judges 5:21 גְּרָפָ֔ם it swept away them
The River Kishon swept them away, the ancient river, the River Kishon. March on, O my soul, in strength!
Here: Used only here in the Hebrew Bible. Related words in later Hebrew and Arabic mean to sweep, scrape or wash away. The picture is a flood that sweeps up men, horses and chariots like rubbish in the current. "Them" means Sisera's army.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.