אוֹצָר

From the study of Proverbs 10:2

Range of meaning

A store or treasury: a place where valuables or supplies are kept (royal and temple treasuries, grain and wine stores, armouries), and the stored goods themselves. It is used figuratively of God's "storehouses" of snow, wind and rain (Job 38:22; Ps 135:7).

Against the English

"Treasures" (KJV, WEB, YLT, BSB) can suggest a pirate's chest of gold. In an agricultural economy, an 'otsar often held grain, oil and wine, which were wealth you could eat. NASB's "gains" and NLT's "wealth" generalise it.

Used elsewhere in the period

Used for the temple and royal treasuries (1 Kgs 7:51; 2 Kgs 20:13), storehouses of produce (1 Chr 27:27–28; Neh 13:12), and in Micah 6:10 in the same phrase "treasures of wickedness", gathered through short measures and dishonest scales. Compare Prov 21:6: "treasures gained by a lying tongue are a fleeting vapour, a snare of death."

From the study of Isaiah 45:3

Range of meaning

ʾOtsar means both a storehouse (a treasury, an armoury, a granary, a temple treasury) and what is stored in it: silver, gold, grain, weapons. It can also be used in poetry for God's "storehouses" of snow, wind and rain (Job 38:22; Jeremiah 10:13). Choshekh means darkness: literal absence of light, and by extension obscurity, hiddenness, distress or death. When the two words are joined as "treasuries of darkness," the second word describes the first: treasure kept in darkness, out of sight.

Against the English

"Treasures of darkness" (KJV, BSB, WEB, ESV) is literal and accurate, but in English it sounds poetic and even mysterious, which invites a figurative reading. NIV's "hidden treasures" and NLT's "treasures hidden in the darkness" bring out the plain sense: concealed wealth.

How it drifted

The phrase has had a long life in devotional writing as a picture of good things God gives in "dark seasons" of suffering. That use is a later application, not the sense of the Hebrew.

Used elsewhere in the period

ʾOtsar is common for royal treasuries: Hezekiah shows the Babylonian envoys "all that was found in his storehouses" (Isaiah 39:2, 4), and Babylon carries off "the treasures of the house of YHWH and the treasures of the king's house" (2 Kings 24:13). Ancient Near Eastern palaces and temples kept wealth in inner, windowless, locked rooms. Greek writers record the proverbial treasure of Croesus of Lydia, whose capital Sardis fell to Cyrus around 547/546 BC (Herodotus, Histories 1). Xenophon's Cyropaedia (book 7) tells of Croesus's treasures passing to Cyrus. Xenophon's account is partly legendary, but it shows how the conquest was remembered.

From the study of Isaiah 33:6

Range of meaning

A storehouse, treasury or stored supply: royal and temple treasuries (1 Kgs 7:51; 14:26), storehouses of grain and oil, and poetically God's storehouses of wind, snow and hail (Job 38:22; Jer 10:13).

Against the English

Versions say 'treasure'. To a modern ear that means a precious, cherished thing. The Hebrew points more to a treasury, the reserves a state relies on.

How it drifted

English 'treasure' has become mainly emotional ('my treasure'), losing the institutional sense of a kingdom's treasury.

Used elsewhere in the period

2 Kings 18:15-16: Hezekiah paid Sennacherib with 'all the silver found in the house of the LORD and in the treasuries (ʾôṣərôt) of the king's house' and stripped the gold from the temple doors. Isaiah 39:2-6: Hezekiah shows Babylon's envoys 'everything in his treasuries', and Isaiah foretells it will all be carried away.