Hebrew word · H2345

חוּם

chum

darkened

A dark colour of animals: dusky, blackish, dark brown. In the Bible it occurs only in Gen 30:32, 33, 35, 40. Lexicons (BDB, HALOT) give 'dark-coloured, black, brownish'.

Appears 4 times in 4 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

dark colour, darkened, dark brown or black

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 Genesis 30:35

Range of meaning

A dark colour of animals: dusky, blackish, dark brown. In the Bible it occurs only in Gen 30:32, 33, 35, 40. Lexicons (BDB, HALOT) give 'dark-coloured, black, brownish'. Post-biblical Hebrew and Aramaic use it for dark brown or black, and it is often compared with an Arabic root used of blackness or darkness.

Against the English

KJV and YLT say 'brown', WEB 'black', BSB 'dark-colored', and others 'black'. The disagreement reflects real uncertainty about the exact shade. 'Dark' is the safest rendering.

How it drifted

KJV's 'brown' was a fair choice in 1611, when 'brown' covered dusky and dark shades generally. Today it can call up a light tan or chocolate colour, which is narrower than the Hebrew.

Used elsewhere in the period

The Greek Septuagint renders it with phaios, 'dusky, grey-dark'. The word appears nowhere else in biblical Hebrew, so its meaning rests on this story, the translations and later Hebrew.

Where it appears

Genesis · 4

  1. Genesis 30:32 חוּם֙ dark

    Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb, and every spotted or speckled goat. These will be my wages.

  2. Genesis 30:33 וְחוּם֙ and dark

    So my honesty will testify for me when you come to check on my wages in the future. If I have any goats that are not speckled or spotted, or any lambs that are not dark-colored, they will be considered stolen.”

  3. Genesis 30:35 ח֖וּם dark [one]

    That very day Laban removed all the streaked or spotted male goats and every speckled or spotted female goat—every one that had any white on it—and every dark-colored lamb, and he placed them under the care of his sons.

    Here: A dark colour, somewhere between brown and black, found in the Bible only in this story (Gen 30:32, 33, 35, 40). For sheep, which were normally white, a dark fleece was the odd one out.

  4. Genesis 30:40 ח֖וּם dark [one]

    Jacob set apart the young, but made the rest face the streaked dark-colored sheep in Laban’s flocks. Then he set his own stock apart and did not put them with Laban’s animals.

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