Aramaic word · H2379
חֲזוֹת
vachazoteh
visibility
Sight, visibility, how something appears or how far it can be seen. It occurs only in Daniel 4:11 and 4:20. It comes from ḥăzāh, to see, the root also behind ḥēzû / ḥezev (vision) in Daniel.
A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?
Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Aramaic of the Old Testament. ·
What it means
view, sight, visibility
Aramaic of cha.zon (חָזוֹן "vision" H2377)
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
Sight, visibility, how something appears or how far it can be seen. It occurs only in Daniel 4:11 and 4:20. It comes from ḥăzāh, to see, the root also behind ḥēzû / ḥezev (vision) in Daniel.
- Against the English
KJV and WEB "the sight thereof" and YLT "its vision" keep the noun. BSB "was visible" turns it into an adjective, which is clear but hides the echo of "you saw".
- Used elsewhere in the period
Daniel 4:11 (Aramaic 4:8) has the fuller "to the end of all the earth". Here Daniel says only "to all the earth". The Old Greek and Theodotion render the idea with words for sight or appearance.
Where it appears
Daniel · 2
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Daniel 4:11 וַחֲזוֹתֵ֖הּ and [the] sight of it
The tree grew large and strong; its top reached the sky, and it was visible to the ends of the earth.
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Daniel 4:20 וַחֲזוֹתֵ֖הּ and [the] sight of it
The tree you saw that grew large and strong, whose top reached the sky and was visible to all the earth,
Here: "And its visibility", meaning how far it could be seen. The word appears only here and in 4:11 and comes from the same root as "you saw". The king saw the tree, and the whole world could see it too.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.