Hebrew word · H2661
חֲפֹר
lachpor
mole
A burrowing animal, from the verb ḥāpar, 'to dig'. Most likely a mole-rat or some other digging rodent. Strong's and older lexicons give 'mole'. HALOT and modern commentators note that true moles (the European kind) do not live in Israel.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
mole (as digger)
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
A burrowing animal, from the verb ḥāpar, 'to dig'. Most likely a mole-rat or some other digging rodent. Strong's and older lexicons give 'mole'. HALOT and modern commentators note that true moles (the European kind) do not live in Israel. The blind mole-rat (Spalax / Nannospalax) is common there and is the likely animal.
- Against the English
'Moles' in all the major English versions is a fair stand-in. The Hebrew picture is more vivid: 'the diggers of holes', creatures that live blind in the ground.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The word appears only here in the Hebrew Bible. Its formation, a repeated syllable ḥăpar-par-, is typical of Hebrew animal names. The Vulgate has talpae, 'moles'. The Septuagint seems not to have recognised the word.
Where it appears
Isaiah · 1
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Isaiah 2:20 לַחְפֹּ֥ר to [the] digging of
In that day men will cast away to the moles and bats their idols of silver and gold—the idols they made to worship.
Here: As printed this is 'to dig'. Together with the next word it names a burrowing animal, 'the hole-diggers'. Many read the two words as one, ḥăparpārôt, 'moles' or 'mole-rats'.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.