Hebrew word · H2758

חָרִישׁ

charish

plowing

Plowing, or the plowing season. The verb ḥarash means to plow or engrave.

Appears 3 times in 3 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. · Updated October 31, 2026

What it means

ploughing, ploughing time

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

Range of meaning: Plowing, or the plowing season. The verb ḥarash means to plow or engrave.
Against the English: Most versions say 'plowing time' or 'plowing season'. The KJV's 'earing time' means the same thing, but in older English: 'to ear' meant to plow. Modern readers usually misread it.
How it drifted: 'Ear' (plow), from Old English erian, died out of ordinary English. Readers now link 'earing' with ears of grain or with hearing.
Used elsewhere in the period: Gen 45:6 ('neither plowing nor harvest', the same pair standing for the whole farming cycle); 1 Sam 8:12 (the king will make men 'plow his plowing and reap his harvest'). The Gezer Calendar, a 10th-century BCE Hebrew inscription, sets out the farm year from ingathering through sowing to the barley and wheat harvests.

Genesis · 1

Genesis 45:6 חָרִ֖ישׁ [will be] plowing

For the famine has covered the land these two years, and there will be five more years without plowing or harvesting.

Exodus · 1

Exodus 34:21 בֶּחָרִ֥ישׁ at <the> plowing time

Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in the seasons of plowing and harvesting, you must rest.

Here: 'In plowing time': the autumn and early-winter weeks after the first rains, when the ground had to be broken quickly so seed could go in. It comes first in its clause, which gives it weight: even then.

1 Samuel · 1

1 Samuel 8:12 חֲרִישׁוֹ֙ plowing his

He will appoint some for himself as commanders of thousands and of fifties, and others to plow his ground, to reap his harvest, and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.

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