Hebrew word · H2770

חֶרְמֵשׁ

chermesh

sickle

Sickle, the reaping blade. In Iron Age Israel it was usually iron, set in a wooden or bone handle. The word appears only here and in Deuteronomy 16:9.

Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

sickle

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 Deuteronomy 23:25

Range of meaning

Sickle, the reaping blade. In Iron Age Israel it was usually iron, set in a wooden or bone handle. The word appears only here and in Deuteronomy 16:9.

Against the English

All translations say "sickle", which is accurate. The point is what the sickle stands for: a reaper uses it to gather grain in quantity.

Used elsewhere in the period

Deuteronomy 16:9 uses the start of the sickle's work on the standing grain to mark the beginning of the seven-week count to the Feast of Weeks. The sickle stands for the owner's harvest. (A different word, maggāl, is used for sickle in Jeremiah 50:16 and Joel 3:13.)

Where it appears

Deuteronomy · 2

  1. Deuteronomy 16:9 חֶרְמֵשׁ֙ a sickle

    You are to count off seven weeks from the time you first put the sickle to the standing grain.

  2. Deuteronomy 23:25 וְחֶרְמֵשׁ֙ and a sickle

    When you enter your neighbor’s grainfield, you may pluck the heads of grain with your hand, but you must not put a sickle to your neighbor’s grain.

    Here: "But a sickle": the curved reaping blade, the basic harvesting tool. Placing it first in the clause stresses the contrast between hand and sickle. The word appears elsewhere only in Deuteronomy 16:9, where putting the sickle to the standing grain marks the start of harvest.

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