Aramaic word · H2827
חֲשַׁל
vechashel
to shatter
To shatter or crush. In Syriac and later Jewish Aramaic, to forge or hammer metal. In Hebrew, the passive form means 'worn down, exhausted' (Deut 25:18).
A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?
Appears once in the Aramaic of the Old Testament.
What it means
(P'al) to subdue, crush, shatter
Aramaic of cha.shal (חָשַׁל "be feeble" H2826)
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
To shatter or crush. In Syriac and later Jewish Aramaic, to forge or hammer metal. In Hebrew, the passive form means 'worn down, exhausted' (Deut 25:18).
- Against the English
KJV and WEB have 'subdueth / subdues', and YLT has 'making feeble'. 'Subdue' sounds political. The Aramaic picture is physical, a smith's hammer beating something flat.
- How it drifted
'Subdue' comes into English through Theodotion's Greek damazei ('tames, subdues') and the Vulgate's domat ('tames'). YLT's 'making feeble' comes from the Hebrew sense in Deut 25:18.
- Used elsewhere in the period
It occurs only here in the Bible. Lexicons (BDB, HALOT) give 'crush, shatter' with the cognate 'forge, hammer'.
Where it appears
Daniel · 1
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Daniel 2:40 וְחָשֵׁל֙ and [is] crushing
Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron; for iron shatters and crushes all things, and like iron that crushes all things, it will shatter and crush all the others.
Here: This word occurs only here in biblical Aramaic. Related languages use it for a smith hammering metal, so the picture is of beating something flat or to pieces, not of quietly 'subduing' it.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.