Aramaic word · H2908
טְוָת
tevat
fasting
'Fasting,' 'hungry,' 'without eating.' It is used here as an adverb describing how he spent the night. The word appears only here in the Bible, but it is related to later Aramaic and Syriac words and to an Arabic root meaning 'to be hungry, go without food.'
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
fasting, fastingly, hungrily
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
'Fasting,' 'hungry,' 'without eating.' It is used here as an adverb describing how he spent the night. The word appears only here in the Bible, but it is related to later Aramaic and Syriac words and to an Arabic root meaning 'to be hungry, go without food.'
- Against the English
All English versions say 'fasting.' That is accurate, but in modern English 'fasting' can suggest a planned spiritual discipline or a diet.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Theodotion has adeipnos, 'without supper,' and the Vulgate has incenatus, 'unsupped.' Both put the stress on skipping the evening meal. In the ancient Near East, refusing food was a standard sign of grief, alarm or pleading (2 Samuel 12:16–23; Jonah 3:7; Esther 4:16).
Where it appears
Daniel · 1
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Daniel 6:18 טְוָ֔ת fasting
Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting. No entertainment was brought before him, and sleep fled from him.
Here: 'Fasting,' or 'hungry, without food.' It describes how he spent the night. He skipped the evening meal, which was a visible sign of distress.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.