Aramaic word · H3346
יְקֵדָא
likedat
burning
yᵉqēdāʾ means 'a burning, a blaze', from the root yqd, 'to burn'. ʾeššāʾ is the ordinary Aramaic word for 'fire'. 'Burning of fire' means total burning, being burned up.
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
a burning
Aramaic of ye.qod (יְקוֹד "burning" H3350)
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
yᵉqēdāʾ means 'a burning, a blaze', from the root yqd, 'to burn'. ʾeššāʾ is the ordinary Aramaic word for 'fire'. 'Burning of fire' means total burning, being burned up.
- Against the English
KJV 'burning flame', NIV/BSB 'blazing fire', WEB/ESV 'to be burned with fire'. All are fine. The risk is that readers automatically picture 'hell' here.
- How it drifted
Later texts, chiefly Revelation 19:20 and 20:10, turn this image into a 'lake of fire' where the beast is thrown alive and tormented. That later scene is often read back into Daniel.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The same root is used for the 'burning fiery furnace' (attûn nûrāʾ yāqidtāʾ) in Daniel 3:6, 11, 15, 17, 20–26. In Israel, burning a corpse was an extreme disgrace reserved for the worst offenders (Josh 7:25; Lev 20:14; 21:9). Amos 2:1 condemns Moab because it 'burned to lime the bones of the king of Edom'. Isaiah 66:24 pictures the corpses of rebels under an unquenchable fire. 1 Enoch 90:24–27 has the guilty cast into a fiery abyss. 4 Ezra 12:3, a Jewish text from about 100 CE that reworks Daniel's fourth beast, ends with 'the whole body of the eagle was burned'.
Where it appears
Daniel · 1
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Daniel 7:11 לִיקֵדַ֥ת to [the] burning of
Then I kept watching because of the arrogant words the horn was speaking. As I continued to watch, the beast was slain, and its body was destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire.
Here: 'To the burning of': the beast is handed over to be consumed. The root is the one behind the 'burning fiery furnace' of Daniel 3:6 and following.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.