Hebrew word · H3531
כְּבָרָה
bakevarah
sieve
A sieve. This is the only occurrence in the Bible; the meaning comes from later Hebrew (the Mishnah uses kəbārāh for a grain sieve) and from related words in other Semitic languages, such as Arabic kirbāl, a coarse sieve.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
sieve, sifter
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
A sieve. This is the only occurrence in the Bible; the meaning comes from later Hebrew (the Mishnah uses kəbārāh for a grain sieve) and from related words in other Semitic languages, such as Arabic kirbāl, a coarse sieve.
- Against the English
All major versions say 'sieve'. None of them tells the reader which kind, and that is the key interpretive question.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Grain cleaning in ancient Palestine, as also observed in the traditional farming studied by Gustaf Dalman, went threshing, then winnowing, then sieving. A coarse sieve lets the grain fall through and holds back stones, clods and bits of straw. A finer sieve holds the grain and lets dust and weed seed through. Sirach 27:4 (2nd century BC) uses the first kind: 'when a sieve is shaken, the refuse remains.' Isaiah 30:28 uses a different word (nāpâ) for a 'sieve of destruction'.
Where it appears
Amos · 1
-
Amos 9:9 בַּכְּבָרָ֔ה in <the> sieve
“For surely I will give the command, and I will shake the house of Israel among all the nations as grain is sifted in a sieve; but not a pebble will reach the ground.
Here: 'In the sieve.' This is the only place the word appears in the Bible. Later Hebrew uses it for a sieve used in cleaning grain, and the definite article treats it as a familiar threshing-floor tool.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.