Hebrew word · H3759

כַּרְמֶל

karmel

plantation

Garden-land, orchard, plantation: land planted with vines and fruit trees and cared for. It is probably related to kerem, 'vineyard'. It is also a proper name: Mount Carmel on the coast, and a town in Judah (1 Sam 25).

Appears 17 times in 15 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

1) plantation, garden-land, orchard, fruit orchard

2) fruit, garden-growth (meton)

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 Isaiah 29:17

Range of meaning

Garden-land, orchard, plantation: land planted with vines and fruit trees and cared for. It is probably related to kerem, 'vineyard'. It is also a proper name: Mount Carmel on the coast, and a town in Judah (1 Sam 25). Lev 2:14 and 23:14 use a homonym for fresh grain ('green ears'), which BDB and HALOT list separately.

Against the English

KJV/ESV/WEB 'fruitful field' and NIV/NASB 'fertile field' suggest open cropland. BSB 'orchard' is closer: karmel is planted land, often with trees. That matters here, because the verse sets planted trees against wild trees.

How it drifted

In older English, 'field' could mean any cultivated land. Modern readers picture a field of wheat or corn, so they lose the tree-against-tree contrast.

Used elsewhere in the period

Isa 10:18 has 'the glory of his forest and his karmel' (Assyria's splendour). Isa 16:10 has joy taken from the karmel, alongside vineyards. Isa 32:15 has 'the wilderness becomes a karmel, and the karmel is reckoned as a forest', almost the same wording as here. Jer 2:7 has 'I brought you into a karmel-land.' In Isa 29:17 and 32:15 the Septuagint (LXX) and the Vulgate both treat it as the name Mount Carmel ('Chermel', 'Charmel').

From the study of Isaiah 32:15

Range of meaning

Garden-land, orchard, plantation, a fertile cultivated tract. It is related to kerem, 'vineyard.' As a proper name it is Mount Carmel on the coast, famous for its greenness (Isa 35:2; Song 7:5), and also a town in Judah (1 Sam 25).

Against the English

KJV/WEB/ESV: 'fruitful field'; NIV/NASB: 'fertile field'; BSB: 'orchard.' Each is part of the picture. The Hebrew points to planted, tree-bearing, well-tended land rather than an open grain field.

Used elsewhere in the period

Isa 10:18; 16:10; 29:17; 37:24; Jer 2:7 ('I brought you into a karmel land'); Jer 4:26 ('the karmel was a wilderness'), which is the reverse of this verse. LXX here (and at 29:17) appears to treat it as the place-name, transliterating it.

From the study of Isaiah 37:24

Range of meaning

As a common noun: a garden-land, orchard, or fertile cultivated land (perhaps from kerem, 'vineyard'). It is also the name of a mountain (Mount Carmel) and of a town in Judah. Here it carries a suffix ('its karmel'), which a proper name would not take, so the common noun is meant.

Against the English

KJV 'the forest of his Carmel' and YLT 'its Carmel' leave the word untranslated, so readers picture Mount Carmel near Haifa. WEB 'fruitful field' and BSB 'densest of its forests' translate the sense.

How it drifted

Older translations transliterated the word instead of translating it. A modern reader naturally takes a capitalised 'Carmel' as the famous mountain.

Used elsewhere in the period

Isaiah 10:18 'the glory of his forest and his garden-land (karmillo)', the same pair in a passage against Assyria. Isaiah 29:17 and 32:15–16 contrast karmel and forest. Jeremiah 2:7 has 'a land of garden-land (eretz ha-karmel)'. Isaiah 16:10 has 'joy is taken from the fruitful field (ha-karmel)'.

Similar words

Where it appears

Leviticus · 2
  1. Leviticus 2:14 כַּרְמֶ֔ל new corn

    If you bring a grain offering of firstfruits to the LORD, you shall offer crushed heads of new grain roasted on the fire.

  2. Leviticus 23:14 וְכַרְמֶ֜ל and new corn

    You must not eat any bread or roasted or new grain until the very day you have brought this offering to your God. This is to be a permanent statute for the generations to come, wherever you live.

2 Kings · 2
  1. 2 Kings 4:42 וְכַרְמֶ֖ל and new corn

    Now a man from Baal-shalishah came to the man of God with a sack of twenty loaves of barley bread from the first ripe grain. “Give it to the people to eat,” said Elisha.

    Here: Fresh, just-ripened ears of grain, eaten roasted or crushed. The same word appears in Leviticus 23:14, which forbids eating new grain until the firstfruits are offered.

  2. 2 Kings 19:23 כַּרְמִלּֽוֹ׃ plantation its

    Through your servants you have taunted the Lord, and you have said: “With my many chariots I have ascended to the heights of the mountains, to the remote peaks of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the finest of its cypresses. I have reached its farthest outposts, the densest of its forests.

2 Chronicles · 1
  1. 2 Chronicles 26:10 וּבַכַּרְמֶ֔ל and in the orchards

    Since he had much livestock in the foothills and in the plain, he built towers in the desert and dug many cisterns. And since he was a lover of the soil, he had farmers and vinedressers in the hill country and in the fertile fields.

Isaiah · 8
  1. Isaiah 10:18 וְכַרְמִלּ֔וֹ and orchard his

    The splendor of its forests and orchards, both soul and body, it will completely destroy, as a sickness consumes a man.

    Here: 'And his garden-land': the cultivated, fruitful land, as opposed to wild forest. Forest and orchard together stand for everything that flourished in Assyria, wild and tended alike.

  2. Isaiah 16:10 הַכַּרְמֶ֔ל the orchard

    Joy and gladness are removed from the orchard; no one sings or shouts in the vineyards. No one tramples the grapes in the winepresses; I have put an end to the cheering.

  3. Isaiah 29:17 לַכַּרְמֶ֑ל וְהַכַּרְמֶ֖ל into <the> orchard, and the orchard

    In a very short time, will not Lebanon become an orchard, and the orchard seem like a forest?

    Here: 'Into the orchard-land': planted, tended land with vines and fruit trees, the opposite of wild forest. The same word is also the name of Mount Carmel, so a hearer may also have caught that echo.

  4. Isaiah 32:15 לַכַּרְמֶ֔ל וְהַכַּרְמֶ֖ל <into> <the> orchard, and the orchard

    until the Spirit is poured out upon us from on high. Then the desert will be an orchard, and the orchard will seem like a forest.

    Here: 'Into garden-land': planted, tended, fruit-bearing land such as vineyards and orchards. Mount Carmel was named for exactly this kind of lushness, so a hearer may also have caught the name of the famously green mountain.

  5. Isaiah 32:16 בַּכַּרְמֶ֥ל in the orchard

    Then justice will inhabit the wilderness, and righteousness will dwell in the fertile field.

  6. Isaiah 37:24 כַּרְמִלּֽוֹ׃ orchard its

    Through your servants you have taunted the Lord, and you have said: “With my many chariots I have ascended to the heights of the mountains, to the remote peaks of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the finest of its cypresses. I have reached its farthest heights, the densest of its forests.

    Here: Here a common noun, 'fertile garden-land' or 'orchard', not Mount Carmel. 'The forest of its garden-land' means Lebanon's lushest, richest woodland.

Jeremiah · 3
  1. Jeremiah 2:7 הַכַּרְמֶ֔ל the orchard

    I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and bounty, but you came and defiled My land and made My inheritance detestable.

    Here: 'The Carmel', meaning farmland planted with vineyards and orchards, the opposite of wilderness. The name of Mount Carmel, famous for its lush growth, comes from the same word.

  2. Jeremiah 4:26 הַכַּרְמֶ֖ל the garden-land

    I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert. All its cities were torn down before the LORD, before His fierce anger.

  3. Jeremiah 48:33 מִכַּרְמֶ֖ל from [the] garden-land

    Joy and gladness are removed from the orchard and from the fields of Moab. I have stopped the flow of wine from the presses; no one treads them with shouts of joy; their shouts are not for joy.

Micah · 1
  1. Micah 7:14 כַּרְמֶ֑ל a garden-land

    Shepherd with Your staff Your people, the flock of Your inheritance. They live alone in a woodland, surrounded by pastures. Let them graze in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old.

    Here: "Garden-land" or "Carmel": fertile, cultivated country, probably with a play on Mount Carmel, the famously lush ridge. Wild thicket inside a fruitful land is the picture of the people's plight.

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