Hebrew word · H3934

לָעֵג

bela'agei

mocking

The root l-'-g mainly means 'to mock, deride, jeer' (2 Kings 19:21; Psalm 2:4; Psalm 22:7; Proverbs 30:17).

Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

1) mocking

1a) mocker (noun cstr)

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 28:11

Range of meaning

The root l-'-g mainly means 'to mock, deride, jeer' (2 Kings 19:21; Psalm 2:4; Psalm 22:7; Proverbs 30:17). Some uses describe speech that is unintelligible: Isaiah 33:19 speaks of 'a people of obscure speech… of a stammering (nil'ag) tongue that you cannot understand.' Speech you cannot understand sounds like mockery and babble at the same time, and the two senses run together in the word.

Against the English

KJV, WEB and NASB have 'stammering'. BSB has 'mocking' and YLT 'scorned'. NIV and ESV avoid both and use 'foreign' or 'strange' lips. Each choice keeps one half of the Hebrew. 'Stammering' can suggest a speech impediment or broken speech; 'mocking' can lose the point that the speech cannot be understood.

How it drifted

In English 'stammering' means a stutter, and in some church traditions it became linked with ecstatic speech. The Hebrew picture is foreign speech that sounds like jeering gibberish to Judean ears.

Used elsewhere in the period

Isaiah 33:19 is the closest parallel and applies the same picture to the Assyrians. The root's mocking sense is common in Psalms and Proverbs. The Septuagint renders the phrase 'contempt (phaulismos) of lips', taking the mocking sense. BDB and HALOT list both mocking and stammering or barbarous speech for this word group.

Where it appears

Psalms · 1

  1. Psalm 35:16 לַעֲגֵ֣י mockers of

    Like godless jesters at a feast, they gnashed their teeth at me.

Isaiah · 1

  1. Isaiah 28:11 בְּלַעֲגֵ֣י by stammerings of

    Indeed, with mocking lips and foreign tongues, He will speak to this people

    Here: 'By (the) mockings of…'. The word holds two ideas at once: speech that sounds like jeering, and speech that sounds like garbled stammering to anyone who does not know the language. It turns the scoffers' own mockery (v. 14 calls them 'men of scoffing') back on them.

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