Hebrew word · H4010

מַבְלִיגִית

mavligiti

cheer

The word is built on the root b-l-g, which in its causative form means 'to make bright, to let one's face clear up, to cheer up'. Job uses it this way: 'I will put off my sad face and brighten up' (Job 9:27; compare Job 10:20; Ps 39:13).

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

smiling, cheerfulness, source of cheerfulness or brightening

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 Jeremiah 8:18

Range of meaning

The word is built on the root b-l-g, which in its causative form means 'to make bright, to let one's face clear up, to cheer up'. Job uses it this way: 'I will put off my sad face and brighten up' (Job 9:27; compare Job 10:20; Ps 39:13). A noun built this way would mean 'a source of brightening' or 'cheerfulness, comfort'. BDB and HALOT both give 'cheerfulness' with a question mark, because the word occurs only here.

Against the English

KJV and WEB take it as a wish to comfort oneself 'against sorrow'. YLT keeps the noun: 'my refreshing'. ESV and NRSV turn it into a statement that joy has gone. NIV makes it a title addressed to God: 'You who are my Comforter'. BSB, NASB and NLT drop the 'cheer' idea entirely and read 'beyond healing', following a different split of the letters.

How it drifted

There is no drift in the usual sense. The English versions differ because the Hebrew is genuinely uncertain, not because a word's meaning has changed over time.

Used elsewhere in the period

The word is unique to this verse. The verb from the same root appears in Job 9:27, 10:20; Ps 39:13 [Eng 39:13/14]; Amos 5:9. The Septuagint renders the opening as 'incurable' (ἀνίατα), which suggests its translators saw or understood a phrase like mibbelî gēhâ, 'without healing'. The noun gēhâ, 'healing', occurs in Prov 17:22. The Vulgate has 'my grief is upon grief' (dolor meus super dolorem).

Where it appears

Jeremiah · 1

  1. Jeremiah 8:18 מַבְלִ֥יגִיתִ֖י cheerfulness my

    My sorrow is beyond healing; my heart is faint within me.

    Here: Read as it stands, this is 'my brightening': whatever lets my face clear up and my spirits lift. This is the only place the word occurs, and its form is uncertain. It may be an exclamation ('O my comfort!') or a phrase that means my cheer has turned to grief. Many scholars think the letters originally said 'without healing'.

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