Hebrew word · H4788

מָרוֹד

merudim

wandering

Homelessness or restless wandering; the plural here means 'wanderers, homeless people.' It is usually linked to the root rwd, 'to roam' or 'be restless.'

Appears 3 times in 3 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

restlessness, straying, wanderer, refugee

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 58:7

Range of meaning

Homelessness or restless wandering; the plural here means 'wanderers, homeless people.' It is usually linked to the root rwd, 'to roam' or 'be restless.'

Against the English

KJV/WEB 'cast out' suggests people who were expelled. YLT 'mourning' follows another sense of the root (restless lament, Ps 55:2). BSB, ESV and NASB 'homeless' and NIV 'wanderer' match the word's other uses best.

How it drifted

The KJV's 'cast out' can sound to modern readers like people who were excommunicated or socially banished. The Hebrew focus is simply on having no settled home.

Used elsewhere in the period

Lam 1:7 ('the days of her affliction and her wandering') and Lam 3:19 ('my affliction and my wandering') use it with the same word for 'affliction' as here, which suggests a fixed pairing. The Septuagint has astegous, 'roofless'; the Vulgate has vagos, 'wanderers.'

From the study of Lamentations 1:7

Range of meaning

Restless wandering, homelessness, being without a settled place. BDB connects it with a root meaning to roam. It occurs only three times: here, Lamentations 3:19 and Isaiah 58:7.

Against the English

BSB, NIV and ESV have 'wandering'; NASB has 'homelessness'; KJV and WEB have 'miseries'; YLT has 'mournings'. 'Miseries' and 'mournings' lose the concrete picture of having nowhere to live. 'Wandering' can sound aimless or even leisurely, so 'homelessness' is closest to the force of the word.

How it drifted

The word is rare, so ancient and older translators had to work out its sense from context, and several chose general words for distress. The Latin Vulgate has a word meaning 'transgression', probably connecting it with a similar Hebrew root meaning 'to rebel'.

Used elsewhere in the period

Isaiah 58:7 uses the related form for the people God wants taken in: 'bring the homeless poor into your house' (the same pairing of poor and homeless). Lamentations 3:19 repeats the pair: 'remember my affliction and my homelessness'. The Greek Septuagint here has a word meaning 'being thrust away'.

Where it appears

Isaiah · 1

  1. Isaiah 58:7 מְרוּדִ֖ים homeless people

    Isn’t it to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your home, to clothe the naked when you see him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

    Here: People driven from place to place with no settled home. In Lamentations 1:7 and 3:19 the same word describes Jerusalem's 'homelessness' after its fall. The pair means 'the poor who have nowhere to live.'

Lamentations · 2

  1. Lamentations 1:7 וּמְרוּדֶ֔יהָ and homelessness<es> her

    In the days of her affliction and wandering Jerusalem remembers all the treasures that were hers in days of old. When her people fell into enemy hands she received no help. Her enemies looked upon her, laughing at her downfall.

    Here: 'And her homelessness', plural in form, which suggests repeated or total rootlessness. The word is striking when applied to a city, which by nature stays put. The same pair of words returns at 3:19.

  2. Lamentations 3:19 וּמְרוּדִ֖י and homelessness my

    Remember my affliction and wandering, the wormwood and the gall.

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