Aramaic word · H4804
מְרַט
meritu
to pluck
To pluck out or pull out, used of hair, beard or feathers. By extension it can mean to make bare or to rub smooth. This is its only use in Biblical Aramaic.
A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?
Appears once in the Aramaic of the Old Testament. ·
What it means
1) to pluck, pull off
1a) (P'il) to be plucked off
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
To pluck out or pull out, used of hair, beard or feathers. By extension it can mean to make bare or to rub smooth. This is its only use in Biblical Aramaic. The Hebrew cognate means pulling out one's hair in grief (Ezra 9:3), pulling out the hair of others as punishment or humiliation (Neh 13:25; Isa 50:6), shoulders rubbed bare (Ezek 29:18), and a sword polished (Ezek 21:9–11).
- Against the English
KJV and WEB say "plucked", which keeps the feather-and-hair picture. The BSB's "torn off" is vivid but loses the specific image of stripping feathers and slightly suggests the whole wing being ripped away.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The Hebrew uses above show that the word belongs to the vocabulary of humiliation: plucking someone's hair or beard was a public shaming.
Where it appears
Daniel · 1
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Daniel 7:4 מְּרִ֨יטוּ they were plucked off
The first beast was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man and given the mind of a man.
Here: "Were plucked out." The verb is passive, and the word is used for pulling out hair or feathers. Someone strips the wings feather by feather. The beast does not shed them, and no one names who does it.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.