Hebrew word · H5001
נָאַם
vaiyin'amu
to prophesy
"To utter an oracle, to pronounce the oracle formula." It is a verb made from the noun nəʾum. This is its only occurrence as a finite verb in the Hebrew Bible.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
1) to prophesy, utter a prophecy, speak as prophet, say
1a) (Qal) to utter a prophecy, speak as prophet
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 23:31
- Range of meaning
"To utter an oracle, to pronounce the oracle formula." It is a verb made from the noun nəʾum. This is its only occurrence as a finite verb in the Hebrew Bible.
- Against the English
KJV and WEB have "say, 'He saith'"; BSB "proclaim, 'The LORD declares it'"; YLT "affirm — an affirmation." Only YLT keeps the repeated root. The others make the sense clear but lose the mockery of "they oracle an oracle."
- Used elsewhere in the period
Unique to this verse. Commentators (Holladay, McKane, Lundbom) generally take it as Jeremiah's own coinage, or at least a deliberately unusual use, made to ridicule the prophets' habit. The Septuagint apparently could not make sense of it and read a different verb ("slumber").
Where it appears
Jeremiah · 1
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Jeremiah 23:31 וַֽיִּנְאֲמ֖וּ and they have uttered
“Yes,” declares the LORD, “I am against the prophets who wag their own tongues and proclaim, ‘The LORD declares it.’”
Here: "And they oracle": a verb made from the noun nəʾum, found as a finite verb only here in the Hebrew Bible. It mocks them: they produce the oracle formula as an act of their own, they "do" oracles.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.