Hebrew word · H5005
נַאֲפוּף
vena'afufeiha
adultery
A form found only here, from nā'af, 'to commit adultery'. Adultery in Israel meant sex with a married woman or betrothed girl, a violation of her husband's exclusive claim (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22). The doubled consonants suggest repeated or intense action, or possibly concrete 'adultery tokens'.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
adultery
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
A form found only here, from nā'af, 'to commit adultery'. Adultery in Israel meant sex with a married woman or betrothed girl, a violation of her husband's exclusive claim (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22). The doubled consonants suggest repeated or intense action, or possibly concrete 'adultery tokens'.
- Against the English
KJV/WEB/ESV 'adulteries'. BSB gives 'unfaithfulness' here and 'adultery' for the first noun. NIV and NLT turn the pair into visible things such as looks, makeup and clothing.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The verb nā'af is used figuratively for Israel's worship of other gods in Jer 3:8–9 and Ezek 16:32, 38; 23:37, 45, and literally in Hos 4:2, 13–14. No other Hebrew text uses this noun form.
Where it appears
Hosea · 1
-
Hosea 2:2 וְנַאֲפוּפֶ֖יהָ and adulteries her
Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not My wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adultery from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
Here: 'And her adulteries'. This rare form appears only here. It comes from na'af, the ordinary verb for breaking a marriage. It may mean the tokens or marks of adultery rather than the acts themselves.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.