Hebrew word · H5192
נֵ֫טֶל
venetel
weight
A burden or load, something lifted and carried. It occurs only here. Its meaning is secured by the verb nāṭal, 'to lift up, to lay upon' (Isa 40:15; Lam 3:28; 2 Sam 24:12 in the sense of 'impose'), and by the Aramaic cognate nṭl, 'to lift'.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
burden, weight
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 Proverbs 27:3
- Range of meaning
A burden or load, something lifted and carried. It occurs only here. Its meaning is secured by the verb nāṭal, 'to lift up, to lay upon' (Isa 40:15; Lam 3:28; 2 Sam 24:12 in the sense of 'impose'), and by the Aramaic cognate nṭl, 'to lift'.
- Against the English
KJV 'weighty', BSB and WEB 'a burden', LXX 'hard to carry' (dysbastakton). 'Burden' is the closest, because the word means a load someone has to carry, not an abstract quantity of weight.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Hebrew Bible only here. The verbal root appears in Aramaic, including Daniel 4:31 (nəṭlēt, 'I lifted up my eyes'), and in later Hebrew (nāṭal, 'to take, to lift').
Where it appears
Proverbs · 1
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Proverbs 27:3 וְנֵ֣טֶל and [the] weight of
A stone is heavy and sand is a burden, but aggravation from a fool outweighs them both.
Here: 'And the load of'. This word appears only here in the Hebrew Bible. It comes from the verb nāṭal, 'to lift, to lay on someone' (Lam 3:28; Isa 40:15), so it means a weight that has to be lifted and carried. It is not just heaviness but the effort of bearing it.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.