Hebrew word · H5615
סְפֹרָה
seforot
number
Occurs only here, so its meaning must be inferred from the root and context. Most lexicons give 'number, sum'. Ancient translators linked it to writing or learning instead.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
number
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
Occurs only here, so its meaning must be inferred from the root and context. Most lexicons give 'number, sum'. Ancient translators linked it to writing or learning instead.
- Against the English
English versions divide: 'numbers' (KJV, YLT), 'full measure' (BSB, WEB), 'their number is past my knowledge' (ESV), 'how to relate them all' (NIV), 'not skilled with words' (NLT). The last two treat it as a limit of the speaker's skill, not of the deeds' quantity.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The LXX has 'letters/learning' (or in some copies 'business'), and the Latin Vulgate has litteraturam, 'literacy, letters'. Medieval commentators built a whole reading on this, the unlearned man who praises God without book-learning. The root's double sense of counting and writing allows that reading, but the Hebrew context of recounting deeds that cannot be counted favours 'number'.
Where it appears
Psalms · 1
-
Psalm 71:15 סְפֹרֽוֹת׃ numbers
My mouth will declare Your righteousness and Your salvation all day long, though I cannot know their full measure.
Here: 'Numbers, sums.' The word occurs only here in the Bible. It comes from the same root as 'recount' at the start of the verse, so the line plays on the root: I will keep counting them out, yet I do not know their count.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.