Hebrew word · H5652

עֲבָד

va'avadeihem

work

'Their works, deeds, doings.' Taken from Aramaic ʿăvād ('work, deed'), as in Daniel 4:34 [4:37 English], 'all his works are truth'. In Hebrew it appears only here.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament.

What it means

work

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 Ecclesiastes 9:1

Range of meaning

'Their works, deeds, doings.' Taken from Aramaic ʿăvād ('work, deed'), as in Daniel 4:34 [4:37 English], 'all his works are truth'. In Hebrew it appears only here.

Against the English

Every major English version renders it 'their deeds' or 'their works', which is accurate. What English cannot show is that the word is borrowed from Aramaic.

Used elsewhere in the period

Daniel 4:34 (Aramaic). Aramaic loanwords and late forms like this are among the evidence most scholars use to date Ecclesiastes to the Persian or early Hellenistic period (roughly 5th–3rd century BC).

Similar words

Where it appears

Ecclesiastes · 1

  1. Ecclesiastes 9:1 וַעֲבָדֵיהֶ֖ם and deeds their

    So I took all this to heart and concluded that the righteous and the wise, as well as their deeds, are in God’s hands. Man does not know what lies ahead, whether love or hate.

    Here: 'And their deeds': what they do and how it turns out. The word is borrowed from Aramaic (the normal Hebrew is maʿăśeh) and appears only here in the Bible. Even their actions, not only their persons, are out of their own control.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.