Aramaic word · H5784
עוּר
ke'ur
chaff
ʿûr is chaff, the light husk separated in winnowing. It occurs only here in the Bible (Syriac and later Aramaic have the same word). ʾiddar is a threshing floor. qayiṭ is summer, the dry harvest season.
A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?
Appears once in the Aramaic of the Old Testament. ·
What it means
chaff
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
ʿûr is chaff, the light husk separated in winnowing. It occurs only here in the Bible (Syriac and later Aramaic have the same word). ʾiddar is a threshing floor. qayiṭ is summer, the dry harvest season.
- Against the English
English renderings are accurate. BSB's singular 'threshing floor' smooths over the Aramaic plural; KJV 'summer threshingfloors' keeps it.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Chaff driven by wind is a standard Israelite image of the wicked or of hostile nations vanishing under God's judgment: Ps 1:4; 35:5; Isa 17:13; 29:5; 41:15–16 ('you will thresh the mountains and crush them… the wind will carry them away'); Hos 13:3. John the Baptist uses it in Matt 3:12.
Where it appears
Daniel · 1
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Daniel 2:35 כְּע֣וּר like chaff
Then the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were shattered and became like chaff on the threshing floor in summer. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that had struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
Here: 'Like chaff': the light husks separated from grain at winnowing. The word occurs only here in the Bible. It stands for what is weightless and worthless and gets thrown away.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.