Hebrew word · H5913
עָכַס
te'akasnah
to tinkle
A verb made from the noun ʿeḵes, 'anklet, bangle' (Isa 3:18; compare Prov 7:22, where the noun is obscure). In the intensive stem it means roughly 'to rattle/jingle anklets'.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
(Piel) to shake bangles, rattle, tinkle
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 verb made from the noun ʿeḵes, 'anklet, bangle' (Isa 3:18; compare Prov 7:22, where the noun is obscure). In the intensive stem it means roughly 'to rattle/jingle anklets'.
- Against the English
KJV 'making a tinkling with their feet' keeps the sound but hides the ornament. BSB/WEB 'jingling the bracelets/ornaments on their ankles' make the anklets explicit, which is right, since the verb is literally built from the word 'anklet'.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The noun heads the inventory of finery in 3:18–23: 'the anklets, the headbands, the crescents…'. That list is the longest catalogue of women's ornaments in the Hebrew Bible, and every item is to be removed.
Where it appears
Isaiah · 1
-
Isaiah 3:16 תְּעַכַּֽסְנָה׃ they tinkle with anklets
The LORD also says: “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty—walking with heads held high and wanton eyes, prancing and skipping as they go, jingling the bracelets on their ankles—
Here: A verb made from the noun ʿeḵes, 'anklet' (the same anklets are listed in 3:18). 'They anklet-jingle': each step is announced by the sound of metal ornaments.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.