Hebrew word · H6090

עֹ֫צֶב

'otzev

pain

The root ʿṣb has two lines of meaning. (1) To hurt, grieve, toil painfully. Related nouns are ʿeṣeḇ ("painful toil," Gen 3:16; Prov 10:22) and ʿiṣṣāḇôn ("pain," Gen 3:16–17). (2) To shape or form. From that comes ʿāṣāḇ, "idol," the usual plural ʿăṣabbîm (Ps 115:4; 135:15; Hos 4:17).

Appears 4 times in 4 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

pain, sorrow

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 Psalm 139:24

Range of meaning

The root ʿṣb has two lines of meaning. (1) To hurt, grieve, toil painfully. Related nouns are ʿeṣeḇ ("painful toil," Gen 3:16; Prov 10:22) and ʿiṣṣāḇôn ("pain," Gen 3:16–17). (2) To shape or form. From that comes ʿāṣāḇ, "idol," the usual plural ʿăṣabbîm (Ps 115:4; 135:15; Hos 4:17). The noun ʿōṣeḇ itself is rare. It means "pain/sorrow" in 1 Chr 4:9 (Jabez, "I bore him in pain") and Isa 14:3 ("rest from your pain"). It means "idol" in Isa 48:5 ("my idol did them"). BDB and HALOT list these as two separate words with the same spelling. Ps 139:24 is the disputed case.

Against the English

KJV, WEB and NRSV say "wicked." NIV and BSB say "offensive." ESV and YLT say "grievous." NASB says "hurtful." "Grievous" and "hurtful" stay closest to the pain sense. "Wicked" and "offensive" are general moral words that cover over both specific meanings, the pain and the idol.

How it drifted

The general sense comes from the Greek Septuagint (LXX), whose "way of lawlessness" (hodos anomias) passed into the Latin Vulgate's via iniquitatis and then into the KJV's "wicked way." Later English versions often kept the familiar phrase.

Used elsewhere in the period

Hebrew Bible: 1 Chr 4:9 and Isa 14:3 (pain); Isa 48:5 (idol). Pain words from this root are tied to the curse of hard labour and childbirth in Gen 3:16–17. The idol words, ʿăṣabbîm, are common in prophetic attacks on idols and in Ps 115 and 135. The LXX renders the word here as anomia, "lawlessness," which is an interpretation and not a gloss for either sense.

Where it appears

1 Chronicles · 1

  1. 1 Chronicles 4:9 בְּעֹֽצֶב׃ in pain

    Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.”

Psalms · 1

  1. Psalm 139:24 עֹ֥צֶב an idol

    See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the way everlasting.

    Here: The hardest word in the verse. It can mean "pain, sorrow" (1 Chr 4:9; Isa 14:3) or "idol," something shaped by hand (Isa 48:5). So the phrase is either "a way of pain" (a course of life that causes or ends in grief) or "an idol-way" (disloyalty to God). The supplied data gives both: the lemma is glossed "pain" and the word in context "an idol."

Isaiah · 2

  1. Isaiah 14:3 מֵֽעָצְבְּךָ֖ from pain your

    On the day that the LORD gives you rest from your pain and torment, and from the hard labor into which you were forced,

  2. Isaiah 48:5 עָצְבִּ֣י idol my

    Therefore I declared it to you long ago; I announced it before it came to pass, so that you could not claim, ‘My idol has done this; my carved image and molten god has ordained it.’

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