Hebrew word · H6209

עָרַר

ve'orah

to strip

The verb ʿarar means to strip, lay bare, or strip away. Applied to buildings it means razing them down to the ground or foundations. It is related to ʿarah, 'to lay bare, empty out', and to ʿarʿar, a 'destitute, stripped' person or shrub (Jer 17:6).

Appears 4 times in 3 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

1) to strip, make bare, strip oneself

1a) (Qal) to strip, strip oneself

1b) (Poel) to lay bare

1c) (Hithpalpel) to be utterly stripped, be utterly laid bare

1d) (Pilpel) break

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 Jeremiah 51:58

Range of meaning

The verb ʿarar means to strip, lay bare, or strip away. Applied to buildings it means razing them down to the ground or foundations. It is related to ʿarah, 'to lay bare, empty out', and to ʿarʿar, a 'destitute, stripped' person or shrub (Jer 17:6). The doubled syllables ʿar-ʿar intensify the meaning, and when the infinitive absolute comes first it adds emphasis: 'utterly stripped bare' (HALOT, BDB).

Against the English

KJV 'utterly broken' and WEB 'utterly overthrown' keep the intensity but lose the picture of stripping. BSB 'leveled' and ESV/NIV-type 'leveled (to the ground)' keep the end result. YLT 'utterly made bare' is closest to the root.

Used elsewhere in the period

Psalm 137:7 uses the related verb ʿarah, doubled, for what the Edomites shouted when Jerusalem fell to Babylon: 'Strip it, strip it, down to its foundation!' The same kind of sound-play now turns on Babylon itself. In Jeremiah 50–51 Babylon is repeatedly told it will get back what it did to Zion (50:15, 29; 51:24, 35).

From the study of Isaiah 23:13

Range of meaning

To strip, lay bare, expose. Of buildings, to raze to the foundations (Jer 51:58; compare Ps 137:7, 'raze it, raze it!' of Jerusalem, from a related form).

Against the English

Modern versions have 'stripped' or 'razed' (BSB, NIV, ESV, NASB). The KJV's 'raised up the palaces' and YLT's 'lifted up her palaces' apparently derive the word from a different root, ʿur ('rouse, stir up'), and reverse the sense.

How it drifted

Older translators linked the form to ʿur, 'to rouse', which fitted their reading of the verse as a construction story. Modern Hebrew lexicons (BDB, HALOT) place it under ʿarar, 'strip bare'.

Used elsewhere in the period

Jeremiah 51:58 says of Babylon: 'the broad wall of Babylon shall be utterly laid bare' (ʿarʿer titʿarʿar). It is a striking parallel, using the same root of the same city.

Where it appears

Isaiah · 2

  1. Isaiah 23:13 עֹרְרוּ֙ they stripped bare

    Look at the land of the Chaldeans—a people now of no account. The Assyrians destined it for the desert creatures; they set up their siege towers and stripped its palaces. They brought it to ruin.

    Here: 'They laid bare' or 'stripped to the ground': demolishing buildings down to their foundations. Jeremiah 51:58 uses the same root for razing the walls of Babylon. The supplied parsing allows an imperative form ('strip bare!'), but most read it as a past-tense report.

  2. Isaiah 32:11 וְעֹ֔רָה and strip yourself

    Shudder, you ladies of leisure; tremble, you daughters of complacency. Strip yourselves bare and put sackcloth around your waists.

    Here: 'And make yourselves bare.' The word means exposing what is normally covered. It strengthens the previous command into the bareness of mourning, and in the background is the stripping of captives.

Jeremiah · 2

  1. Jeremiah 51:58 עַרְעֵ֣ר תִּתְעַרְעָ֔ר utterly <demolish>, it will be demolished

    This is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Babylon’s thick walls will be leveled, and her high gates consumed by fire. So the labor of the people will be for nothing; the nations will exhaust themselves to fuel the flames.”

    Here: Infinitive absolute, a verb form placed before the main verb to intensify it: 'stripping-bare'. It builds toward total demolition.

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