Hebrew word · H6683

צוּלָה

latzulah

deep

"Deep, ocean depth." It comes from a root meaning to sink or be deep, and is related to metsolah/metsulah, "depth, the deep sea" (Exod 15:5; Jonah 2:3; Mic 7:19; Ps 68:22; 69:2, 15; 107:24).

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

ocean-deep, deep, ocean depth

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 Isaiah 44:27

Range of meaning

"Deep, ocean depth." It comes from a root meaning to sink or be deep, and is related to metsolah/metsulah, "depth, the deep sea" (Exod 15:5; Jonah 2:3; Mic 7:19; Ps 68:22; 69:2, 15; 107:24). It sits in the same family of meaning as tehom, "the great deep" of Gen 1:2, which is the unformed, threatening water of the world before order.

Against the English

KJV/WEB/ESV say "the deep"; BSB and NASB spell it out as "depths of the sea"; NIV has "watery deep." All are accurate. "The deep" keeps the poetic, almost mythic weight best, while "depths of the sea" can sound like simple oceanography.

Used elsewhere in the period

This is the only time this exact form occurs. Its relatives describe the Exodus sea that swallowed Egypt (Exod 15:5, metsolot), the abyss Jonah sinks into (Jonah 2:3), and the place God hurls sins (Mic 7:19). The LXX (the ancient Greek translation) renders it abyssos, "abyss"; the Vulgate has profundum.

Where it appears

Isaiah · 1

  1. Isaiah 44:27 לַצּוּלָ֖ה to the ocean-deep

    who says to the depths of the sea, ‘Be dry, and I will dry up your currents,’

    Here: "To the deep," meaning the ocean depths. This exact form appears only here in the Bible. It is related to metsulah, "the depths," the word used where Pharaoh's army "went down into the depths like a stone" (Exod 15:5). The deep is spoken to as a person, grammatically feminine, and given an order.

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