Hebrew word · H6688

צוּף

tzuf-

honeycomb

Tsuf appears only twice: here and in Psalm 19:10 (Hebrew 19:11), where God's judgments are 'sweeter than honey and the drippings of the comb' (nofet tsufim). Lexicons such as BDB and HALOT give 'honeycomb' and link it to a root meaning 'to flow'. The sense is liquid honey running from the comb.

Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

honeycomb

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 Proverbs 16:24

Range of meaning

Tsuf appears only twice: here and in Psalm 19:10 (Hebrew 19:11), where God's judgments are 'sweeter than honey and the drippings of the comb' (nofet tsufim). Lexicons such as BDB and HALOT give 'honeycomb' and link it to a root meaning 'to flow'. The sense is liquid honey running from the comb.

Against the English

'Honeycomb' is accurate. It can still suggest a dry hexagon of wax to a modern reader. The Hebrew picture is the dripping comb, honey at its freshest and richest.

Used elsewhere in the period

Psalm 19:10 uses the same image for God's instruction. In 1 Samuel 14:27–29, Jonathan eats wild honey from the woods and 'his eyes brightened': honey gives strength. Egyptian medical texts such as the Ebers Papyrus use honey constantly in remedies and wound dressings. At Tel Rehov in northern Israel, archaeologists found a large apiary of clay hives from the 10th–9th century BC, which shows that bee honey was produced on a large scale in Israel. (Devash could also mean date or grape syrup, but tsuf points to the bee's comb.)

Where it appears

Psalms · 1

  1. Psalm 19:10 צוּפִֽים׃ honeycombs

    They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.

    Here: 'Of honeycombs.' Together with the word before it: 'the drippings of the combs,' fresh comb honey, the best sweetness there was. It ends the verse at its highest point.

Proverbs · 1

  1. Proverbs 16:24 צוּף־ [are] a honeycomb of

    Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

    Here: The comb oozing with honey. The noun probably comes from a root meaning 'to flow, overflow', so the picture is honey dripping from the comb, not a dry block of wax. It comes first in the Hebrew, so the hearer sees the image before learning what it describes.

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