Hebrew word · H6830
צְפוֹנִי
hatzefoni
northern
An adjective from tsafon ('north') meaning 'northern', used here as a noun: 'the northern one', 'the northerner'. It appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
adj
1) northern
n m
2) northern one, northerner (subst)
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
An adjective from tsafon ('north') meaning 'northern', used here as a noun: 'the northern one', 'the northerner'. It appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
- Against the English
KJV (with 'army' in italics to show it was added), BSB and WEB say 'the northern army'. NIV has 'the northern horde'. ESV keeps 'the northerner'. Adding 'army' is an interpretation: it pushes readers toward a human military force, while the Hebrew leaves the invader's nature open.
- How it drifted
Translators supply a noun because English needs one. Once 'army' is printed, readers naturally picture soldiers and, in some prophecy teaching, a specific modern nation.
- Used elsewhere in the period
In the prophets, 'the north' is the stock direction of invasion and doom: 'out of the north disaster will break loose' (Jer 1:14; also 4:6; 6:1, 22). Assyrian and Babylonian armies entered Israel from the north because of the desert to the east. Ezekiel's Gog comes 'from the remotest parts of the north' (Ezek 38:6, 15; 39:2). The Greek Septuagint translates it 'the one from the north' (ton apo borra), and the Aramaic Targum interprets it of a people coming from the north.
Similar words
Where it appears
Joel · 1
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Joel 2:20 הַצְּפוֹנִ֞י the northerner[s]
The northern army I will drive away from you, banishing it to a barren and desolate land, its front ranks into the Eastern Sea, and its rear guard into the Western Sea. And its stench will rise; its foul odor will ascend. For He has done great things.
Here: An adjective used as a noun, 'the northerner', found only here in the Bible. No word for 'army' stands beside it. It names the invader of chapters 1–2 by the direction from which Israel's terrors traditionally came.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.