Hebrew word · H7111
קְצָפָה
liktzafah
splinter
Found only here. The root q-ts-p appears to mean 'snap, break off'. BDB gives 'a splintering, snapping'. Others suggest 'stump' or 'broken twig'. A related noun, qetsef, appears in Hos 10:7, where Samaria's king is carried off like a 'twig' (or 'foam') on the water.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
snapping or splintering, something fragmented or splintered
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
Found only here. The root q-ts-p appears to mean 'snap, break off'. BDB gives 'a splintering, snapping'. Others suggest 'stump' or 'broken twig'. A related noun, qetsef, appears in Hos 10:7, where Samaria's king is carried off like a 'twig' (or 'foam') on the water.
- Against the English
BSB, ESV and NASB give 'splintered/splinters'. YLT has 'a chip'. KJV has 'barked' (stripped of bark), which seems to follow the Vulgate. NIV's 'ruined' and NLT's similar wording are safe but give up the concrete picture.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Septuagint: eis synklasmon, 'into a breaking-up'. Vulgate: ficum meam decorticavit, 'he has debarked my fig tree', which takes the line as a description of bark-stripping. KJV 'barked' probably comes from this tradition.
Where it appears
Joel · 1
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Joel 1:7 לִקְצָפָ֑ה into a stump
It has laid waste My grapevine and splintered My fig tree. It has stripped off the bark and thrown it away; the branches have turned white.
Here: 'Into splinters / a snapped thing.' This word occurs only here in the Bible. It comes from a root meaning to snap or break off, and pictures the fig tree reduced to broken, stripped stumps.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.