Hebrew word · H7263
רֶ֫גֶב
uregavim
clod
A clod or lump of earth (HALOT, BDB). It occurs only twice in the Hebrew Bible: here and Job 38:38 ("when the dust runs into a mass and the clods stick together").
Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
clod (of earth)
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
A clod or lump of earth (HALOT, BDB). It occurs only twice in the Hebrew Bible: here and Job 38:38 ("when the dust runs into a mass and the clods stick together").
- Against the English
"Clods" (KJV, BSB, WEB, YLT, ESV) is accurate. NIV's "soil" is smoother but loses the picture of distinct lumps of earth piled over a grave.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The other use, in Job 38:38, concerns soil after rain. The LXX reads χάλικες ("pebbles, gravel") here and the Vulgate glareis ("gravel"). Both picture the stony earth of a stream bed.
Where it appears
Job · 2
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Job 21:33 רִגְבֵ֫י [the] clods of
The clods of the valley are sweet to him; everyone follows behind him, and those before him are without number.
Here: Lumps of earth. The word occurs only here and in Job 38:38, where clods "stick together" after rain. It pictures the soil heaped over or around a burial.
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Job 38:38 וּרְגָבִ֥ים and [the] clods
when the dust hardens into a mass and the clods of earth stick together?
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.