Hebrew word · H7377
רִי
beri
moisture
Moisture or saturation. It appears only here in the Hebrew Bible. Most lexicons (BDB, HALOT) link it to the root r-w-h, 'to drink your fill' or 'be saturated'. That root gives words such as rāweh, 'well-watered', and rəwāyâ, 'overflowing' (Ps 23:5).
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
moisture
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
Moisture or saturation. It appears only here in the Hebrew Bible. Most lexicons (BDB, HALOT) link it to the root r-w-h, 'to drink your fill' or 'be saturated'. That root gives words such as rāweh, 'well-watered', and rəwāyâ, 'overflowing' (Ps 23:5).
- Against the English
Most modern versions have 'moisture'. KJV has 'by watering', which fits the same root but sounds as if God is watering the cloud like a garden. YLT has 'by filling'.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Because the word is so rare, ancient translators struggled with it. The Vulgate read the consonants as bar, 'grain' (frumentum desiderat nubes, 'grain desires the clouds'). The Septuagint seems to have read a form meaning 'choice' or 'pure'. Modern commentators mostly keep the Hebrew text and its meaning 'moisture'. A few have proposed changing it to bārād, 'hail', or to a word for 'brightness'.
Where it appears
Job · 1
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Job 37:11 בְּ֭רִי with moisture
He loads the clouds with moisture; He scatters His lightning through them.
Here: 'With moisture', meaning the water a storm cloud holds. The word appears only here in the Bible. It is usually linked to the verb rawah, 'to drink your fill' or 'be soaked', so it pictures a cloud soaked through with water.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.