Hebrew word · H8386

תַּאֲנִיָּה

ta'aniyah

mourning

Both nouns come from the root ʾnh, 'to mourn, groan, moan' (compare the verb in Isa 3:26: 'her gates shall lament and mourn'). They mean audible grief: moaning, groaning, lamentation, keening. The second is the same word without the ta- prefix.

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

What it means

mourning, grieving

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 Lamentations 2:5

Range of meaning

Both nouns come from the root ʾnh, 'to mourn, groan, moan' (compare the verb in Isa 3:26: 'her gates shall lament and mourn'). They mean audible grief: moaning, groaning, lamentation, keening. The second is the same word without the ta- prefix.

Against the English

'Mourning and lamentation' (BSB, KJV, WEB) is accurate but loses the echo. YLT 'Mourning and moaning' and NASB's similar pairing try to keep the sound play. Something like 'moaning and groaning' comes closest to the effect.

Used elsewhere in the period

The identical pair appears in only one other place, Isaiah 29:2. There God threatens 'Ariel' (Jerusalem): 'I will distress Ariel, and there will be taʾaniyyah vaʾaniyyah.' The Septuagint here appears to read the words from the related root meaning 'to be humbled/afflicted', giving something like 'humbled and brought low'.

Where it appears

Isaiah · 1

  1. Isaiah 29:2 תַֽאֲנִיָּה֙ mourning

    And I will constrain Ariel, and there will be mourning and lamentation; she will be like an altar hearth before Me.

Lamentations · 1

  1. Lamentations 2:5 תַּאֲנִיָּ֖ה mourning

    The Lord is like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah.

    Here: Audible grief, groaning. It is the first half of a sound-alike pair from the same root.

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