Hebrew word · H919

בֶּ֫דֶק

bedek

breach

A breach, fissure, crack or gap in a structure: a place where something has split open or worn through. Lexicons (BDB, HALOT) give 'fissure, rent, breach'. The related verb means to mend or patch up.

Appears 10 times in 8 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

fissure, rent, breach, leak (in a building)

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 2 Kings 22:5

Range of meaning

A breach, fissure, crack or gap in a structure: a place where something has split open or worn through. Lexicons (BDB, HALOT) give 'fissure, rent, breach'. The related verb means to mend or patch up.

Against the English

KJV 'breaches', YLT 'breach', BSB and WEB 'damage(s)'. 'Breaches' keeps the concrete picture of cracks and gaps. 'Damage' is accurate but vaguer.

Used elsewhere in the period

Rare. It appears almost only in the two temple-repair stories (2 Kgs 12:6–13, under King Joash, and here) and in Ezekiel 27:9, 27, where the 'strengtheners of your bedeq' are the caulkers who seal the seams of the ship that stands for Tyre. The pairing chazaq + bedeq is therefore a fixed phrase for repair work. The Greek translation of Kings apparently just spelled the word out as bedek in the Joash chapter instead of translating it, which suggests the translators treated it as a technical term.

From the study of Ezekiel 27:9

Range of meaning

Bedeq means a breach, crack or damaged place in a structure. Outside Ezekiel 27 it appears only in 2 Kings 12 and 22, about the cracks in the temple. The verb ḥāzaq in this form means 'to make strong, make firm'. Together, 'to make strong the breach' is the standard Hebrew expression for doing repairs.

Against the English

KJV 'calkers' and WEB 'repairers of ship seams' give the nautical sense well. YLT 'strengthening thy breach' keeps the literal words but means little to a modern reader. BSB 'shipwrights, repairing your leaks' is clear, but 'shipwright' suggests men who build ships, and the Hebrew is about men who maintain and repair them.

Used elsewhere in the period

In 2 Kings 12:5–12 (Hebrew 12:6–13), King Joash orders the priests to 'make strong the breach of the house' (ḥazzēq bedeq habbayit), and the same wording returns for Josiah's repairs in 2 Kings 22:5. Ezekiel takes a building-maintenance phrase and applies it to the seams of a hull. The same phrase comes back in Ezekiel 27:27, where the 'strengtheners of your breach' sink along with the ship.

Where it appears

2 Kings · 8

  1. 2 Kings 12:5 בֶּ֣דֶק בָּֽדֶק׃ פ [the] damage of, damage

    Let every priest receive it from his constituency, and let it be used to repair any damage found in the temple.”

  2. 2 Kings 12:6 בֶּ֥דֶק [the] damage of

    By the twenty-third year of the reign of Joash, however, the priests had not yet repaired the damage to the temple.

  3. 2 Kings 12:7 בֶּ֣דֶק לְבֶ֥דֶק [the] damage of, for [the] damage of

    So King Joash called Jehoiada and the other priests and said, “Why have you not repaired the damage to the temple? Now, therefore, take no more money from your constituency, but hand it over for the repair of the temple.”

  4. 2 Kings 12:8 בֶּ֥דֶק [the] damage of

    So the priests agreed that they would not receive money from the people and that they would not repair the temple themselves.

  5. 2 Kings 12:12 בֶּ֣דֶק [the] damage of

    masons, and stonecutters. They also purchased timber and dressed stone to repair the damage to the house of the LORD, and they paid the other expenses of the temple repairs.

  6. 2 Kings 22:5 בֶּ֥דֶק [the] damage of

    And let them deliver it into the hands of the supervisors of those doing the work on the house of the LORD, who in turn are to give it to the workmen repairing the damages to the house of the LORD—

    Here: A crack, gap or worn-through spot in a structure. Elsewhere it is used for the seams of a ship that have to be caulked (Ezek 27:9, 27).

Ezekiel · 2

  1. Ezekiel 27:9 בִּדְקֵ֑ךְ leaks your

    The elders of Gebal were aboard as shipwrights, repairing your leaks. All the ships of the sea and their sailors came alongside to barter for your merchandise.

    Here: 'Your breaches': the cracks and opened seams in the hull. The same word is used for cracks in the Jerusalem temple's walls. Here it means caulking and patching leaks.

  2. Ezekiel 27:27 בִדְקֵ֣ך leaks your

    Your wealth, wares, and merchandise, your sailors, captains, and shipwrights, your merchants and all the warriors within you, with all the other people on board, will sink into the heart of the sea on the day of your downfall.

    Here: Your breach: cracks and open seams. In 2 Kings 12 the same word is used for repairs to the temple. Together with the previous word it means 'your caulkers' or 'your ship-repairers'.

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