Hebrew word · H944
בּוּל
vul
produce
Bul occurs only here and in Job 40:20 ('the mountains bring him their produce'). It is usually linked with the root yabal, 'to bring, carry', and so means 'what is brought forth: yield, produce'. Many lexicons give 'block, lump (of wood)' for this verse.
Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
produce, outgrowth
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 Isaiah 44:19
- Range of meaning
Bul occurs only here and in Job 40:20 ('the mountains bring him their produce'). It is usually linked with the root yabal, 'to bring, carry', and so means 'what is brought forth: yield, produce'. Many lexicons give 'block, lump (of wood)' for this verse. A separate word Bul is the name of the eighth month (1 Kgs 6:38), probably borrowed from Phoenician.
- Against the English
KJV 'the stock of a tree' and YLT 'the stock of a tree' use 'stock' in the old sense of trunk or log. BSB, ESV, NIV and NASB 'a block of wood' and WEB 'a tree trunk' make it plain but lose the 'produce' overtone.
- How it drifted
'Stock' in the KJV is now archaic (a tree stump or trunk, as in 'stocks and stones'). Modern readers may not see that it means a log.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Job 40:20 is the only other biblical use. Jer 2:27 mocks those 'who say to a tree, You are my father'. Jer 10:3 says 'a tree from the forest is cut down… the work of a craftsman's hands'. The Wisdom of Solomon 13:13 picks up this scene, describing the god made from 'a useless leftover, a crooked stick full of knots'.
- Range of meaning
Usually explained as a short form of yevul, 'produce, yield (of the land)', from the root y-b-l, 'to bring, carry'. Elsewhere it appears in Isaiah 44:19 as bul ʿets, 'a block / lump of wood' (literally 'produce of a tree'), and as the name of the eighth month, Bul (1 Kings 6:38), which is probably connected with produce, rain or harvest.
- Against the English
KJV, WEB and NASB have 'food'. BSB and NIV have 'produce'. Most modern versions agree that it means vegetation the hills provide. The supplied contextual gloss 'beast[s] of' follows the minority reading described below.
- Used elsewhere in the period
In Hebrew it is very rare (Job 40:20; Isaiah 44:19; the month-name Bul). Its fuller relative yevul ('yield of the land') is common, for example in Leviticus 26:4, Deuteronomy 11:17 and Psalm 67:6. In Akkadian, būlu means 'cattle, herd animals', and the phrase būl ṣēri, 'beasts of the steppe', closely matches the Hebrew 'beasts of the open country' in the second half of this verse. This is the basis for the alternative reading.
Where it appears
Job · 1
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Job 40:20 ב֭וּל [the] beast[s] of
The hills yield him their produce, while all the beasts of the field play nearby.
Here: A rare word. Most read it as the produce or yield of the hills, the grass and plants Behemoth eats (v. 15 says he 'eats grass like an ox'). Another possibility, based on Akkadian, is 'the animals of the mountains'. Either way it names what the uplands give.
Isaiah · 1
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Isaiah 44:19 לְב֥וּל to a product of
And no one considers in his heart, no one has the knowledge or insight to say, “I burned half of it in the fire, and I baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make something detestable with the rest of it? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”
Here: Literally 'to the yield of'. Bul is what something produces: the only other use, Job 40:20, speaks of the 'produce' of the mountains. 'The yield of a tree' is a contemptuous way of saying a chunk of timber.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.