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it down” (Num. 13:23), and one "[swings] the axe to cut down the tree” (Deut. 19:5). The
word is also used of “chopping down” wooden idols (Exod. 34:13).
can signify
“chopping off” a man’s head and feet (1 Sam. 5:4). In Jer. 34:18 this verb means “to cut
into two pieces.” “Cut off” may also imply cutting off in the sense of circumcision. In
Exod. 4:25 Zipporah took a flint knife and “cut off” her son’s foreskin. In a related but
different usage this word appears in Num. 11:33, where it means “to chew” meat.
“To cut off” can mean “to exterminate or destroy.” God told Noah that “all flesh
[shall never again] be cut off … by the waters of a flood …” (Gen. 9:11-the first
occurrence of the word).
can be used of spiritual and social extermination. A
person “cut off” in this manner is not necessarily killed but may be driven out of the
family and removed from the blessings of the covenant. God told Abraham that “the
uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be
cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant” (Gen. 17:14).
One of the best known uses of this verb is “to make” a covenant. The process by
which God made a covenant with Abraham is called “cutting”: “In the same day the Lord
made a covenant with Abram …” (Gen. 15:18). The word “covenant” appears nine times
before this in Genesis, but it is not connected with
.
A synonym to this verb appears in this immediate context (Gen. 15:10) and is directly
related to the process of making the covenant. Furthermore, hereafter in Genesis and
throughout the Bible
is frequently associated with making a covenant. This verb,
therefore, constitutes a rather technical term for making a covenant. In Genesis it often
alludes to an act by which animals were cut in two and the party taking the oath passed
between the pieces. This act was not created by God especially to deal with Abraham but
was a well-known practice at that time among many men.
Later, “cutting” a covenant did not necessarily include this act but seems to be an
allusion to the Abrahamic covenantal process (cf. Jer. 34:18). In such a covenant the one
passing through the pieces pledged his faithfulness to the covenant. If that faithfulness
was broken, he called death upon himself, or the same fate which befell the animals. In
some cases it is quite clear that no literal cutting took place and that
is used in a
technical sense of “making an agreement in writing” (Neh. 9:38).
B. Nouns.
$
(
" "
, 3748), refers to a “bill of divorcement.” This word implies the
cutting off of a marriage by means of a “bill of divorcement”: “When a man hath taken a
wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he
hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give
it in her hand, and send her out of his house” (Deut. 24:1).
$
appears 4 times.
means “beams.” This noun, which occurs only 3 times, refers to “beams” in
the sense of things “cut off” in 1 Kings 6:36: “And he built the inner court with three
rows of hewed stone, and a row of cedar beams.”
TO MAKE HASTE, HASTEN
(
, 4116), “to hasten; make haste.” This verb, along with various
derivatives, is common to both ancient and modern Hebrew. It occurs approximately 70