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, 6310), “mouth; edge; opening; entrance; collar; utterance; order; command;
evidence.” This word has cognates in Ugaritic, Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, and Amorite.
It appears about 500 times and in every period of biblical Hebrew.
First, the word means “mouth.” It is often used of a human “mouth”: “And he shall be
thy spokesman unto the people: and he shall be, even he shall be to thee instead of a
mouth …” (Exod. 4:16). In passages such as Num. 22:28 this word represents an
animal’s “mouth”: “And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto
Balaam.…” When used of a bird’s “mouth” it refers to its beak: “And the dove came in to
him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off …” (Gen. 8:11).
This word may be used figuratively of “the mouth of the ground,” referring to the fact
that liquid went into the ground—the ground drank it: “And now art thou cursed from the
earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand” (Gen.
4:11—the first biblical occurrence). A similar use appears in Ps. 141:7: “Our bones are
scattered at the grave’s mouth.…” In this case Sheol is perhaps conceived as a pit and
then personified with its “mouth” consuming men once they die.
Second, this word can be used in an impersonal, nonpersonified sense of an
“opening”: “And he looked, and behold a well in the field, and, lo, there were three flocks
of sheep lying by it; for out of that well they watered the flocks: and a great stone was
upon the well’s mouth” (Gen. 29:2). In Isa. 19:7 this word represents the “edge” of a
river: “The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and every thing sown
by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away.…” Gen. 42:27 uses
to refer to an orifice,
or the area within the edges of a sack’s opening: “… He espied his money; for, behold, it
was in his sack’s mouth.” A similar use appears in Josh. 10:18, where the word is used of
a cave “entrance” or “opening.”
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can mean not only an opening which is closed in on
all sides but a city gate, an opening opened at the top: “… at the gates, at the entry of the
city, at the coming in at the doors” (Prov. 8:3). Exod. 28:32 uses this word to mean an
“opening” in a tunic around which a collar would be woven: “And there shall be a hole in
the top of it, in the midst thereof: it shall have a binding of woven work round about the
hole of it, as it were the hole of a habergeon, that it be not rent.” Job 30:18 uses the word
of the “collar” itself: “By the great force of my disease is my garment changed: it bindeth
me about as the collar of my coat” (cf. Ps. 133:2).
In several passages
represents the edge of a sword, perhaps in the sense of the
part that consumes and/or bites: “And they slew Hamor and Shechem his son with the
edge of the sword …” (Gen. 34:26).
Several noteworthy idioms employ
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In Josh. 9:2 “with one mouth” means “with
one accord”: “… That they gathered themselves together, to fight with Joshua and with
Israel, with one accord.” In Num. 12:8 God described His unique communication as
“mouth to mouth” or person to person. A similar construction appears in Jer. 32:4 (cf.
34:3, which has the same force): “And Zedekiah king of Judah shall not escape out of the
hand of the Chaldeans, hut shall surely be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon,
and shall speak with him mouth to mouth, and his eyes shall behold his eyes.” The phrase
“from mouth to mouth” or “mouth to mouth” can mean “from end to end”: “And they
came into the house of Baal; and the house of Baal was full from one end to another” (2
Kings 10:21). “With open mouth” is a phrase which emphasizes greedy consumption: