איש

Forms

אִישׁ (ʾîš) noun, masculine, plural אֲנָשִׁים^[1][4] Construct אִישׁ, with suffix אִישִׁי, אִישָׁהּ; the usual plural is אֲנָשִׁים, construct אַנְשֵׁי, and a plural אִישִׁים occurs only three times (Isaiah 53:3, Psalm 141:4, Proverbs 8:4).^[5][2] The inscriptions spell it plene, אישׁ, in the Lachish and Arad letters, and defectively, אשׁ, in other ostraca from Arad and Jerusalem.^[6][7][5] MACULA counts 2,186 occurrences.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Semitic *ʔinš- (“man, person”) in Wiktionary's reconstruction.^[4] Kogan, who finds the form only in Central Semitic, reconstructs it for Proto-Central Semitic from Ugaritic ỉnš (“people”), Samaritan Aramaic, Old and Official Aramaic אש (ʾš, “man”), Arabic إِنْس (ʾins, “mankind”) and إِنْسَان (ʾinsān, “man”), and Sabaean ʾns¹ (“man, husband, warrior”).^[8][9] Moabite and Phoenician ʾš have the same short form as Hebrew.^[5][2][10] Kogan thinks *ʔinš- almost certainly related to Akkadian nišū (“people, mankind”) and nšm (“people”).^[8][11]

The long vowel of ʾîš is the difficulty.^[2] BDB sums up the debate: most scholars derive the word from the same base as the plural אֲנָשִׁים (ʾănāšîm) and the feminine אִשָּׁה (ʾiššâ, “woman”), but the plene spelling with î, kept before suffixes, and the rare plural ʾîšîm speak against it.^[2] Gesenius and others posited a root אושׁ (ʾwš), comparing Akkadian ūšu, and Nöldeke opposed this.^[12] HALOT calls the etymology uncertain and Klein leaves it open.^[12][5][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Lachish ostraca, which Sáenz-Badillos dates to the 6th century BC, have the plene ʾyš (Lachish 3:9), as do the letters from Arad.^[6][13][14] In the Bible the word appears in the archaic poems: the Song of the Sea calls the Lord ʾîš milḥāmâ “a man of war” (Exodus 15:3), and Balaam's oracle says lōʾ ʾîš ʾēl wîḵazzēḇ “God is not a man, that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19).^[15][1]

Semantic evolution

HALOT's senses start from the man as opposed to the woman, to the animal and to God, and include the male child and the husband (Genesis 3:6, Hosea 2:18, where God is Israel's husband).^[5] The word also marks rank and office: bənê ʾîš are the distinguished, ʾîš ʾĕlōhîm “man of God” is the title of prophets such as Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, and in compounds it names an occupation, as ʾîš hāʾăḏāmâ “farmer” (Genesis 9:20).^[5] Very often it is a pronoun: “each one”, ʾîš ʾel-ʾāḥîw “one to another”, and with a negative “no one”.^[2] The Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek ἀνήρ (anḗr), ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos) and, in the pronominal use, ἕκαστος (hékastos).^[1][16] It is common in the Dead Sea Scrolls, with nearly two thousand occurrences.^[17] Modern Hebrew אִישׁ (ish) keeps “man” and “husband”.^[4]

Timeline

• 6th century BC – ʾyš in the Lachish letters (Lachish 3:9).^[14][6]
• Archaic Hebrew poetry – ʾîš milḥāmâ in the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:3) and lōʾ ʾîš ʾēl in Balaam's oracle (Numbers 23:19).^[15][1]
• Classical Biblical Hebrew – more than half of the 2,186 biblical occurrences are in Genesis to Kings.^[1]
• 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint renders it as Ancient Greek ἀνήρ (anḗr) and ἕκαστος (hékastos).^[18][1]
• 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – 1,987 occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls.^[19][17]

Meanings

Noun

1. a man, a male, as opposed to a woman; also of male animals.^[5][2]
2. a husband.^[5]
3. a human being, as opposed to God or to animals.^[5]
4. a man of rank; with a genitive, a man of a calling: ʾîš ʾĕlōhîm “man of God”, a prophet.^[5]
5. (pronominal) each one, anyone; with a negative, no one.^[2][10]

Word family

• אִישׁוֹן (ʾîšôn)

Descendants

• Modern Hebrew אִישׁ (ish)^[4]

Related words

• אִשָּׁה (ʾiššâ)
• אֱנוֹשׁ (ʾĕnôš)

Usage notes

HALOT's second אִישׁ (Proverbs 18:24) and the form אִשׁ of 2 Samuel 14:19 and Micah 6:10 are BDB's softer spelling of יֵשׁ (yēš, “there is”), not this noun.^[20][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Clear Bible (2023–), MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (Westminster Leningrad Codex, with Greek alignment), github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-hebrew, CC BY 4.0
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. אִישׁ
3. ^ Højgaard, Christian Canu; Naaijer, Martijn; Schorch, Stefan (2023), Text-Fabric Dataset of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.7734632
4. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. אִישׁ I
6. ^ a b c Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1.003.9
7. ^ Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2.021.9
8. ^ a b Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 177
9. ^ Lane, Edward William (1863–1893), An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts, London: Williams and Norgate, p. 113
10. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. אִישׁ
11. ^ Black, Jeremy; George, Andrew; Postgate, Nicholas (2000), A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 2nd ed., Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, p. s.v. nišū
12. ^ a b Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. אִישׁ
13. ^ Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2.040.7
14. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 77
15. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 69
16. ^ Tov, Emanuel; Kraft, Robert A. (1987), CATSS Parallel Aligned Hebrew and Greek Texts of Jewish Scripture, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania (Oxford Text Archive 1111)
17. ^ a b Abegg, Martin G.; Jacobs, Jarod; Roorda, Dirk (2022), The Dead Sea Scrolls, Text-Fabric dataset, version 2.0.2, github.com/ETCBC/dss
18. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 93
19. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 143
20. ^ Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. אִישׁ II
21. ^ Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. אִשׁ