Etymologically
Log in

ארץ

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 1 November 2026 at 06:55. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

Pronunciation

  • Tiberian: ʾereṣ, pausal ʾāreṣ[1][2]
  • Samaritan reading tradition: ārəṣ[3]
  • Origen's Secunda: αρς[4]

Forms

אֶרֶץ (ʾereṣ) noun, feminine, plural אֲרָצוֹת[1][5] With the article הָאָרֶץ, with the locative ending אַרְצָה “to the ground”, with suffix אַרְצִי, אַרְצְךָ; plural אֲרָצוֹת, construct אַרְצוֹת.[6][4] Feminine, rarely masculine (Ezekiel 21:24).[6]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Semitic *ʔarṣ́- (“earth”), one of the basic words of Proto-Semitic.[5][7][8] The noun is kept in Akkadian erṣetu, Old Akkadian arṣatu,[4][9] Ugaritic ảrṣ,[10] Phoenician ʾrṣ and Moabite,[4][6] Aramaic אֲרַע (ʾăraʿ) (Old Aramaic ארק (ʾrq), Biblical Aramaic also אַרְקָא (ʾarqā)),[4][11] Classical Syriac ܐܲܪܥܵܐ (ʾarʿā),[12] Arabic أَرْض (ʾarḍ)[13] and Sabaean ʾrḍ.[4] The forms show the Proto-Semitic lateral /ṣ́/, which became /ṣ/ in Hebrew, Akkadian and Ugaritic, /q/ and later /ʿ/ in Aramaic, and /ḍ/ in Arabic and Old South Arabian.[14][15] Kogan notes where the word was lost: Ethiopian Semitic replaced it altogether, and of the Modern South Arabian languages only Jibbali kept it, while Mehri uses ḳā and Soqotri ḥóyhi.[8]

Jastrow still derived it from a root meaning “to press together”, after the rugged look of the dry land,[16] but HALOT and Kogan treat it as a primary noun.[4][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is one of the commonest nouns of the Bible: 2504 times, 24 of them in the archaic poems.[1][17] In the Song of Moses the Egyptians perish when nāṭîṯā yəmînəḵā tiḇlāʿēmô ʾāreṣ, “you stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them” (Exodus 15:12), a verse HALOT counts among those where the earth is the underworld.[4][1] In the Blessing of Jacob a tribe sees “that the land was pleasant” (Genesis 49:15), and Deuteronomy 32:1 calls on heaven and earth to listen.[1] Outside the Bible, an inscription from Jerusalem names a god qn ʾrṣ, “creator of the earth”,[18] and another inscription has ʾlhy kl hʾrṣ, “god of all the earth”.[19]

Semantic evolution

HALOT orders the biblical senses from the near to the far.[4] The ground is what one bows down to, ʾarṣâ “to the ground” (Genesis 18:2), or falls on; a piece of ground is a field bought or sown (Genesis 23:15, Exodus 23:10).[4][20] A land is a territory with a people or a king: ʾereṣ miṣrayim, ʾereṣ kənaʿan (Genesis 47:13), ʾereṣ yiśrāʾēl (1 Samuel 13:19), and for the prophets YHWH's own land (Jeremiah 2:7).[4] The plural is used for the countries of the nations, as in ʿammê hāʾărāṣôṯ, “the peoples of the lands” (Ezra 9:1).[4] The earth as a whole is the dry land opposed to the sea (Genesis 1:10) and, with heaven, the whole world, haššāmayim wəhāʾāreṣ (Genesis 2:1), which matches Akkadian šamû u erṣetu.[4][21] The earth is built on foundations and shakes when God appears (1 Samuel 2:8, Psalm 18:8).[6] The “depths of the earth” lead to its last sense, the underworld, parallel to Sheol (Jonah 2:7), as Akkadian erṣetu and Ugaritic ảrṣ also mean the netherworld.[4][9][10]

The Septuagint renders it almost everywhere by Ancient Greek γῆ (gê).[1] In the Dead Sea Scrolls it occurs 2260 times.[22] Rabbinic Hebrew used ʾereṣ yiśrāʾēl for Palestine, opposed to ḥûṣâ lāʾāreṣ, “outside the land”.[16] Modern Hebrew ארץ (érets) keeps the word.[5]

Timeline

  • Archaic Hebrew poetry – tiḇlāʿēmô ʾāreṣ “the earth swallowed them” in the Song of Moses (Exodus 15:12).[17][1]
  • Classical Biblical Hebrew – 1025 of the 2504 biblical occurrences are in Genesis to Kings.[1]
  • Late Biblical Hebrew – ʿammê hāʾărāṣôṯ “the peoples of the lands” (Ezra 9:1).[4]
  • Inscriptions – qn ʾrṣ, “creator of the earth”, at Jerusalem.[18]
  • 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek γῆ (gê).[23][1]
  • 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – 2260 occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls.[24][22]

Meanings

Noun

  1. the ground, the soil;[4][20] ʾarṣâ, to the ground.[4][20]
  2. a piece of ground, a field.[4]
  3. a land, territory or country; plural, the countries of the nations.[4][6]
  4. the earth as a whole; dry land as opposed to the sea; with heaven, the world.[4][6]
  5. (figurative) the people of the earth.[21]
  6. (poetic) the underworld, parallel to Sheol.[4]

Descendants

  • Modern Hebrew ארץ (érets)[5]

Usage notes

HALOT lists a verb of the same letters only as a conjecture: a hiphil participle “fertilizing” for מֵאָרֶץ in 2 Samuel 23:4, compared with Arabic ʾaruḍa, “to be fertile”.[25][13]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Clear Bible (2023–), MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (Westminster Leningrad Codex, with Greek alignment), github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-hebrew, CC BY 4.0
  2. ^ 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
  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 e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u 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. אֶרֶץ
  5. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  6. ^ a b c d e f 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. אֶרֶץ
  7. ^ Huehnergard, John (2011), "Proto-Semitic Language and Culture" and "Semitic Roots", in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. s.v. ʾrṣ́
  8. ^ a b c Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 27
  9. ^ a b Tawil, Hayim ben Yosef (2009), An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew: Etymological-Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalents, Jersey City: Ktav, p. 34
  10. ^ a b del Olmo Lete, Gregorio; Sanmartín, Joaquín (2015), A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd ed., transl. W. G. E. Watson, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. ảrṣ
  11. ^ Kaufman, Stephen A., ed., Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, cal.huc.edu, p. s.v. ארע
  12. ^ Sokoloff, Michael (2009), A Syriac Lexicon, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns; Piscataway: Gorgias Press, p. 104
  13. ^ a b Lane, Edward William (1863–1893), An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts, London: Williams and Norgate, p. 47
  14. ^ Blau, Joshua (2010), Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew: An Introduction, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, p. 39
  15. ^ Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. אֶֽרֶץ
  16. ^ a b Jastrow, Marcus (1886–1903), A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, London: Luzac; New York: Putnam, p. s.v. אֶרֶץ
  17. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 69
  18. ^ a b Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 4.201
  19. ^ Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 15.005
  20. ^ a b c Holladay, William L. (1971), A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. אֶרֶץ
  21. ^ 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. אֶרֶץ
  22. ^ 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
  23. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 93
  24. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 143
  25. ^ 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. ארץ