הלך

Forms

הָלַךְ (hālaḵ) verb^[1] Qal perfect הָלַךְ; imperfect usually יֵלֵךְ, וַיֵּלֶךְ, imperative לֵךְ, לְכָה, infinitive לֶכֶת, as if from a root ילך (629 times in BDB's count).^[4][5] The regular forms יַהֲלֹךְ, אֶהֱלֹךְ are rare and late, mostly in Job and the Psalms.^[5][4] Also niphal (once), piel, hiphil הוֹלִיךְ and hithpael הִתְהַלֵּךְ.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Semitic *halak- (“to go”).^[6] The verb is shared by the Northwest Semitic languages: Ugaritic hlk, with the imperfect ylk,^[7][8] Phoenician hlk,^[9] Moabite,^[5][4] Aramaic הלך (hlk), whose imperfect is formed as if from a root ⟨hwk⟩,^[10] and Classical Syriac ܗܠܟ (hallek) in the pael, “to walk”.^[11] It matches Akkadian alāku (“to go”),^[12][13] and Kogan pairs the Hebrew and Syriac verbs as the basic word for “to walk”.^[14] The Arabic verb هَلَكَ (halaka) means “to perish”,^[15][5] which Gesenius–Buhl, after Nöldeke, takes as a euphemism;^[16][5] Tigre has “to exert oneself, to die”, and Old South Arabian “to behave”.^[16][5] The imperfect /yēlēḵ/, as if from ⟨ylk⟩, has the same shape as the Ugaritic and Phoenician imperfects.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest dated record is the Siloam tunnel inscription of about 700 BC:^[17] wylkw hmym mn hmwṣʾ ʾl hbrkh, “the water flowed from the spring to the pool”.^[18] Flowing water is one of the subjects HALOT lists for the verb.^[5] In the archaic Song of Deborah hōlḵê nəṯîḇôṯ yēlḵû ʾŏrāḥôṯ ʿăqalqallôṯ, “those who went on the paths went by crooked ways” (Judges 5:6), and in Habakkuk 3:5 pestilence goes before God.^[19][1]

Semantic evolution

The verb is one of the commonest of the Bible, about 1550 times, and HALOT's article runs from the literal to the figurative.^[5][1] People and animals walk, a snake creeps, water and the sea flow, fire runs down, ships float, letters are sent, and desire wanders.^[5] The imperatives became interjections: lek-ləḵā, “go!” (Genesis 12:1), ləḵû wənēlḵâ, “come, let us go” (1 Samuel 9:9).^[5] With an infinitive or participle it marks a process going on: wayyēleḵ hālôḵ wəḡāḏēl, “he became greater and greater” (Genesis 26:13).^[5] To “go away” is also to die (Genesis 15:2, Psalm 39:14), and to “go the way of all the earth” (1 Kings 2:2).^[5] To “walk” in a way is to behave (Isaiah 33:15), and to “go after” other gods is the Deuteronomistic phrase for apostasy (Deuteronomy 6:14).^[5] The hithpael “walk about” is used of walking with God, said of Enoch and Noah (Genesis 5:22, 6:9), and of walking before him (Genesis 17:1); the hiphil means “to lead, bring”.^[5]

The Septuagint renders it mostly by Ancient Greek πορεύομαι (poreúomai) and ἀπέρχομαι (apérkhomai).^[1] The Dead Sea Scrolls use it 1181 times.^[20] From the sense “walk, behave” came Mishnaic Hebrew הֲלָכָה (hălāḵâ), “custom, rule”,^[5] the source of the English word halakha.^[21] Modern Hebrew הלך (halákh) keeps the verb.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 700 BC – wylkw hmym “and the water flowed” in the Siloam tunnel inscription.^[18][17]
• Archaic Hebrew poetry – yēlḵû ʾŏrāḥôṯ ʿăqalqallôṯ in the Song of Deborah (Judges 5:6).^[19][1]
• Classical Biblical Hebrew – more than half of the biblical occurrences are in Genesis to Kings.^[1]
• 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek πορεύομαι (poreúomai).^[22][1]
• 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – 1181 occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls.^[23][20]

Meanings

Verb

1. qal: to go, walk, travel; of water, to flow; of a border, to run.^[5][4]
2. qal: to go away, depart; to pass away, die.^[5]
3. qal (figurative): to walk in a way, to behave; with ʾaḥărê, to follow (a person, a god).^[5]
4. qal, as an auxiliary: to go on doing, grow more and more.^[5]
5. piel: to walk about, move along.^[5]
6. hiphil: to lead, bring, carry away; to make flow.^[5]
7. hithpael: to walk to and fro; to walk with or before God.^[5]

Word family

• הֲלִיכָה (hălîḵâ)
• מַהֲלָךְ (mahălaḵ)
• הֲלָכָה (hălāḵâ)

Descendants

• Modern Hebrew הלך (halákh)^[6]

Usage notes

The noun הֵלֶךְ (hēleḵ), “traveller”, occurs once in its own right, in the parable of 2 Samuel 12 (2 Samuel 12:4); in 1 Samuel 14:26 the Masoretic hēleḵ dəḇaš is a “flow of honey”, which BDB would emend.^[24][25] The Biblical Aramaic verb הֲלַךְ (Ezra 5:5, Daniel 3:25) and the noun הֲלָךְ, a “toll” (Ezra 4:13), are Aramaic.^[1][16]

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 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. הָלַךְ
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x 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. הלךְ
6. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
7. ^ 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. h-l-k
8. ^ Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 253
9. ^ Krahmalkov, Charles R. (2000), Phoenician-Punic Dictionary, Leuven: Peeters (OLA 90), p. s.v. h-l-k
10. ^ Kaufman, Stephen A., ed., Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, cal.huc.edu, p. s.v. הלך
11. ^ Sokoloff, Michael (2009), A Syriac Lexicon, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns; Piscataway: Gorgias Press, p. 344
12. ^ Black, Jeremy; George, Andrew; Postgate, Nicholas (2000), A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 2nd ed., Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, p. s.v. alāku
13. ^ von Soden, Wolfram (1965–1981), Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, p. 31
14. ^ Kogan, Leonid (2015), Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 234
15. ^ Lane, Edward William (1863–1893), An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts, London: Williams and Norgate, p. 3044
16. ^ a b c Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. הלך
17. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 76
18. ^ a b Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 4.116
19. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 69
20. ^ 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
21. ^ 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. hlk
22. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 93
23. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 143
24. ^ 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. הֵלֶךְ
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. הֵלֶךְ