the Third Week of Advent
free while helping to build churches and support pastors in Uganda.
Click here to learn more!
Bible Dictionaries
Awake
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or ‛Ůr (עוּר, 5782), “to awake, stir up, rouse oneself, rouse.” This word is found in both ancient and modern Hebrew, as well as in ancient Ugaritic. It occurs approximately 80 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. Its first use in the Old Testament has the sense of “rousing” someone to action: “Awake, awake, Deborah” (Judg. 5:12). This same meaning is reflected in Ps. 7:6, where it is used in parallelism with “arise”: “Arise, O Lord, in thine anger, … awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded.” The RSV translates this passage: “… Awake, O my God; thou hast appointed a judgment.” This probably is more in harmony with the total parallelism involved (arise/awake, Lord/God) than the KJ version. Also, the RSV’S change from “for me” to “O my God” involves only a very slight change of one vowel in the word. (Remember that Hebrew vowels were not part of the alphabet. They were added after the consonantal text was written down.)
‛Ůr commonly signifies awakening out of ordinary sleep (Zech. 4:1) or out of the sleep of death (Job 14:12). In Job 31:29, it expresses the idea of “being excited” or “stirred up”: “If I … lifted up myself when evil found him.…” This verb is found several times in the Song of Solomon, for instance, in contrast with sleep: “I sleep, but my heart waketh …” (5:2). It is found three times in an identical phrase: “… that you stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please” (Song of Sol. 2:7; 3:5; 8:4).
These files are public domain.
Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Awake'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/a/awake.html. 1940.
