the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Dictionaries
Hate
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or A. Verb.
Śânê' (שָׂנֵא, Strong's #8130), “to hate, set against.” This verb appears in Ugaritic, Moabite, Aramaic, and Arabic. It appears in all periods of Hebrew and about 145 times in the Bible.
Śânê' represents an emotion ranging from intense “hatred” to the much weaker “set against” and is used of persons and things (including ideas, words, inanimate objects).
The strong sense of the word typifies the emotion of jealousy; and therefore, śânê' is the feeling Joseph’s brothers experienced because their father preferred him (Gen. 37:4; cf. v. 11). This “hatred” increased when Joseph reported his dreams (Gen. 37:8). Obviously, the word covers emotion ranging from “bitter disdain” to outright “hatred,” for in Gen. 37:18ff. the brothers plotted Joseph’s death and achieved his removal.
This emphasis can be further heightened by a double use of the root. Delilah’s father told Samson: “I verily thought that thou hadst utterly hated her [literally, “hating, you hated her”] …” (Judg. 15:2).
One special use of śânê' is ingressive, indicating the initiation of the emotion. So “Amnon hated [literally, “began to hate”] her exceedingly; so that the hatred wherewith he hated [“began to hate”] her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her” (2 Sam. 13:15). This emphasis appears again in Jer. 12:8: “Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest; it crieth out against me: therefore have I [come to hate] it” (also cf. Hos. 9:15).
In a weaker sense, śânê' signifies “being set against” something. Jethro advised Moses to select men who hated [“were set against”] covetousness to be secondary judges over Israel (Exod. 18:21). A very frequent but special use of the verb means “to be unloved.” For example, śânê' may indicate that someone is “untrustworthy,” therefore an enemy to be ejected from one’s territory. This sense is found in an early biblical occurrence, in which Isaac said to Abimelech and his army: “Wherefore come ye to me, seeing ye hate me, and have sent me away from you?” (Gen. 26:27). The word may mean “unloved” in the sense of deteriorating marital relations: “And the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth [i.e., turned against] her” (Deut. 22:16). This nuance is especially clear in Ezek. 23:28, where the verb is in synonymous parallelism to “alienated”: “Behold, I will deliver thee into the hand of them whom thou hatest, into the hand of them from whom thy mind is alienated.” In the case of two wives in a family, in which one was preferred over the other, it may be said that one was loved and the other “hated” (Deut. 21:15). This emphasis is found in Gen. 29:31: “And when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren.” The word, used as a passive participle, represents a spurned woman: “… An odious [unloved] woman when she is married …” (Prov. 30:23).
B. Noun.
Śin'âh (שִׂנְאָה, Strong's #8135), “hatred.” This noun occurs 17 times in the Old Testament. Num. 35:20 is one occurrence: “And if he stabbed him from hatred, or hurled at him, lying in wait …” (RSV).
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Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Hate'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/h/hate.html. 1940.
