the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Last
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or A. Adjective.
'Achăryôn (אַחֲרֹן, Strong's #314), “at the back; western; later; last; future.” This word occurs about 51 times in biblical Hebrew.
'Achăryôn has a local-spatial meaning. Basically, it means “at the back”: “And he put the handmaids and their children foremost, and Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindermost” (Gen. 33:2—the first biblical appearance). When applied elsewhere, the word means “western”: “Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost [western] sea shall your coast be” (Deut. 11:24).
Used temporally, 'achăryôn has several nuances. First, it means “last” as contrasted to the first of two things: “And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign” (Exod. 4:8). Second, it can represent the “last” in a series of things or people: “Ye are my brethren, ye are my bones and my flesh: wherefore then are ye the last to bring back the king?” (2 Sam. 19:12). The word also connotes “later on” and/or “afterwards”: “But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people” (Deut. 13:9). Next the emphasis can be on the finality or concluding characteristic of a given thing: “Now these be the last words of David” (2 Sam. 23:1).
'Achăryôn connotes “future,” or something that is yet to come: “… So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land …” (Deut. 29:22). The combination of “first” and “last” is an idiom of completeness: “Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat?” (2 Chron. 9:29). Likewise the phrase expresses the sufficiency of the Lord, since He is said to include within Himself the “first” as well as the “last”: “Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his Redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God” (Isa. 44:6; cf. 48:12). These verses affirm that there is no other God, because all exists in Him.
B. Verb.
'Âchar (אָחַר, Strong's #309), “to tarry, remain behind, delay.” Other words derived from this verb are: “other,” “after (wards),” “backwards.” 'Âchar appears in Exod. 22:29 with the meaning “delay”: “Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me.”
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Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Last'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/l/last.html. 1940.
