the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Pit
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or Be'êr (בְּאֵר, Strong's #875), “pit; well.” Cognates of this noun appear in Ugaritic, Akkadian, Arabic, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Ethiopic. This word appears 37 times in the Bible with no occurrences in the Old Testament prophetic books.
Be'êr means a “well” in which there may be water. (By itself the word does not always infer the presence of water.) The word refers to the “pit” itself whether dug or natural: “And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which Abimelech’s servants had violently taken away” (Gen. 21:25). Such a “well” may have a narrow enough mouth that it can be blocked with a stone which a single strong man could move (Gen. 29:2, 10). In the desert country of the ancient Near East a “well” was an important place and its water the source of deep satisfaction for the thirsty. This concept pictures the role of a wife for a faithful husband (Prov. 5:15).
A “pit” may contain something other than water. In its first biblical appearance be'êr is used of tar pits: “And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits …” (Gen. 14:10). A “pit” may contain nothing as does the “pit” which becomes one’s grave (Ps. 55:23, “pit of the grave”). In some passages the word was to represent more than a depository for the body but a place where one exists after death (Ps. 69:15). Since Babylonian mythology knows of such a place with gates that shut over the deceased, it is not at all unreasonable to see such a place alluded to (minus the erroneous ideas of the pagans) in the Bible.
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Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Pit'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/p/pit.html. 1940.
