the Week of Proper 25 / Ordinary 30
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Bible Dictionaries
Shut
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or Sâgar (סָגַר, Strong's #5462), “to shut, close, shut up or imprison.” Found in ancient Ugaritic, this verb is common also in ancient and modern Hebrew. It is found some 80 times in the text of the Hebrew Old Testament. Sâgar is used for the first time in the Old Testament in the story of the creation of the woman from the rib of the man: “And the Lord God … closed up the flesh instead thereof” (Gen. 2:21).The obvious use of this verb is to express the “shutting” of doors and gates, and it is used in this way many times in the text (Gen. 19:10; Josh. 2:7). More specialized uses are: fat closing over the blade of a sword (Judg. 3:22) and closing up a breach in city walls (1 Kings 11:27).
Figuratively, men may “close their hearts to pity” (Ps. 17:10, RSV; KJV, “They are inclosed in their own fat,” with “fat” symbolizing an unresponsive heart). In the books of Samuel, sâgar is used in the special sense of “to deliver up,” implying that all avenues of escape “are closed”: “This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand …” (1 Sam. 17:46; cf. 1 Sam. 24:18; 26:8; 2 Sam. 18:28).
In Lev. 13-14, in which the priest functions as a medical inspector of contagious diseases, sâgar is used a number of times in the sense of “to isolate, to shut up” a sick person away from other people (see Lev. 13:5, 11, 21, 26). The more extreme sense of “to imprison” is found in Job 11:10: “If he cut off, and shut up, or gather together, then who can hinder him?”
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Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Shut'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/s/shut.html. 1940.
