the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Dictionaries
Sufficiency
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or Day (דַּי, Strong's #1767), “sufficiency; the required enough.” Cognates of this word appear in late Aramaic, Syriac, and Phoenician. Its 42 biblical occurrences appear in all periods of biblical Hebrew.
The word is translated variously according to the needs of a given passage. The meaning “sufficiency” is clearly manifested in Exod. 36:7: “For the stuff they had was sufficient for all the work to make it, and too much.” A different translation is warranted in Jer. 49:9: “If thieves [come] by night, they will destroy till they have enough” (cf. Obad. 5). In Prov. 25:16 the word means only what one’s digestive system can handle: “Hast thou found honey? Eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.” Other passages use this word of money (Deut. 15:8). In Jer. 51:58 day preceded by the preposition ke means “only for”: “… The people shall labor in vain [only for nothing], and the folk in the fire [only for fire], and they shall be weary.” The phrase “as long as there is need” signifies until there is no more required (Mal. 3:10, NEB; KVJ, “that there shall not be room enough to receive it”). The word first appears in Exod. 36:5 and is preceded by the preposition day: “The people bring much more than enough for the service of the work, which the Lord commanded to make.”
There are many special uses of day where the basic meaning is in the background and the context dictates a different nuance. In Job 39:25 the word preceded by the preposition be may be rendered “as often as”: “As often as the trumpet sounds he says, Aha!” (NASB). When preceded by the preposition ke, “as,” the word usually means “according to”: “… The judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number” (Deut. 25:2). Preceded by day, “from,” the word sometimes means “regarding the need.” This illuminates passages such as 1 Sam. 7:16: “And he [Samuel] went from year to year [according to the need of each year; NASB, “annually”] in circuit to Beth-el …” (cf. Isa. 66:23). In other places this phrase (day preceded by min) signifies “as often as”: “Then the princes of the Philistines went forth: and it came to pass, after [NASB, “as often as”] they went forth, that David behaved himself more wisely than all the servants of Saul …” (1 Sam. 18:30).
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Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Sufficiency'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/s/sufficiency.html. 1940.
