Language Studies

Hebrew Thoughts

mûwth - מוּת (Strong's #4191)
To die, be dead, death

mûwth 'to die, be dead, death' מוּת (Strong's #4191)

"but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17, JPS)

מוּת mûwth " be dead, die" (Strong's #4191, x835) is a common Semitic and Phoenician root word meaning "death". The middle root letter וּ appears to be a softening of a 'liquid' ר over time, so that the original word might have been מרת m-r-t.

This is evident in both ancient and modern words like mortal, French mort, Latin mortis and Greek μορτος Compare also, with the 't' hardened to a 'd', the old German mord used of death and killing, and English murder.

Ben Jonson even cites mort as derogatory slang for woman: "Male gypsies all, not a mort among them".

Interestingly, in Ancient Egypt, Mut was the wife of Amun and meant "mother". Though she (occasionally he) was depicted as a vulture it was not meant negatively for their carrion eating but for their mothering and myth that they reproduced without males.

It first occurs in Genesis 2:17, in the Edenic promise of some kind of certain death from eating of the tree of knowledge. Much debate has raged since on whether that was physical and/or spiritual death. One thing it was not, was immediate. The Hebrew uses an emphatic literary style device of repeating the word, מוֹת תָּמוּת môwth tâmûwth, to represent the translation "surely die". When Eve repeats this to the serpent in Genesis 3:3-4 she omits the repetitive מוֹת môwth but the serpent doubles it up again in reply, adding לא lô’ "not" - "you shall not surely die".

Its next use is in Genesis 5:5-31 in the genealogical list of ages and deaths, there representing natural end of years death: "And all the days of so-and-so which he lived were X years, and he died". Not just human death, but animal death is described during the Flood, by the same language, albeit due to supernatural disaster (Gensesis 7:22).

As with the brevity of life, so the brief construction of just five words in the Hebrew of Exodus 21:12: מַכֵּה אִישׁ וָמֵת מוֹת יוּמָת makkêh ’îysh vâmêth môwth yûmâth "He who strikes a man, so that he dies, shall surely be put to death" (NAS). This has מוּת mûwth repeated three times in a row in different forms. Most of Exodus 21:14-22:2 continues in the same vein.

Metaphorically, one's heart can die within (1 Samuel 25:37), or Job can refer to wisdom dying (Job 12:2) or the root of a plant in the earth (Job 14:8), but not of plant death itself. Indeed, these are probably the rare handful of figurative uses that exist in the Hebrew Bible.

Somewhat more than a figurative use is intended when Aaron describes Miriam's leprous skin and his plea for healing: "Let her not be כַּמֵּת kammêth as death, whose flesh is half consumed, when coming out of a mother's womb" (Numbers 12:12).

Although it occurs 835 times as a verb, sometimes verb and noun are hard to tell apart and thus Jenni and Westermann count 1000 combined occurrences by including the noun מָוֶת mâweth "dead, die" (Strong's #4194, x160).

Death and the Underworld are personified as Mot among the Canaanites, a rival of Ba'al. In popular culture Terry Pratchett personified DEATH in smallcaps but his understudy as Mort, the title of one of his best known DiscWorld novels.

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