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Abarim Publications' Biblical Dictionary: The Old Testament Hebrew word: חוה

Source: https://www.abarim-publications.com/Dictionary/ht/ht-w-he.html

חוה

Abarim Publications' online Biblical Hebrew Dictionary

חוה

Scholars insist that the form חוה (hwh) occurs over three separate roots, which have nothing to do with each other. But anyone with some poetic merit will notice that the most fundamental idea beneath all three of these is the act of investing one's personal sovereignty into a living collective in order to form a symbiotic whole.

In nature this phenomenon occurs when molecules cluster up "voluntarily" to form living cells, or when many living cells form one organism or when many human minds form one living culture.

In the Bible this phenomenon is described most clearly in Genesis 2:7, where God gathers the dust of the earth into a viable composition and injects into it the breath of life. He performs the exact same miracle but at a different scale of complexity when he gathers the descendants of Abraham (who were to be like the dust of the earth; Genesis 13:16) into a viable composition and releases into that gathering the Spirit (Acts 2:1-2).

חוה I

The root חוה (hwh) is unused in the Bible, so we don't exactly know what it means. But BDB Theological Dictionary reports of an identical verb in Arabic that means to collect or gather. The derived feminine noun חוה (hawwa), means tent-village (Deuteronomy 3:14, Joshua 13:30).

חוה II

The verb חוה (hawa II) meaning to show, tell, make known. This Hebrew verb occurs six times in the Bible (mostly in Job: Job 15:17, 32:6) but the Aramaic equivalent (also spelled חוה, hawa) occurs fourteen times in the Book of Daniel (Daniel 4:2, 5:7). Its obvious derivative אחוה ('ahwah), meaning declaration, occurs once, in Job 13:17. Note that this noun is spelled identical to the noun אחוה ('ahawa), meaning brotherhood.

חוה III

The verb חוה (hawa III) meaning to prostrate oneself, specifically out of sheer politeness (Genesis 18:2, 23:7), in submission to a superior (Exodus 11:8, Esther 3:2) or in worship of God (Judges 7:15, 1 Chronicles 29:20). This verb occurs 170 times in the Bible.


Associated Biblical names