Abarim Publications' online Biblical Hebrew Dictionary
כסה I
The verb כסה (kasa) means to cover, either in order to protect something vulnerable or to conceal something shameful. It's very common in the Bible, and is used to describe how clothes cover a person (Genesis 9:23, Ezekiel 16:10), wings an angel (Isaiah 6:2), the deep the earth (Psalm 104:6), the sea the Egyptians (Exodus 14:28), sea-waves Babylon (Jeremiah 51:42), locusts the land (Exodus 10:5), frogs the land (Exodus 8:2), quails a camp (Exodus 16:13), dust a city (Ezekiel 26:10), camels Jerusalem (Isaiah 60:6), darkness the earth (Isaiah 60:2), leprosy the skin (Leviticus 13:12), God's glory the heavens (Habakkuk 3:3), a cloud the heavens (Psalm 147:8), a cloud the sun (Ezekiel 32:7), a cloud the land (Ezekiel 30:18).
One can cover one's face (Genesis 38:15), one's transgressions (Job 31:33), one's hatred (Proverbs 10:18), a pit (Exodus 21:33), an evil general (Judges 4:19), or God's lovingkindness (Psalm 40:10).
Our verb frequently occurs in reference to the tabernacle. The theophanic cloud first covered the mountain (Exodus 24:15), and then the tent of meeting (Exodus 40:34, Numbers 9:15). A cloud of incense was to cover the כפרת (kapporet) or "mercy-seat", the cherubim covered the ark and its poles (2 Chronicles 5:8), curtains covered panels (Exodus 26:13), and cloths and hides covered all utensils and furniture (Numbers 4:6-15). Most tellingly, love covers all transgressions (Proverbs 10:12).
From this verb derive:
- The masculine noun כסוי (kasuy), meaning covering (Numbers 4:6 and 4:14 only).
- The feminine noun כסות (kesut), meaning covering. This noun is essentially a plural and refers primarily to (sets or outfits of) clothing: Exodus 21:10, Job 24:7, but also a "covering" of a debt (Genesis 20:16) and the concealment (or lack thereof) of Sheol and Abaddon (Job 26:6), as neatly contrasted by the darkness with which God "covers" the heavens (Isaiah 50:3).
- The masculine noun מכסה (mikseh), which rather describes an item of coverage or a thing that covers: the uppermost hatches of Noah's ark (Genesis 8:13), or the outermost coverings of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:14, Numbers 3:25).
- The masculine noun מכסה (mekasseh), also referring to some agent of coverage: fat covering inner organs (Leviticus 9:19), worms covering a corpse (Isaiah 14:11), someone's flamboyant attire (Isaiah 23:18).
כסה II
The identical verb כסה (kasa) means to bind, or so it is assumed. It exists in Assyrian with a meaning of to bind or fetter (and hence to capture and take prisoner), and the only reason why it's been assumed to exist in Hebrew as well is because of:
- The feminine noun כסת (keset), which refers to some kind of magic ornamental band to be worn around one's wrists. It occurs in Ezekiel 13:18 and 13:20 only, in reference to hunting souls like birds, and from a position of concealment by means of some kind of veil.
כסא כסה I
The masculine noun כסא (kisse) or כסה (kisse) means throne — or more specifically: the "seat" of governmental authority, in Greek: θρονος (thronos) — and whether or not this word is in technical truth indeed etymologically related to the previous, the informal and poetic association is obvious. As Ezekiel writes: "Now above the expanse that was over their heads there was something resembling a throne" (Ezekiel 1:26), which implies that the throne was considered an object whose primary appearance was that it hovered over everybody's head, and that from it emanated a broad expanse, radially outward from the throne and below the throne but still over everybody's head.
All this is in obvious reference to the second creation day, during which the firmament severs the waters into waters above and below the firmament. The throne, it must be stressed, is not "above" the firmament in the same dimension as the one half of the waters that is now "above" the firmament. These two entities do not share a dimension or space. The waters that are beneath the firmament are beneath the firmament because they subject themselves to the firmament, and the governing lights that God places in that firmament on day four. Being "beneath" the firmament means to be in obedient subjection to the firmament, so that there is one unbroken line of harmony between God, the throne, the firmament and waters beneath the firmament. The waters "above" the firmament do not subject themselves to the governance of the firmament and go their own dark way, which is not a way that comes anywhere close to the throne. So no, these waters and the throne are not in the same space "above" the firmament.
And the key here is that freedom follows discipline: freedom of speech, for instance, only happens when we first subject ourselves to the rules of language and abide by them. Likewise, freedom to travel only happens when we first learn the rules of traffic and abide by them. Freedom follows from law, and without law there cannot be freedom. This is why the law must exist in a fulfilled state within the deity before the deity has the freedom to create, which is a clause of the law that sums up the law and that must exist before the law does, so that the deity is never not-free to do whatever the deity wants (see John 1:1 relative to Matthew 7:12). This divine, law-based freedom is the freedom for which Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1): certainly not a freedom from law, but freedom by law (see our article on ελευθερια, eleutheria, freedom-by-law). It's this law that James calls the "perfect law, the law of liberty" (James 1:25).
From the throne emanates the heavenly firmament, which becomes the sword that enters the waters that exist separate from the throne and separates these waters into two halves: (1) one half that is haughty and not beneath the firmament and hence the throne and goes its own way, which is into darkness and bondage, and is hence heard from no more, and (2) one half that is "beneath" (i.e. obediently subjected to the authority of) the firmament, in which the heavenly lights appear, who teach the skill of freedom to the earthlings. From the waters "under" the firmament (which subject themselves to the governance of the lights in the firmament, which in turn subject themselves to the authority of the throne) comes dry land, and from the dry land emerge living things.
This second-day image is among the most contemplated and most utilized in the Bible (and beyond, as it's also prominent in Kabbalah; see our article on σμαραγδινος, smaragdinos, meaning "emeralden", which appears in Revelation 4:3), and shows up in stories that range from the two sons of Eber, of which Joktan produces the haughty tower of Babel and Peleg the obedient house of Abraham (Genesis 10:25), to "heavenly" Israel crossing the Sea of Reeds (Exodus 14:6), to "heavenly" Solomon judging the two mothers (1 Kings 3:21), to "heavenly" Jesus between the two murderers (Luke 23:43; note that the word "Christian" originally meant "under Christ").
Since antiquity, thrones were often equipped with a canopy (in later times dubbed baldachin), but the core idea of a throne is that it is the local and physical seat (Exodus 11:5) of a non-local and non-physical authority that covers the realm like a spirit (or a mother chicken: Matthew 23:37) hovering over it and covering it and protecting it (Genesis 1:2, Psalm 91:4).
There were bigger and smaller thrones, as there were superior and inferior authorities (Genesis 41:40, Ezekiel 26:16, also see Colossians 1:16). Our noun could refer to an actual physical chair (Judges 3:20, 1 Kings 2:19, Esther 5:1), but with the explicit understanding that in the old world, chairs were rare and only the highest dignitaries sat on them. Ordinary people had no chairs, and being allowed to sit (on the floor) in the presence of some important person required the sitter to "bend the knee", which is where the verb to bless comes from: verb ברך (barak) means to bless or literally "do the knee thing". Noun ברך (berek) means knee.
Most fundamentally, our noun כסא (kisse) refers to the covenantal idea of the seat of a realm's formal authority (2 Samuel 14:9, Isaiah 14:9, Zechariah 6:13), which means that this seat may very well not be inside the realm but instead exist somewhere beyond it: moved to be a member of a senatorial or imperial assembly (Jeremiah 1:15). From the Greek for "to be seated", namely εζομαι (hezomai), comes the noun εδρα (hedra), meaning seat, from which comes the familiar term συνεδριον (sunedrion), which is Sanhedrin: the "joint-seatedness" of a governmental council (Jeremiah 3:17).
Such a council is precisely what exists in heaven (or rather: what heaven exists as), which in turn is centered upon God's throne (1 Kings 22:19, Psalm 82:1, Isaiah 66:1, Matthew 5:34). At this point, it's prudent to point out that the word for heaven, namely שמים (shemayim), looks first of all like a proper contraction of אשר מים ('asher mayim), or "which is waters" (hence the pun in Jeremiah 10:13), and secondly like a proper dual (i.e. a plural of two) of the word שם (shem), meaning name or noun (hence the pun in Nehemiah 9:6).
In other words, in its most abstract sense, "earth" is anything that is material, from the deepest terrestrial ocean floor to the clouds in the sky and the farthest reaches of outer space, whereas "heaven" is anything that is mental (made from mind or consciousness), from the most modest acts of data management within an amoeba's "mind", to you reading this article, to the most formidable insight that all words add up to one consciousness and somehow fit together like puzzle pieces (Romans 8:28) or the branches of one tree (Daniel 4:11, Matthew 13:32). This also explains that God created reality by first creating words (the "heavens" of Genesis 1:1) and only then the things that represent the words (rather than the other way around), namely by pronouncing the words he had created before. Said simpler (and probably too simple, but so be it): God first created the verb "to be" and then the noun "light", and then said: "let there be light", so that therefore light could begin to be (hence Matthew 4:4, and see our article on Adam for more on what the creation story is actually talking about). But all this means — and this is nothing new: this idea has existed for more than 2,500 years — that we earthlings are living in a simulation that runs on the software that is the language spoken by God (Romans 1:20).
The Word of God, of course, is the one Word that sums up all words (John 21:25), which is the word that is as One as God himself is (John 17:21-24), and hence "was" before there was heavenly multiplicity, or even duality, which explains why the Word was, with God, within the beginning, when there was only Oneness (John 1:1). All this in turn means that human language is not a thing that humans made by themselves but rather a thing that sits within the very fabric of creation and emerges naturally (Genesis 4:26), as it is gradually discovered, like the mental version of the standard model of elementary particles or the period table of elements (Psalm 93:2). The "three days" that Jesus was in the grave correlate to the first three days of creation. On the fourth, the agents of light appear in the firmament and begin to govern the earth (relate Genesis 1:14-18 to Isaiah 9:2-6).
כסא כסה II
A curious identical noun meaning [full] moon appears twice in the Bible: Proverbs 7:20 speaks of the full moon (כסא, kisse) as the time at which one's husband returns, and in Psalm 81:3 a similar festive event is planned at the time of כסה (kisse), contrasting חדש (hodesh), new moon. This word is commonly considered to be completely separate from the previous, but here at Abarim Publications we see no reason for that, as the association with celestial objects (and sunrise versus moonset or shepherd versus dog) is obvious. Also see our article on שחר (shahar), solar eclipse, γαλα (gala), meaning milk (hence the word galaxy or Milky Way, which explains the joke that the moon might be made of cheese), and κοσμος (kosmos), which describes the great heavenly human world of rules and regulations, which sets it apart from the animal world of lawlessness.
כיס
The noun כיס (kis) means purse or bag. This word is rare and occurs only five times: Proverbs 1:14 speaks of combining lots in a single purse, which is what in Latin times became known as "fascism" (see our article on Three Taverns). Isaiah 46:6 speaks of units of gold and silver in such a purse, from which someone makes a "god", and such a god would be the ruler of that person's reality. Both these texts ultimately speak of forms of government or at least forms of societal organization.
Deuteronomy 25:13, Proverbs 16:11 and Micah 6:11 warn that one's purse is not to have different sized weights, which obviously emphasizes the economic importance of standardization: cheating with weights might give a scrupulous merchant a temporary advantage but in the long run, predictability and transparency creates trading empires whereas an unfair merchant is soon abandoned (or beaten up and robbed). Also note that a proper and complex language can only emerge when definitions of words are precise and widely agreed upon. Since the primary concern of the Bible is the anastatis of language (i.e. the "evolution" of consciousness), this word כיס (kis) also metaphorizes what in modern times would become the dictionary (Matthew 5:37).
כוס I
The noun כוס (kus) means cup, and is quite possibly etymologically related to the previous word, and if not, then certainly associated in a poetic sense. Our word often simply seems to refer to a physical cup to drink from, but in the story's background always linger hints to government: from the royal cup in Pharaoh's hand (Genesis 40:11) to that of Joseph, which ended up in Benjamin's bag (Genesis 44:2: the word for cup used here is גביע, gabia') to probably the most famous cup in the Bible, the one used by Jesus at the Last Supper (Matthew 26:27; the word is ποτηριον, poterion, which relates to the familiar noun ποταμος, potamos, river).
The lip of the temple's great bronze sea was like that of a כוס (kus), suggesting that this templar sea represented a similar element (or societal reaction to it) of government in Solomon's government as the cup in Pharaoh's hand had in Egypt (1 Kings 7:26, also see Jeremiah 51:7, Ezekiel 23:31-33). Psalm 11:6 speaks of fire and brimstone in the cup of the wicked, which likewise appears to concern societal unrest rather than anyone's favorite beverage (also see Psalm 16:5, 23:5, Jeremiah 16:7). Psalm 75:8 envisions the כוס (kus) in the very hand of YHWH (and see Psalm 110:1, Habakkuk 2:16), containing wine, which obviously also refers to cooperating people (Isaiah 5:1, see John 15:5). Psalm 116:13 even speaks of the כוס ישועות (kos yes'uot) or "cup of salvation" (also see Isaiah 51:17-22, Jeremiah 25:15-17; also see Jeremiah 25:28 and 49:12 relative to Matthew 26:39).
כוס II
Identical to כוס (kus) meaning cup (which symbolizes elements of society's reaction to elements of government), noun כוס (kus) refers to some sort of unclean bird. It's entirely unclear what bird this might be, but it's prudent to note that taxonomy works entirely different in classical Hebrew than it does in modern English or Latin. One main difference is that Hebrew recognizes animals according to their behavior much rather than to their outer looks. To give an example: in Hebrew, something that resembles a lion (ארי, 'ari) is anything that collects or gathers up (ארה, 'ara) animals, or rather that causes a herd to contract and huddle up in fear of being eaten. The feminine version of the masculine noun ארי ('ari), herd-compacter (i.e. lion), is אריה ('urya), meaning crib or manger, which is a thing around which animals huddle to eat. So what is stronger than a lion (Judges 14:18)? That would be a crib (and note that the masculine version of the feminine word דברה, debora, bee, is דבר, dabar, Word).
What modern species or class of bird the word כוס (kus) might describe is hard to tell. Our word appears in Leviticus 11:17 and Deuteronomy 14:16, as the first of three birds, within a larger list of birds that are all named after specific behaviors rather than looks, evolutionary origin, genetic classification or anything resembling modern taxonomy. Our word appears a third time, in Psalm 102:6, where it describes a dweller of ruins, parallel to the קאת (qata) of the wilderness, and this latter word קאת (qata) appears to derive from the verb קוא (qo'), to vomit. All this suggests that perhaps our bird כוס (kus) was known for its regurgitating of pellets: items like hair and bones that the bird swallowed but which it can't digest, and which remain in its glandular stomach until the accumulation of it is large enough to expel.
Birds that cast pellets are commonly carnivorous (owls, falcons, seagulls), which means that they would or might eat unclean animals, which in turn would make them unclean. That may be one of the reasons why these birds ended up on the list of unclean animals. Another reason might be that the Bible's dietary laws are mostly concerned with the effects that foods have on people's minds (as noted above, the Bible's main concern is the evolution of consciousness and thus that of language), and the act of eating closely resembles the act of learning (see our article on οδους, odous, tooth).
That said, just like the wrong sorts of food can cause physical sickness or even death, so the wrong sorts of information can make one's mind sick or dead. A mature person, and particularly a scientifically informed person, doesn't have to be "forbidden" certain foods, and that person will willingly eat their veggies before they start dessert and eat fruit instead of candy, and that has nothing to do with certain foods being in any way unclean or unholy. Entirely likewise, to a mature person, there is no forbidden knowledge and there is no forbidden experience. But a mature person will know about diseases of the mind, and what sort of experience has been known to bring these about.
This does not mean that certain people's refraining from eating certain forbidden foods is in any way silly. Quite the opposite is true. Our celebrated human society has gone belly up quite a few times, after which it had to be rebooted. And that reboot was possible because certain people were the living backup drive from which the whole of humanity could be rebooted. In our present time, humanity is facing its greatest collapse ever, with a wall of madness and death barreling down upon us. Humanity will collectively lose its mind, but the world will be resurrected from a small remnant of people who have the lists of do's and don'ts securely saved in their own minds.
For now, our bird called כוס (kus) embodies the kind of mind that scrolls indiscriminately through an endless array of information, and on occasion barfs out whatever it could never digest. A furball doesn't look like the original mouse, and the bird won't recognize that furball as anywhere near similar to a mouse. It just comes out, from no particularly obvious source. That means that the mental equivalent of a furball will not look at all like the original information, but the information that does come out is as alien and revolting to the producer as to the audience upon which this mental furball is projected.
And so the woke therapists among us speak of inexplicable psychoses and outbursts on one end, and flings and adventures and going off-roading on the other, which is an elaborate euphemism for screwing your life up and going off the rails for reasons that are beyond your own comprehension, and only because you absorbed tons of crap that you are not designed to process. The Bible strongly urges you to stop scrolling like you have no sense, and only target the information that you willingly and knowingly crave. And the good stuff, the really good stuff, is abundantly available. Just go anywhere there are people, and simply converse. And turn your phone off.