My wife, Jan, and I were driving down a Michigan road at dusk the other night and she said, "Watch for deer." I replied, "Yes, dear." This is an English wordplay we have done countless times, playing on the fact that "deer", the animal, and "dear", a sweetheart, sound the same. (I'm not sure Jan still thinks this is funny, but she has learned to put up with me! She is patient with her patient! 😁)
Wordplay occurs in all languages. It is especially common in Old Testament Hebrew, where the wordplay would aid in memorization of the story and also keep the attention of listeners.
Wordplay, like the acrostic structure in an earlier post, disappears in translation from Hebrew to English and often has to be pointed out by footnotes. Occasionally the wordplay is explicitly mentioned in the text, but most of the time only the Hebrew listener would catch it.
In Ruth 4: 1, Boaz calls a man over to begin the negotiation for Ruth. The NIV has Boaz call the man "friend" but in the Hebrew the term is peloni almoni, a rhyming phrase that means "such and such," hiding the man's name for all eternity. The rhyming phrase might be better translated "mister mystery" to catch the flavor of the original wordplay.
Robert Alter's translations and commentaries give many examples of these. For example, in 1 Samuel 13: 7, the text says "the Hebrews had crossed the Jordan..." The uncommon description of the people as "Hebrews" is explained by the wordplay ivrim avru, two similar Hebrew words meaning "Hebrews crossed". In 1 Samuel 16: 23, Saul's finding relief from the evil spirit, involves the same base word; ruah is spirit and rawah is relief.
Samson’s riddle to his wedding guests in Judges 14:14, comes through quite well in most English translations. Based on his exploit of killing a lion and later discovering honey in its carcass, which he proceeds to eat, Samson poses the following riddle: “From-the-eater out-came eat[s] and from-the-strong out-came sweet[s]”... Samson does use assonance (the use of similar vowel sounds), alliteration (the use of same sounding consonants), and word repetition.
[Wordplay] is found in Judges 3: 8, 10. ... Othniel, battles Cushan Rishathaim from Aram Naharaim. Even in English we can pick up the obvious rhyme between Rishathaim and Naharaim. The NKJV spoils this rhyme by translating Aram Naharaim ... as Mesopotamia. ... [T]he name Cushan Rishathaim also is a clever wordplay. The word “Rishathaim” means “doubly wicked.” Cushan may also mean “dark,” and so Cushan Rishathaim means, “the dark doubly wicked one!” Clearly this is not the name that Cushan’s parents gave him! Rather, it is a clever twisting or substituting of vowels to produce a pun that mocks their adversary...
[I]n Judges 9 when a man named Gaal Ben Ebed strolls into the city of Shechem. Gaal Ben Ebed means “Loathesome son of a slave,” hardly the man’s real name. In cases like this, we will never know the real name of the individual, but we can take an educated guess. For example, by changing a couple of vowels, Gaal becomes “Goel” which means “redeemer.” Were the Israelites making fun of this man whose name may have meant “Redeemer” by calling him “Loathesome?” Remember that when writing ancient Hebrew (much like modern Hebrew) only consonants were used. Therefore, Gaal and Goel would look the same when written out.
[W]hen Jeremiah was called to be a prophet God says to him in Jeremiah 1:11, “What do you see Jeremiah?” The young prophet responds, “I see a branch of an almond tree.” The Lord responds, “I am watching over my word to perform it” (Jer. 1:12). In Hebrew the word for almond tree is shaqed, while the word for watching is shoqed. Since the almond tree was the first tree to bud in spring, the point of the wordplay is that God’s word will soon come to pass. ...
My favorite wordplay of this kind occurs in the story of Eli found in 1 Samuel chapters 1-4. We are told on two occasions that Eli has a weight problem. In 1 Samuel 2:29 the Lord accuses Eli and his sons of making themselves “fat with the best of all the offerings of Israel.” Later when Eli dies, the narrator tells us that Eli broke his neck when he fell backwards off his seat because he was old and heavy. The word heavy in Hebrew is kabed. It is from the same root as the Hebrew word for honor which is kabod. The story of Eli emphasizes that he has not honored the Lord (1 Sam. 2:30) Eli’s heaviness is directly related to the lack of honor that he has shown for God because it is his consumption of the stolen meat from the sacrifices that has contributed to his weight problem. The wordplay between kabed and kabod emphasizes the correspondence between the stolen sacrificial meat and the lack of honor given to God.... After Eli’s death, his daughter-in-law gives birth to a child that she names Ichabod ... [which] means ...“no glory”.
In Psalm 48, the Hebrew nowda in verse 4, translated by the NIV as "shown himself", is followed in the next line by nowadu (verse 5), translated as "joined forces". (God has nowda while the kings have nowadu.)
In Psalm 56: 8, the psalmist writes: "Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll..." The Hebrew is literally "Count my wanderings (nodi), my tears into your bottle (nod)...." The psalmist sings that his nodi are collected into God's nod.
In Psalm 69, in verses 30 and 31, the Hebrew word translated "song" is shiyr while the Hebrew translated "ox" is shor. David claims that praising God with shiyr will please God more than shor.
In 2 Kings 1: 6-8, Elijah has a message for the king, Ahaziah. Ahaziah identifies Elijah by the description "garment of hair and a leather belt." The Hebrew expression translated here "garment of hair" is baal sear , literally "lord of hair." The messengers were originally to go see Baal-Zebub (literally "lord of the flies") but instead met Baal-Sear ("lord of hair".)
In the same chapter, verses 11 and 12, the men of Ahaziah demand that "the man (ish) of God come down" but in response to their demand, "the fire (esh) of God comes down". They call for ish but get esh! (Be careful what you ask for!)
Other resources
- Biblicalarchaeology.org has an article on Wordplay in Genesis.
- Gary Rendsburg of Cornell has an article Wordplay in Biblical Hebrew.
- John Parsons at hebrew4christians.com has this short article.
- Verlyn Verbrugge has this short article on Hebrew wordplay.
- The Culture of the Bible blog argues in this article that Hebrew wordplay even shows up in some of the sayings of Jesus (once they are translated back into Hebrew.)
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