(BA) Genesis 2:21, tardemah

...

31 July 2022 Navigate 'up to the Genesis index: index-genesis.

From the Revised Version:

And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man . . .

The RV's "deep sleep" is not two Hebrew words, but one: tardemah. What does tardemah mean, exactly? How can we know? How can we know what any word in any language means? By looking through how it is used. In the case of tardemah, the word appears seven times in the Bible.

Here, Yahweh God causes a tardemah to fall on Adam prior to performing surgery. When Abram is about to have an encounter with God, a tardemah falls upon him (Genesis 15:12). David manages to steal some of Saul's personal effects because God caused a tardemah to fall on Saul and his soldiers, leaving them too soundly asleep to hear David creeping up (1 Samuel 26:12). The book of Job twice speaks of divine messages coming to people when a tardemah falls (4:13, 33:15). Isaiah preaches of how the people of Judah's ignorance is a result of Yahweh pouring out a spirit of tardemah and closing their eyes -- their prophets and rulers. And finally, Proverbs 19:15 teaches that laziness causes tardemah to fall.

How to sum up those examples and extract the vital essence of the word? Let us put it this way. Tardemah would seem to be a synonym of sleep, but carries a more serious tone. Nobody gets a little sleepy and grabs himself some tardemah. Instead, tardemah falls, or is made to fall by Yahweh. It is associated with divine messages -- either causing them to be heard or preventing them from being heard. And the danger of laziness is not that it might cause someone to nap, but that it might bring down tardemah.