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חוּם ḥūm – dark brown(?)

Semantic Fields: Colours   
Author(s): John E. Hartley
First published: 2025-08-01
Citation: John E. Hartley, חוּם ḥūm – dark brown(?),
               Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database (sahd-online.com), 2025

This entry is based on the article חוּם in John E. Hartley, The Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Colour Lexemes (2010), 143-45 (Printed publications).

Introduction

Grammatical Type: adjective

Occurrences: 4x HB (4/0/0); 0x Sir; 0x Qum; 0x inscr. (Total: 4).

  • Torah: Gen 30:32, 33, 35, 40.

1. Root and Comparative Material

A.1 KBL3 identifies the root as either חום or חמם.1 Gradwohl prefers חמם, ‘warm sein’; in his judgement it is the colour that results from something being burned (Gradwohl 1963:50; also Beyse 1977:1047). Brenner, however, is not persuaded by Gradwohl’s proposal (Brenner 1982:122).

A.2 See חמם.

2. Formal Characteristics

A.1 The form is qūl (BL, 452, §61r) or qull (BL, 455, §61fʹ).

3. Syntagmatics

A.1 חוּם stands both in an attribute position with שֶׂה (Gen 30:32) and as a predicative adjective (Gen 30:33). It also occurs as a substantivised adjective for sheep of this colour (Gen 30:35, 40). In the latter usage it is followed by a prepositional phrase identifying this species as belonging to the sheep בַּכְּשָׂבִים (Gen 30:35) or the flock בְּצֹאן (Gen 30:40).

4. Ancient Versions

a. Septuagint (LXX):

  • φαιός, ‘grey, dark complexioned’:5 Gen 30:32, 33, 35;
  • ποικίλος, ‘multi-coloured, variegated, spotted’:6 Gen 30:40.

b. Peshitta (Pesh):

  • ܐܟܡ (ʾāḵem), ‘black’ (part. peal),7 here possibly ‘speckled’:7a Gen 30:32, 33, 35, 40.

c. Targum (Tg):

  • שְׁחוֹם, ‘dark, black’:8 TgO Gen 30:32, 33, 35, 40; similarly TgSmrA Gen 30:32, 33, 40;
  • לחושׁ, a colour,9 possibly ‘flaming, red’8: TgN/PsJ Gen 30:32, 33, 35, 40; similarly TgSmrJ: לוש, ‘dark (colour)’.11

d. Vulgate (Vg):

  • furvus, ‘dark-coloured, dark, black’: Gen 30:32, 33, 40. For Gen 30:35, see A.2.

A.1 LXX, TgO and Vg gloss חוּם with a lexeme that represents a dark colour to black. The colour represented by Aram. לחושׁ, the gloss in TgN and TgPsJ, has not been determined. Pesh’s gloss ܐܟܡ (ʾāḵem), supported by LXX’s gloss ποικίλος, ‘multi-coloured’, in Gen 30:40, suggests that these translators considered that חוּם conveyed a pattern more than a hue. In any case it is clear that the translators sought to differentiate חוּם from שָׁחֹר (Brenner 1982:122-23), but they were no longer aware of the precise meaning of this archaic Heb. lexeme, other than it signaled a ‘non-white’ colour.

A.2 Jerome (Vg) offers a free rendering of Gen 30:35 and includes the gloss niger, ‘black’, probably because of the presence of חוּם in the MT, but the Vg reading is not a one to one equivalent of the Heb. The free translation of Gen 30:35 impacts the way Jerome glosses Gen 30:40.

5. Lexical/Semantic Fields

A.1 Rashi glosses חוּם with שָׁחוּם דּוֹמֶה לְאָדֹם, ‘dark, somewhat reddish’, apparently influenced by לחושׁ in TgPsJ.14 Shalem gives ‘dark red’, inclining to ‘black’ (1932:68). The relationship between חוּם and שָׁחֹר is difficult to assess since חוּם occurs only for sheep in Gen 30 and שָׁחֹר only occurs in Lev 13 in reference to hair, though the שׁחר root is more widely attested. Brenner proposes that because of the ancient versions—especially the LXX, which has the gloss φαιός, ‘grey, dark complexioned’, for three of the four occurrences of חוּם and ποικίλος, ‘multi-coloured, variegated’, for the other one and prefers μέλας, ‘black’, for שָׁחֹר—חוּם may be a specification of שָׁחֹר (Brenner 1982:122-23). She classifies it as a submember of the class שָׁחֹר. She is on the right tract; probably חוּם was a contextualised colour lexeme for a species of sheep with coats ranging in colour from ‘reddish brown’ to ‘dark brown’ and ‘black’.15

A.2 חוּם בַּכְּשָׂבִים (Gen 30:33, 35) stands in contrast to נָקֹד וְטָלוּא בָּעִזִּים, ‘white spotted or streaked among goats’. These contextualised colour lexemes refer to non-dominant members of the respective species in the flock.

6. Exegesis

A.1 In one of several contracts for shepherding Laban’s flocks, Jacob was to receive the lambs born dark brown or black חוּם (Gen 30:25-43). Since Jacob’s plan was to win an agreement from Laban whereby he could use his breeding skills to build his own flock from the offspring born a non-dominant colour, it may be assumed that חוּם identified a species of sheep having a non-dominant colour.

B.1 The commentator Jacob argues that חוּם is unlikely ‘black’, for black sheep are dominant in the Near East (Jacob 1934:604). He takes the position that ‘es ist wohl das an Schafen häufige, leicht in Schwarz übergehende Rostrot’ (Jacob 1934:604). While it is difficult to assess the correctness of his claim about the colour of most sheep in that ancient era, given the dominant light colour of present-day sheep, the burden of proof lies with his position.

7. Conclusion

A.1 חוּם is attested only in Early Biblical Hebrew, being used to identify certain kind of sheep by their dark colour, either ‘rust’, ‘dark brown’, or ‘black’.16 That is, חוּם functions as a contextualised colour lexeme used by ancient shepherds. Thus it is not a salient colour lexeme. It appears to have dropped out of usage in Late Biblical Hebrew.

Bibliography

For the abbreviations see the List of Abbreviations.

Beyse 1977
K.-M. Beyse, ‘חֹם ḥom, חָם ḥām, חוּם ḥûm, חַמָּה ḥammāh, חַמָּן ḥammān’, ThWAT 2:1045-50.
Brenner 1982
Athalya Brenner, Colour Terms in the Old Testament (JSOTSup, 21), Sheffield: JSOT Press.
Gradwohl 1963
Roland Gradwohl, Die Farben im Alten Testament: Eine terminologische Studie (BZAW, 83), Berlin: Töpelmann.
Jacob 1934
Benno Jacob, Das erste Buch der Tora Genesis übersetzt und erklärt, Berlin: Schocken Verlag.
Rosenbaum & Silbermann 1973
M. Rosenbaum, A.M. Silbermann, Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, Haphtaroth and Rashi's Commentary, Jerusalem: published by the Silbermann family.
Shalem 1932
N. Shalem, ‘לשׁמות הצבעים בעברית’, Leshonenu 4:61-66.

Notes

  1. Similarly HALOT, 297; Ges18, ii:330. ↩

  2. GELS, 579a; LSJ, 1913a. ↩

  3. GELS, 469a. ↩

  4. Payne Smith, CSD, 16a; Sokoloff, SLB, 42b. ↩

  5. Payne Smith, CSD, 16a. ↩

  6. Jastrow, DTT, p. 1545b. ↩

  7. Sokoloff, DJPA, p. 280b. ↩

  8. Jastrow, DTT, p. 702a. ↩

  9. Tal, DSA, 434 s.v. 2לחש. TgSmrA Gen 32:35: לעוש. ↩

  10. Rashi, translated by Rosenbaum & Silbermann 1929-34:144. ↩

  11. Beyse (1977:1047) gives the glosses ‘bräunlich, schwärzlich, braun-schwarz’. ↩

  12. Similarly DCHR, iii:175. ↩

Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database