Lexicon

H3513 - kabed

Strong's: H3513 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: kaw-BADE Part of speech: verb (primitive root) OT occurrences: tagged 120 times in 108 verses in the Strong's-tagged ASV (a common verb) Core range: to be heavy, weighty; hence to be burdensome or grievous, to be honored or glorious, and, of the heart, ears or eyes, to be dull or unresponsive.

Semantic range

Kabed is one root with two faces that look opposite in English and are one idea in Hebrew: weight.

• Heavy, burdensome. Pharaoh orders "heavier work" laid on the Israelites (Exodus 5:9). The sin of Sodom is "very grievous" (Genesis 18:20).
• Weighty in substance. Abram was "very rich" (Genesis 13:2), heavy with goods.
• Weighty in honor. "Honor thy father and thy mother" (Exodus 20:12) is kabed: give them weight. "Them that honor me I will honor" (1 Samuel 2:30). The nations "shall glorify thy name" (Psalm 86:9). The noun from the same root is kavod, "glory."
• Heavy and dull. Used of the senses and the heart, the weight becomes unresponsiveness: "make their ears heavy" (Isaiah 6:10). In the other direction, "neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear" (Isaiah 59:1).

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Theological force: the hardening of Pharaoh

Kabed is one of three roots used for the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, alongside chazaq (make strong, 12 times) and qashah (make hard, twice). Kabed appears six times as verb or adjective (English verse numbers): 7:14; 8:15; 8:32; 9:7; 9:34; 10:1.

1. It is the verb of Pharaoh's own hardening. Every verse that names Pharaoh as the one who hardened his heart uses kabed (8:15; 8:32; 9:34). Pharaoh "made his heart heavy."
2. It is not reserved for Pharaoh. God is its subject at 10:1, "I have hardened his heart." The roots do not divide human from divine hardening, and they do not form a progression across the plagues.
3. The same root closes the story. At the sea God says, "I will get me honor upon Pharaoh" (Exodus 14:4; 14:17; 14:18), and the verb is kabed again. The man who made Israel's labor heavy (5:9) and his own heart heavy against God becomes the occasion of God's weighty glory.
4. Israel's later memory uses the same word. The Philistine priests warn: "Wherefore then do ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts?" (1 Samuel 6:6). Both verbs are kabed. The hardening is remembered as something Pharaoh and Egypt did.

See Hardening Pharaohs Heart and Hardening Pharaohs Heart Objection Defeater.

Apologetic load

1. The heart's weight and God's glory are one word. The skeptic reads the hardening as God manipulating a puppet. The vocabulary frames it as a contest of weights: Pharaoh gives weight to his own will, and God shows whose weight is real.
2. A caution against over-reading. Kabed is a common verb with a wide range. The observation that Pharaoh's self-hardening always uses it is a modest narrative pattern in three verses, not a theory of the hardening vocabulary. An older claim that the hardening verbs move from kabed in the early plagues to qashah and chazaq later is not supported by the text.
3. Honor is weight. "Honor thy father" means to treat parents as weighty, which connects the fifth commandment to the language of glory and gives the commandment more than a sentimental sense.

Notable verses

• Exodus 5:9, "let heavier work be laid upon the men"
• Exodus 8:15; 8:32; 9:34, Pharaoh "hardened his heart"
• Exodus 10:1, "I have hardened his heart"
• Exodus 14:4, "I will get me honor upon Pharaoh"
• Exodus 20:12, "Honor thy father and thy mother"
• 1 Samuel 6:6, "as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts"
• Isaiah 6:10, "make their ears heavy"

See also

Lexicon

• H3519 - kavod, "glory," the noun from the same root
• H2388 - chazaq, "make strong," the commonest hardening verb in Exodus

Concepts and defeaters

• Hardening Pharaohs Heart
• Hardening Pharaohs Heart Objection Defeater