The half or middle
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H2677 names a half, a divided portion, or the middle point of a measured whole. It can describe one of two shares, the midpoint of time, half of a territory or group, and conventional expressions such as midnight.
Reader summary
Full entry for חֵצִי (H2677) · Open the biblical lexicon
H2677 names a half, a divided portion, or the middle point of a measured whole. It can describe one of two shares, the midpoint of time, half of a territory or group, and conventional expressions such as midnight.
The BSB source-word alignment has 125 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include half (26), and the half-tribe (16), and a half (15), and half (8), and a half cubits (4).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Exodus 12:29. Its strongest book concentrations include Joshua (29), Exodus (20), 1 Chronicles (13), Nehemiah (13).
H2677 names a half, a divided portion, or the middle point of a measured whole. It can describe one of two shares, the midpoint of time, half of a territory or group, and conventional expressions such as midnight. The word itself expresses proportion or position; it does not say whether the division is wise, cruel, generous, literal, approximate, or rhetorical.
In 1Kgs. 3. 25, Solomon’s command to divide the living child and give half to each claimant exposes the true mother’s compassion within a judicial test; the verse is not approving harm to a child. In Esth. 5. 3, the king’s offer of up to half the kingdom is royal speech expressing expansive favor, not a precise transfer contract. In Dan. 9. 27, the middle of the week locates an event within an apocalyptic timetable whose interpretation requires attention to the whole vision and the history of its reception.
H2677 opens teaching on measured portions, divided communities, incomplete knowledge, and decisive midpoints. It corrects the habit of making the numerical idea of half carry moral meaning by itself, and it restrains prophetic systems that build certainty from one time expression while neglecting genre, context, and canonical fulfillment. Faithful use distinguishes quantity from evaluation and direct wording from interpretive conclusions.
H2677 ranges across ordinary division, territorial and tribal portions, midpoints in time, rhetorical descriptions, and prophetic chronology. Scripture may use a half to describe equity, humiliation, incompleteness, abundance, or judgment, but those evaluations arise from the event and literary setting rather than the fraction itself.
And the king declared, “Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other.”
Solomon orders the living child divided in two as part of a judicial test that reveals the true mother through her willingness to surrender her claim so the child may live.
“What is it, Queen Esther?” the king inquired. “What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be given to you.”
The king welcomes Esther and offers to grant her request even up to half the kingdom, signaling royal favor before her petition is disclosed.
And he will confirm a covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of the temple will come the abomination that causes desolation, until the decreed destruction is poured out upon him.”
Daniel’s vision places the ending of sacrifice and offering in the middle of a week within a dense prophecy of covenant, desolation, and decreed judgment.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Denotes half or middle portion; used for time divisions (midnight) and spatial/quantitative partitions.
Denotes half or middle portion; used for time divisions (midnight) and spatial/quantitative partitions.
the half or middle BDB: half Usage: half, middle, mid(-night), midst, part, two parts.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
חֵצִי is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H2677 is a word of proportion and midpoint, not an independent moral verdict. Solomon’s proposed division of the child is deliberately intolerable, and the narrative uses the true mother’s compassion to disclose wisdom; the fraction does not sanctify the act. Ahasuerus’s offer of half the kingdom communicates lavish royal willingness within courtly speech, not necessarily a surveyed conveyance of territory.
Daniel’s middle of the week identifies a point in a symbolic prophetic sequence, but the word half cannot by itself settle the referent, chronology, or relation to later fulfillment. Across these passages, faithful reading names the whole, the portion, and the speaker’s purpose. A divided quantity may expose injustice, describe administration, mark a boundary in time, or strengthen rhetoric.
Theological teaching should therefore resist numerological shortcuts. God’s wisdom can expose hidden motives through a proposed division, providence can work through royal speech and courageous petition, and prophecy can announce judgment and covenant purposes without giving interpreters permission to manufacture certainty. H2677 contributes the idea of half or middle; the surrounding passage supplies the moral, historical, and eschatological claim.
1Kgs.3.25
H2677 is a Hebrew noun meaning half or middle. It can identify one divided share, a midpoint within time or space, half of a people or territory, and idiomatic temporal expressions such as midnight.
Old Testament divisions of land, people, goods, and time form part of the biblical vocabulary of stewardship and judgment. The New Testament likewise uses portions and temporal midpoints in ordinary and figurative ways, while locating salvation in God’s appointed time through Christ. That canonical continuity does not make separate Hebrew and Greek terms interchangeable or settle disputed readings of Daniel by vocabulary alone.