Being humiliated or insulted receives its meaning from the actor, conduct and speaking voice the passage supplies. Boaz forbids his workers to insult Ruth while she gleans, giving a vulnerable person's dignity concrete protection.
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Full entry for כָּלַם (H3637) · Open the biblical lexicon
Being humiliated or insulted receives its meaning from the actor, conduct and speaking voice the passage supplies. Boaz forbids his workers to insult Ruth while she gleans, giving a vulnerable person's dignity concrete protection.
The BSB source-word alignment has 38 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include and humiliated (4), humiliated (4), and be ashamed (2), and disgraced (2), and embarrassed (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Numbers 12:14. Its strongest book concentrations include Ezekiel (6), Jeremiah (6), Psalms (6), Isaiah (5).
Being humiliated or insulted receives its meaning from the actor, conduct and speaking voice the passage supplies. Boaz forbids his workers to insult Ruth while she gleans, giving a vulnerable person's dignity concrete protection. David's envoys are humiliated by another ruler and allowed time in Jericho before returning. Jonathan grieves Saul's shameful treatment of David rather than endorsing the father's action.
Ezra also speaks of shame in a confession that names his community's wrongdoing, while Jeremiah reports empty water jars and humiliation during drought. Isaiah's speaker expresses confidence in the Lord's help despite narrated scorn. These settings prevent shame from becoming one proof of the sufferer's guilt. Read imposed insult, admitted wrongdoing and distress separately.
Protect dignity where harm is inflicted, retain confession where voiced and avoid using a person's humiliation as permission for further exposure, blame or forced compliance.
Protection from insult, humiliated envoys, grief at mistreatment, communal confession, drought distress and confidence amid scorn supply different contexts. Agency and voice distinguish inflicted shame from admitted wrongdoing.
When Ruth got up to glean, Boaz ordered his young men, “Even if she gathers among the sheaves, do not insult her.
Boaz orders the workers not to insult Ruth and then directs extra grain and no rebuke, joining dignity with practical food provision.
When this was reported to David, he sent messengers to meet the men, since they had been thoroughly humiliated. The king told them, “Stay in Jericho until your beards have grown back, and then return.”
The envoys have been humiliated by shaved beards and cut garments, and David allows them to remain in Jericho until their beards grow back rather than requiring immediate public exposure.
And said: “O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, because our iniquities are higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached the heavens.
Ezra's shame is voiced in a prayer that names communal iniquity and guilt, retaining confession's speaker rather than assigning the same cause to everyone insulted elsewhere.
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. properly, to wound ; but only figuratively, to taunt or insult
properly, to wound; but only figuratively, to taunt or insult BDB: be humiliated Usage: be (make) ashamed, blush, be confounded, be put to confusion, hurt, reproach, (do, put to) shame.
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
כָּלַם is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Humiliation must not be interpreted through the sufferer's feelings alone. Ruth's potential insult is something Boaz forbids, and the envoys' shame is caused by the ruler's abusive treatment. David's response allows time before their return. Jonathan's grief likewise concerns Saul's treatment of David, so a father's authority does not make the mistreatment right.
Ezra supplies a different setting by naming communal wrongdoing in his own prayer, while Jeremiah's drought scene describes empty jars and distress. Isaiah's speaker names the Lord's help amid actual scorn rather than claiming scorn never occurred. Keep these agents, voices and responses together. Teach protection and accountable confession where given, refusing the equation that every humiliated person must be guilty.
Do not use shame as a coercive tool, demand public exposure of harmed people or turn a particular drought into knowledge of present sufferers' hidden causes.
Ruth.2.15
The licensed Hebrew range includes being humiliated, insulted or put to shame. The sentences distinguish an actor imposing disgrace from a speaker confessing wrongdoing or describing distress. Source wording about figurative wounding should not be turned into a separate bodily diagnosis or make every ashamed person culpable.
Matthew 27:28-31 explicitly narrates soldiers mocking, spitting on and striking Jesus. Read beside Isaiah's scorn and the Hebrew accounts of imposed humiliation while preserving each named actor. The Gospel makes abusive conduct visible; it does not authorize a present leader to shame others or require a harmed person to remain exposed. Ruth's concrete protection also remains a distinct supplied response rather than an identical prediction for every case.