ʿĀrēl describes uncircumcised status in the selected covenant setting, while other passages apply related imagery to speech, hearing and fruit. Exodus 12:48 excludes the uncircumcised male from Israel's Passover within the stated household participation rule.
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Full entry for עָרֵל (H6189) · Open the biblical lexicon
ʿĀrēl describes uncircumcised status in the selected covenant setting, while other passages apply related imagery to speech, hearing and fruit. Exodus 12:48 excludes the uncircumcised male from Israel's Passover within the stated household participation rule.
The BSB source-word alignment has 35 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include the uncircumcised (6), uncircumcised (6), of the uncircumcised (3), uncircumcised men (3), . . . (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 17:14. Its strongest book concentrations include Ezekiel (16), 1 Samuel (4), Exodus (3), Jeremiah (3).
ʿĀrēl describes uncircumcised status in the selected covenant setting, while other passages apply related imagery to speech, hearing and fruit. Exodus 12:48 excludes the uncircumcised male from Israel's Passover within the stated household participation rule. Exodus 6:12 uses the expression behind the BSB description of Moses as unskilled in speech. That construction concerns Moses' objection about speaking and does not classify his lips as a bodily covenant violation.
Jeremiah 6:10 describes closed ears in a refusal to hear the Lord's word, and Leviticus 19:23 treats young fruit as forbidden for a stated period. These direct contexts prevent making the adjective a uniform verdict of personal depravity or foreign ethnic inferiority. The noun or body part it qualifies must be named. Christian teaching can then follow Romans 2 and First Corinthians 7, where bodily status is discussed within explicit arguments about obedience and calling rather than a hierarchy of human dignity.
Passover status, Moses' speech objection, resistant hearing and restricted fruit give the adjective varied objects. Each context supplies the bodily or figurative function, preventing an automatic ethnic or moral judgment from the lexical label alone.
If a foreigner resides with you and wants to celebrate the Lord’s Passover, all the males in the household must be circumcised; then he may come near to celebrate it, and he shall be like a native of the land. But no uncircumcised man may eat of it.
The adjective names a bodily status within the specified Passover participation rule. The next verse applies the same law to native and resident foreigner alike.
But in the Lord’s presence Moses replied, “If the Israelites will not listen to me, then why would Pharaoh listen to me, since I am unskilled in speech?”
Moses raises an objection about being unskilled in speech after Israel fails to listen. The expression qualifies speaking capacity rather than asserting an anatomical requirement for the lips.
To whom can I give this warning? Who will listen to me? Look, their ears are closed, so they cannot hear. See, the word of the Lord has become offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it.
Closed ears accompany refusal to receive the Lord's word and its warning. The prophetic accusation concerns the described response, not a diagnosis of physical hearing ability.
When you enter the land and plant any kind of tree for food, you shall regard the fruit as forbidden. For three years it will be forbidden to you and must not be eaten.
The fruit of newly planted trees is forbidden for the first three years. The stated agricultural period limits an interpretation that forces a human bodily status onto the fruit.
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. Uncircumcised: technically exterior/exposed condition marking covenant outsider status in Israel's identity theology.
Uncircumcised: technically exterior/exposed condition marking covenant outsider status in Israel's identity theology.
properly, exposed, i.e. projecting loose (as to the prepuce); used only technically, uncircumcised (i.e. still having the prepuce uncurtailed) BDB: having foreskin Usage: uncircumcised (person).
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 4 selected witnesses from 35 lexical occurrence verses.
עָרֵל 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.
Moses' objection in Exodus 6 concerns whether Pharaoh will hear him when Israel has not. The BSB renders the expression as being unskilled in speech, showing why a mechanical bodily translation would obscure the scene's problem. Jeremiah's closed-ear expression belongs to rejection of the Lord's word, while Leviticus applies restriction language to fruit during its first years. These uses make the adjective's object essential to explanation.
The Passover rule still has a literal covenant setting and cannot be dissolved into a general metaphor. Yet neither that rule nor the figurative contexts grant a teacher permission to rank people's inherent worth by ethnicity, speech fluency or bodily status. Romans 2 evaluates obedience, and First Corinthians 7 directs people not to reconstruct their bodily status as a measure of calling. The Christian comparisons should retain those stated purposes rather than turn a strong ancient label into contemporary contempt.
Exod.6.12
A technical bodily adjective can be applied figuratively to lips or ears and to restricted fruit. The modified object and context explain the use; the common identifier cannot decide whether bodily status, speech, refusal or a time-limited prohibition is intended.
Romans 2:25-29 evaluates sign and obedience, while First Corinthians 7:17-20 refuses to make changing bodily status a condition of God's calling. These passages support a bounded Christian comparison. They do not make Moses' speech objection a moral condemnation or provide an ethnic hierarchy from the Hebrew adjective.