הוֹי
hôwy · H1945 · Hebrew · 51 occurrences
Meanings
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alas!
Exclamation expressing grief and dismay
Examples1 Kings 13:30 He laid his body in his own grave, and they mourned over him, saying, “Oh, my brother!”
Jeremiah 22:18 Therefore this is what the LORD says regarding Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: “They will not mourn for him: ‘Oh, my brother!’ or, ‘Oh, sister!’ They will not mourn for him: ‘Oh, for the master!’ or, ‘Oh, for his splendor!’
Jeremiah 30:7 ‘Woe, for that day is great, There is none like it; And it is the time of Jacob’s distress, Yet he will be saved from it.
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woe!
Exclamation expressing emotion concerning suffering that will come over an individual or nation
ExamplesIsaiah 1:4 Oh, sinful nation, People weighed down with guilt, Offspring of evildoers, Sons who act corruptly! They have abandoned the LORD, They have despised the Holy One of Israel, They have turned away from Him.
Isaiah 5:8 Woe to those who attach house to house and join field to field, Until there is no more room, And you alone are a landowner in the midst of the land!
Isaiah 5:11 Woe to those who rise early in the morning so that they may pursue intoxicating drink, Who stay up late in the evening so that wine may inflame them!
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come on!
Exclamation encouraging people to act
ExamplesIsaiah 55:1 “You there! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost.
Zechariah 2:6 “You there! Flee from the land of the north,” declares the LORD, “because I have spread you out like the four winds of the heavens,” declares the LORD.
Zechariah 2:7 “You, Zion! Escape, you who are living with the daughter of Babylon.”
How it’s used In 2 roles
Every occurrence, grouped by the words it is grammatically related to.
the word studied the word it goes with
What is done to itIt is the object
2 occurrences in 2 groups
- אָמַרto say 1
- סָפַדto mourn 1
What it is said to bePredicate
4 occurrences in 5 groups
- נְבוֹNebo 1
- נָבִיאprophet 1
- עָשָׂהto do, to make 1
- תָּפַרto sew together 1
- הֶםthem 1
When two words share a role, as in “Paul and Barnabas said”, the verse appears under each, so a section’s counts can add up to more than the number of occurrences.
MACULA Greek Linguistic Datasets, available at https://github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-greek/, licensed CC BY 4.0; MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets © 2022-2024 by Biblica, Inc., CC BY 4.0. Westminster Leningrad Codex (tanach.us). OpenScriptures Hebrew Bible morphology (hb.openscriptures.org), CC BY 4.0.
Near synonyms 4 words
- אוֹיָה ʼôwyâh · H190 · woe
- Both words are interjections expressing distress or lament ("woe," "alas," "ah"), and can substitute for each other in expressing lamentation or judgment.
- בִּי bîy · H994 · please
- Both words are interjections with clearly overlapping senses; both express emotive exclamations, sharing "alas" and "O" in their meanings, and they are interchangeable interjections.
- הֶאָח heʼâch · H1889 · aha
- Both are Hebrew interjections expressing emotional evaluation—exclamations of surprise, distress, or judgment—sharing the exclamatory sense "ah."
- אַלְלַי ʼalᵉlay · H480 · woe! alas!
- Both lexemes are interjections expressing distress or lament, legitimately overlapping in sense as near-synonyms.
In the other Testament 2 words
- οὐαί ouaí · G3759 · disaster, horror
- Greek οὐαί directly renders Hebrew הוֹי as the standard translation equivalent for prophetic and wisdom-literature interjections of lament, warning, or denunciation; both function as formulaic discourse markers introducing judgment oracles or expressing grief.
- ὦ ō · G5599 · as a sign of the vocative case, O; as a note of exclamation, oh
- Greek ὦ (ō, G5599) serves as the standard vocative particle and exclamation in Koine Greek, functioning as the direct translation equivalent of Hebrew הוֹי (hôwy, H1945) in its interjection and direct-address roles across prophetic and exclamatory contexts.
Semantic domains 1 entry
- Evaluators004005
- הוֹי is an interjection of woe or alas, the characteristic prophetic cry introducing oracles of judgment, as in the repeated "woe" pronouncements of Isaiah and Habakkuk.
Word family 6 words
Words formed from the same root. They share a form, not always a meaning.
Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon H1945. hoy הוֺי51 interjection (onomatopoetic; compare = הוֺ הוֺ Amo 5:16 ᵑ6, = הֵידָד…
הוֺי51 interjection (onomatopoetic; compare = הוֺ הוֺ Amo 5:16 ᵑ6, = הֵידָד Jer 51:14 ᵑ6; also Modern Aramaic ú hú, ú hú (in a lament), SoUrmia-Dial. 102. 4) — expressing usually dissatisfaction and pain, Ah, Alas; Ha (not distinctly Woe! which is אוֺי): used in lamentations, 1Ki 13:30 and they mourned over him (saying) אָחִי הוֺי Ah, my brother! je 1Ki 22:18 הֹדֹה וְהוֺי אָדוֺן הוֺי ֗֗֗ אָחוֺת וְהוֺי אָחִי הוֺי, 1Ki 34:5 לָ֑ךְ יִסְמְּדוּ אָדוֺן וְהוֺי (compare הוֺהֿוֺ Amo 5:16): hence Isa 1:4 חֹטֵא גּוֺי הוֺי Ah! sinful nation Isa 1:24 Ah! I will ease me of my adversaries; especially preparatory to a declaration of judgment, Isa 10:5 אַמִּי שֵׁבֶט אַשּׁוּר הוֺי, Isa 17:12; Isa 28:1, often followed by a participle Ah! those that . . ., Isa 5:8, Isa 5:11, Isa 5:18; Isa 29:15; Isa 31:1; Isa 45:9-10, Jer 22:13; Amo 5:18; Amo 6:1; Hab 2:6; Hab 2:9; Hab 2:12; Hab 2:15; Hab 2:19; Zec 11:17 + (more sympathetic than לְ אוֺי): followed by כִּי Jer 30:7, אֶל Jer 48:1, עַל Jer 50:27; Eze 13:3, לְ Eze 13:18. Sts. hardly more than an exclamation arousing attention Ha! (though perhaps with a touch of sympathy or pity) Isa 18:1; Isa 55:1; Zec 2:10 (twice in verse); Zec 2:11; Jer 47:6.
Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), public domain
Topical studies with this word 1 entry
Meanings adapted from the UBS Dictionary of the Greek New Testament, © United Bible Societies, CC BY-SA 4.0 and the UBS Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (from the Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew), © United Bible Societies, CC BY-SA 4.0; MACULA Greek Linguistic Datasets, available at https://github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-greek/, licensed CC BY 4.0; MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets © 2022-2024 by Biblica, Inc., CC BY 4.0. Westminster Leningrad Codex (tanach.us). OpenScriptures Hebrew Bible morphology (hb.openscriptures.org), CC BY 4.0.
Sources
eRhema lexical overview, based on the UBS Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew and the UBS Dictionary of the Greek New Testament (© United Bible Societies, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Macula Hebrew and Greek (Clear Bible, CC BY 4.0); released under CC BY-SA 4.0
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