Genesis 6:9 · Symbol · Integrity
The Words Tom and Tamim
Tom and tamim describe Noah, Abram, Job and David, and tamim also every unblemished animal brought to the altar.
The Berean Standard Bible renders one Hebrew root with words as far apart as quiet, sincerity, perfect and unblemished.
This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.
- The word
- תָּמִים (tamim), H8549
- First appears
- Genesis 6:9 “This is the account of Noah. Noah was…”
Summary
The Old Testament's words for this value grow from one root, t-m-m, which carries the sense of being complete. The nouns tom and tummah name the quality, and the adjectives tam and tamim describe the person or the thing that has it. Together they give the value its picture, a person with no part held back from God.
- One adjective, tamim, joins the language of sacrifice to the language of character.
- Tom and tummah are the nouns the Berean text renders integrity, and tummah belongs almost wholly to the book of Job.
- Noah is the first person Scripture calls tamim (Genesis 6:9).
- The Greek amomos carries the picture of the whole sacrifice into the New Testament.
Blameless in His Generation
Genesis uses the words of Abram, of a foreign king and of Jacob.
The Words Tom and Tamim studies the Hebrew vocabulary behind integrity in the Old Testament. Integrity is wholeness before God and before people, and these words show where the idea comes from, in the language of sacrifice and of a life walked with God.
The question this study answers is what tom, tamim and their related words mean, and how far that meaning reaches. It gives how often each word stands and the man and the sacrifice described by one word. It also gives the two words of Job 2:3, a caution about reading the root into every use, and the Greek word used for Christ.
God commanded Abram: "Walk before Me and be blameless" (Genesis 17:1).
Didn’t Abraham tell me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ I have done this in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands.”The noun tom stands here for the first time in the canon, in the plea of a foreign king who had taken Sarah without knowing she was married.
When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man who stayed at home.The adjective tam describes Jacob, and the Berean text renders it quiet, which shows how wide the word's range is.
God answered Abimelech with the same noun, which the Berean text renders "with a clear conscience" (Genesis 20:6). Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible (1832), wrote that the king's views in taking Sarah "were of the most honorable kind".
How Often the Words Stand
Five Hebrew words and one Greek word make up the family.
Tamim and the verb tamam carry most of the root's uses, and tummah is the rarest of the five Hebrew words.
| Word | Sense in the STEP Bible lexicon | Uses | Books with the most uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew | |||
| tom, תֹּם, H8537, noun | completeness; integrity | 23 | Psalms 7, Proverbs 7; 8 books in all |
| tummah, תֻּמָּה, H8538, noun | innocence; integrity | 5 | Job 4, Proverbs 1 |
| tam, תָּם, H8535, adjective | complete; usually (morally) pious | 16 | Job 7; 7 books in all |
| tamim, תָּמִים, H8549, adjective | entire; unblemished | 91 | Leviticus 22, Numbers 19, Ezekiel 13; 14 books in all |
| tamam, תָּמַם, H8552, verb | to complete, in a good or a bad sense | 63 | Jeremiah 10, Joshua 9; 16 books in all |
| Greek | |||
| amomos, ἄμωμος, G299, adjective | unblemished; blameless | 8 | Ephesians 2; 7 books in all |
Greek, amomos, ἄμωμος, G299, adjective
A printed concordance may differ from these counts by one or two.
The Sacrifice and the Person
The laws of offering and the songs of Israel use the same adjective.
Most uses of tamim stand in the laws of sacrifice. The STEP Bible tagging glosses 51 of them unblemished and 13 blameless.
Your lamb must be an unblemished year-old male, and you may take it from the sheep or the goats.The Passover lamb had to be tamim, whole and without defect, before Israel could offer it.
When a man presents a peace offering to the LORD from the herd or flock to fulfill a vow or as a freewill offering, it must be without blemish or defect to be acceptable.The law sets the rule for every peace offering, and the Berean text renders tamim here as without blemish.
The same word describes God. "As for God, His way is perfect" (Psalm 18:30), and Moses sang that the Rock's "work is perfect" (Deuteronomy 32:4).
Joshua told Israel to serve the LORD "in sincerity and truth" (Joshua 24:14), and the word rendered sincerity is tamim.
Thummim, named beside Urim in 1 Samuel 14:41, is tagged with the same number, and its meaning cannot be drawn from the shared letters alone.
A Caution About the Root
Joshua, Lamentations and the Psalms show the range of the verb.
Most uses of the verb tamam describe something finished, used up or brought to an end. The Berean text renders it with the Jordan's water "completely cut off" (Joshua 3:16) and with "we are not consumed" (Lamentations 3:22).
So the sense of tom and tamim is read from the verses where they stand, and the verb's common sense of coming to an end stays with the verb.
In a few of its uses the verb describes a person kept blameless, as in David's prayer, "Then I will be blameless and cleansed of great transgression" (Psalm 19:13).
The Nouns Rendered Integrity
Tom and tummah stand in Job, the Psalms and Proverbs, where a man asks to be judged by his integrity.
Job 2:3 carries two words of the family in one verse, tam for blameless and tummah for integrity. Albert Barnes, in his Notes on the Old Testament (1832 to 1869), wrote that tummah there "means 'perfection;' another form of the word which is rendered 'perfect' in Job 1:1".
The LORD judges the peoples; vindicate me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and integrity.David asks the LORD to judge him by his tom, the noun with the ending my.
So David shepherded them with integrity of heart and guided them with skillful hands.Here tom describes a king's rule, the integrity of a public office.
Without Blemish: Amomos and Christ
Hebrews, 1 Peter and Ephesians use amomos.
how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, purify our consciences from works of death, so that we may serve the living God!This verse joins the language of the altar to the death of Christ.
but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot.Peter's word for without blemish is amomos, the same word Hebrews uses.
Paul uses the same word of believers, chosen "to be holy and blameless in His presence" (Ephesians 1:4).
Augustine of Hippo, in his Exposition on Psalm 41, heard Christ speaking in the psalm's words about integrity and called His innocence "integrity without sin".
Voices on Integrity in the Psalms
An eighteenth-century commentator reads tom in Psalm 26.
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Henry reads David's prayer in Psalm 26 as a guard on any claim to integrity.
Read the page on Matthew Henry
“He prays for the divine grace both to enable him to do so and to give him the comfort of it: ‘ Redeem me out of the hands of my enemies, and be merciful to me, living and dying.’ Be we ever so confident of our integrity, yet still we must rely upon God's mercy and the great redemption Christ has wrought out, and pray for the benefit of them.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Psalm 26:11 to 12Puritan
A Whole Way of Life
The book of Proverbs uses tamim of a way of life.
He who walks with integrity will be kept safe, but whoever is perverse in his ways will suddenly fall.This is the last of the six uses of tamim in Proverbs.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG glosses (Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0), with the Strong's definitions (1890) the rows carry.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament, the tagged texts (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on Job 2:3.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Genesis 20:5.
- Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 41, on Psalm 41:12.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Psalm 26:11 to 12.
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