Exodus 34:14 · Symbol · Zeal
The Words Qinah and Zelos
The LORD names Himself Jealous in Exodus 34:14, and the same Hebrew word family names a psalmist's zeal and a neighbour's envy.
The noun the psalmist used for zeal for God's house is the noun Job's friend used when he said that "envy slays the simple" (Job 5:2).
For you must not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
- The word
- קִנְאָה (qinah), H7068
- First appears
- Numbers 5:14 “and if a feeling of jealousy comes over…”
Summary
Qinah is the Hebrew noun of this word family, and qana is the verb beside it. In the New Testament the Greek noun zelos and its verb zeloo carry the senses of the Hebrew words. Each use takes its sense from the verse in which it stands, so a reader asks who feels it and toward whom.
- Qinah stands 43 times in 41 verses of the Old Testament, and zelos 16 times in the New Testament.
- The verb qana stands 34 times in 29 verses, and the Greek verb zeloo 11 times in 10 verses.
- The adjectives qanna and qanno, both meaning jealous, are said only of the LORD.
Where the Words First Stand
The first uses of the Hebrew noun and verb and of the Greek noun stand in Numbers, Genesis and John.
The Words Qinah and Zelos studies the Hebrew word family of qinah and the Greek family of zelos as the Berean text renders them. They belong to the value of zeal, because Scripture speaks of zeal for God and His house in these words.
This study asks what qinah, qana, zelos and zeloo mean, and how one word family can carry senses so far apart. It gives the counts of the word family, a verse for each of its senses and the name Jealous that God takes for Himself. It also gives the Greek words beside zelos and the teachers who read the words.
The noun first stands in Numbers 5:14, in the law for a husband who suspects his wife. The verb qana first stands where Isaac grew rich in Gerar and "the Philistines envied him" (Genesis 26:14).
His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for Your house will consume Me.”This is the first use of zelos in the order of the New Testament, and it names the zeal for God's house that the disciples saw in Jesus.
The Zeal Words Counted
Counted in the tagged texts, the Hebrew words outnumber the Greek by more than two to one.
Qinah and qana carry most of the uses of the family, and zelos leads the Greek words.
| Word | Sense | Uses | Books with the most uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew | |||
| qinah, קִנְאָה, H7068, noun | jealousy or envy | 43 | Ezekiel 10, Numbers 9, Isaiah 7; 12 books in all |
| qana, קָנָא, H7065, verb | to be zealous, or jealous or envious | 34 | Numbers 6, 1 Kings 5; 11 books in all |
| qanna, קַנָּא, H7067, adjective | jealous | 6 | Exodus 3, Deuteronomy 3 |
| qanno, קַנּוֹא, H7072, adjective | jealous or angry | 2 | Joshua and Nahum, one use each |
| Greek | |||
| zelos, ζῆλος, G2205, noun | heat; zeal or jealousy | 16 | 2 Corinthians 5; 9 books in all |
| zeloo, ζηλόω, G2206, verb | to have warmth of feeling for or against | 11 | 1 Corinthians 4, Galatians 3; 5 books in all |
| zelotes, ζηλωτής, G2207, noun | a zealot | 6 | Acts 2; 5 books in all |
zelos, ζῆλος, G2205, noun, zeloo, ζηλόω, G2206, verb, zelotes, ζηλωτής, G2207, noun
The glosses of zelos1 figure
The tagged text glosses zelos as zeal almost as often as it glosses it as jealousy.
The four counts as a table
| Gloss | Uses |
|---|---|
| zeal | 6 |
| jealousy | 5 |
| with jealousy, in jealousy, with the jealousy | 4 |
| fury | 1 |
Bars from zero for four groups of the glosses the tagged Greek text gives zelos.
The counts are those of the STEP Bible tagging of the Hebrew and Greek texts.
Zeal for God, Jealousy and Envy
The Greek entry lists zeal and jealousy as two senses of zelos, and the Hebrew noun names envy as well.
Under zeal the entry for zelos lists the zeal of the psalm in John 2:17, of Israel in Romans 10:2 and of Paul the persecutor in Philippians 3:6. Under jealousy it lists the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:20 and the bitter jealousy of James 3:14.
My zeal has consumed me because my foes forget Your words.The psalmist's qinah is zeal for God, kindled because his foes forget God's words.
For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every evil practice.James uses zelos for the jealousy that breeds disorder, the sense Scripture forbids.
Ecclesiastes uses qinah when it says that "all labor and success spring from a man's envy of his neighbor" (Ecclesiastes 4:4).
John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), set true zeal against the jealousy James forbids and wrote, "True Christian zeal is only the flame of love".
Paul uses the verb and the noun together of a good jealousy when he writes, "I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy" (2 Corinthians 11:2). The verb zeloo is also the word of the line "It does not envy" in Paul's portrait of love (1 Corinthians 13:4).
The LORD Whose Name Is Jealous
Five verses of the law and one each in Joshua and Nahum give the LORD these two adjectives.
The adjective qanna stands in Exodus 20:5, Exodus 34:14, Deuteronomy 4:24, Deuteronomy 5:9 and Deuteronomy 6:15. The form qanno stands in Joshua 24:19 and Nahum 1:2.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,The second commandment grounds the ban on idols in God's jealousy, so His jealousy guards the covenant He has made.
For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.Moses names the jealous God a consuming fire as he warns Israel not to forget the covenant and make an idol (Deuteronomy 4:23).
Moses "burned with anger" and broke the tablets when he saw the calf (Exodus 32:19), and the LORD then told him to chisel out two new tablets for the same words (Exodus 34:1).
Zelos, Zeloo and the Zealot
The Greek noun, its verb and the word for a zealous person stand beside the title given to the apostle Simon.
Strong's dictionary defines zelos as "properly, heat", then as zeal "in a favorable sense, ardor" and as jealousy "in an unfavorable one".
Albert Barnes, in his Notes on Psalm 69:9, wrote that "Zeal is represented under the idea of heat" and that "the characteristics of heat or fire are here applied to it."
The command "be earnest" in the letter to Laodicea is ζήλευε, a form of the same family by its spelling, and the tagged text gives it no Strong's number (Revelation 3:19).
The noun zelotes names a zealous person, and Paul says that he was "extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers" (Galatians 1:14).
The apostle Simon bears the title in two forms, Zelotes in Luke 6:15 and Acts 1:13 and Kananites in Matthew 10:4 and Mark 3:18. Jerome, in his Commentary on Matthew, identified the Cananaean of Matthew with the Zealot of Luke and wrote, "For Chana means zeal."
The Gospels give Simon the title and do not say whether he belonged to the Jewish party of that name.
Zeal for God's House
The zeal of Phinehas and the zeal of the psalm stand in the same Hebrew noun.
“Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned My wrath away from the Israelites; for he was zealous for My sake among them, so that I did not consume the Israelites in My zeal.The verb qana and the noun qinah stand together here, so the zeal of Phinehas answers the zeal of God.
The study of the covenant of Phinehas joins this verse to John 2:17 by word and theme.
The verb of Psalm 69:9 is glossed "it has consumed me" and the verb of John 2:17 "will consume", so John's quotation turns the psalm's past into a future.
Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, wrote that in the psalmist the desire for God's glory "has absorbed all others".
A People Zealous for Good Deeds
Paul names the people Christ redeemed by the word for a zealous person.
He gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.The noun zelotes names what Christ's redeemed people are to be, so zeal is the mark of those He purified for Himself.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG glosses (Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0), the Greek glosses based on Abbott-Smith (1922), 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.
- James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, with its dictionaries of the Hebrew and Greek words of the original (1890)
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on James 3:14.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on Psalm 69:9.
- Jerome, Commentary on Matthew, on Matthew 10:4.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Psalm 69:9.
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