אַגְמֹן
ag.mon
bulrush
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# Agmon (אַגְמֹן): A Biblical Plant The Hebrew word *agmon* refers to a bulrush, a wetland plant that appears five times in the biblical text. This limited occurrence suggests it held modest significance in Hebrew vocabulary, likely because it was encountered in specific ecological contexts rather than being central to everyday life or religious practice. The minimal frequency of *agmon*—appearing only five times across the entire Hebrew Bible—indicates its usage was contextual and specialized. It was a term for a particular type of vegetation found in marshy or water-rich environments, the kind of plant that would have been familiar to those living near or traveling through wetlands and riparian zones in the ancient Near East. The word's specificity suggests biblical authors used precise botanical terminology when describing such environments. Without access to the specific biblical passages where *agmon* appears, we cannot determine whether the term carried metaphorical or symbolic weight in biblical discourse, or whether it functioned purely as descriptive botanical vocabulary. Its rarity in the scriptural record indicates that while bulrushes existed in the biblical landscape, they did not feature prominently in the theological, legal, or narrative concerns that dominate Hebrew Scripture.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
5 total occurrences across the text
Can you put a rope into his nose, or pierce his jaw through with a hook?
Job 41:20Out of his nostrils a smoke goes, as of a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.
Isaiah 9:14Therefore Yahweh will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm branch and reed, in one day.
Isaiah 19:15Neither shall there be any work for Egypt, which head or tail, palm branch or rush, may do.
Isaiah 58:5Is this the fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to humble his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under himself? Will you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to Yahweh?