תֶּ֫לֶם

# Telem (H8525): The Biblical Furrow The Hebrew word *telem* denotes a furrow—the long, narrow groove created in soil by a plow. This is a straightforward agricultural term rooted in the physical reality of ancient Near Eastern farming practices. The word appears five times in the Hebrew Bible, indicating it held a recognizable place in biblical vocabulary, though it was not a frequently used term. Given its limited occurrences and agricultural specificity, *telem* likely carried both literal and potentially metaphorical significance. Its presence in biblical texts reflects the agrarian foundation of ancient Hebrew society, where plowing and furrow-making were essential seasonal activities. The word would have been familiar to an audience whose livelihood and daily life were shaped by cultivation of the land. The term itself—concrete and descriptive—refers to the visible, functional result of agricultural labor rather than the activity of plowing itself. Without access to the specific biblical contexts where this word appears, we can identify only that *telem* functioned as a standard lexical item for a fundamental feature of the cultivated landscape. Its rarity in biblical texts suggests it was used when precision about agricultural imagery mattered, or when describing specific scenes involving prepared fields.