סָפַד çâphad — properly, to tear the hair and beat the breasts (as Orientals do in grief)
Translated in the KJV as lament, mourn, wail.
a primitive root; properly, to tear the hair and beat the breasts (as Orientals do in grief); generally to lament; by implication, to wail.
çâphad in each stem
Qal (Pa'al)
Wayyiqtol 7Imperfect (yiqtol) 7Infinitive construct 4Imperative 4Perfect (qatal) 2Participle (active) 2Infinitive absolute 1Sequential perfect (weqatal) 1
And Sarah died in Kirjath–arba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.
And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days.
And Samuel died; and all the Israelites were gathered together, and lamented him, and buried him in his house at Ramah. And David arose, and went down to the wilderness of Paran.
Niph'al
Imperfect (yiqtol) 2
They shall die of grievous deaths; they shall not be lamented; neither shall they be buried; but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth.
And the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground.
What the stems mean
A Hebrew verb is its root letters set into a pattern. The pattern — the binyan — is the grammar's way of saying three things at once: whether the action is simple, intensive or causative, and whether its subject is active, passive or reflexive. That is why one Hebrew word can need six English ones. All seven binyanim, explained ›