Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Psalm 41:9
Mine own familiar friend hath lifted up his heel against me. Akev, heel, the same root as Jacob's name, applied by Jesus to Judas's betrayal.
Psalm 41:9, in every translation this tool compares.
English lifted up his heel reads as an odd, archaic idiom for betrayal, with no built-in connection to anything else in the Bible. In Hebrew, the heel-word carries a long history: it is Jacob's own name, tied since Genesis to grasping, supplanting, and betrayal, and this psalm's use of it for betrayal by a trusted friend is precisely the verse Jesus applies to Judas.
Because the phrase lifted up his heel against me uses akev, heel, the same root behind Jacob's own name and his lifelong association with heel-grabbing and betrayal, and Jesus applies this exact verse to Judas, a betrayer, at the last meal they share together.
Every version reads lifted up his heel against me or a similar phrase, correctly, and John 13:18's Gospel citation of this verse for Judas is well known, but neither translation shows an English reader that heel here is the same word running through Jacob's whole story.
עָקֵב akev (heel; cf. Ya'akov, Jacob) · H6119
Akev, heel, is the same root behind Ya'akov, Jacob, first explained at Genesis 25:26 as grasping his brother's heel at birth, and reinterpreted by Esau at Genesis 27:36 as supplanted, deceived, a betrayal sense the root carries elsewhere too. Jesus quotes this exact verse, he that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me, at John 13:18, applying it directly to Judas's betrayal at a shared meal, drawing on the same heel-vocabulary that has carried treachery and supplanting since Jacob's own birth.
English lifted up his heel is an isolated, archaic-sounding idiom for betrayal with no visible connection to anything else in the Bible; the Hebrew reader, by contrast, hears the same root that has already carried deception and supplanting since Genesis, so Jesus's quotation of this verse for Judas draws on a much older web of association an English reader cannot access.
If a quotation applies an Old Testament verse to a specific act of betrayal, check whether the underlying Hebrew vocabulary already carries that association elsewhere in the Bible. The heel-root's long history with deception, running from Jacob through this psalm to Judas, is exactly this kind of accumulated resonance.
Lifted up his heel is the uncontested sense here; no rendering is in dispute. What's worth tracing is this verse's vocabulary back through the same root's long biblical history with deception and betrayal, a thread running from Jacob's birth through this psalm to Jesus's own application of the verse to Judas.
- John 13:18's direct quotation applied to Judas
- The same root's history at Genesis 25:26 and 27:36
