קִינָה
qi.nah (H7015)
dirge
AI Word Study
# Qinah (קִינָה): The Hebrew Dirge The Hebrew word *qinah* denotes a dirge—a mournful song or poem composed specifically for occasions of grief and lamentation. Based on its eighteen biblical occurrences, this term represents a distinct literary and performative genre within ancient Israelite culture, one reserved for expressing sorrow over death or disaster. The word's consistent definition across these instances indicates it was a recognized, formal mode of communal expression rather than spontaneous weeping. The relative frequency of *qinah* in the biblical text—appearing eighteen times—suggests it held meaningful cultural importance in ancient Israel. Its technical nature as a specific type of composition, distinguished from general mourning or crying, indicates that Israelite communities employed specialized elegiac traditions. These were likely performed at funerals or commemorative occasions, serving both as expressions of communal grief and as structured artistic responses to loss. The significance of *qinah* lies in how it reflects the ancient Israelite approach to grief: channeling raw emotion into formal, culturally sanctioned expressions. Rather than leaving lamentation unstructured, the existence and use of this term demonstrates that death and disaster were occasions for composed, perhaps even memorized or transmitted, poetic responses—a practice that preserved both individual sorrow and collective memory within Israelite society.
AI synthesis uses only provided lexicon data -- never training knowledge.
David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over Jonathan his son
Jeremiah lamented for Josiah, and all the singing men and singing women spoke of Josiah in their lamentations to this day; and they made them an ordinance in Israel. Behold, they are written in the lamentations.
Cut off your hair, and throw it away, and take up a lamentation on the bare heights; for Yahweh has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.
I will weep and wail for the mountains, and lament for the pastures of the wilderness, because they are burned up, so that no one passes through; Men can’t hear the voice of the livestock. Both the birds of the sky and the animals have fled. They are gone.
Yet hear Yahweh’s word, you women. Let your ear receive the word of his mouth. Teach your daughters wailing. Everyone teach her neighbor a lamentation.
He spread it before me. It was written within and without; and lamentations, mourning, and woe were written in it.
“Moreover, take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel,
Fire has gone out of its branches. It has devoured its fruit, so that there is in it no strong branch to be a scepter to rule.’ This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.”
They will take up a lamentation over you, and tell you, “How you are destroyed, who were inhabited by seafaring men, the renowned city, who was strong in the sea, she and her inhabitants, who caused their terror to be on all who lived there!”
“You, son of man, take up a lamentation over Tyre;
In their wailing they will take up a lamentation for you, and lament over you, saying, ‘Who is there like Tyre, like her who is brought to silence in the middle of the sea?’
“Son of man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and tell him, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “You were the seal of full measure, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
‘Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and tell him, “You were likened to a young lion of the nations; yet you are as a monster in the seas. You broke out with your rivers, and troubled the waters with your feet, and fouled their rivers.”
“ ‘ “This is the lamentation with which they will lament. The daughters of the nations will lament with this. They will lament with it over Egypt, and over all her multitude,” says the Lord Yahweh.’ ”
Listen to this word which I take up for a lamentation over you, O house of Israel.
I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will make you wear sackcloth on all your bodies, and baldness on every head. I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.