The fore or front part; hence (by orientation) the East (often adverbially, eastward , for brevity the east wind )
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The Hebrew adjective and directional term qadim can identify the east, something eastward, or an east wind. In many biblical settings the east wind is hot, dry, or destructive: it scorches Pharaoh's dream grain, drives locusts, shatters ships, dries springs, sweeps people away, and becomes an image within judgment or futility.
Reader summary
Full entry for קָדִים (H6921) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew adjective and directional term qadim can identify the east, something eastward, or an east wind. In many biblical settings the east wind is hot, dry, or destructive: it scorches Pharaoh's dream grain, drives locusts, shatters ships, dries springs, sweeps people away, and becomes an image within judgment or futility.
The BSB source-word alignment has 69 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include east (15), from east (11), on the east side (4), the east (4), by the east wind (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 41:6. Its strongest book concentrations include Ezekiel (52), Exodus (3), Genesis (3), Job (3).
The Hebrew adjective and directional term qadim can identify the east, something eastward, or an east wind. In many biblical settings the east wind is hot, dry, or destructive: it scorches Pharaoh's dream grain, drives locusts, shatters ships, dries springs, sweeps people away, and becomes an image within judgment or futility. Other passages use east simply to locate a gate, side, route, boundary, or movement.
Job places the east wind among features of creation whose distribution lies within God's wisdom. Jonah 4 joins a scorching east wind with Jonah's physical collapse and wish to die. That scene must be handled compassionately; it does not make every weather event punishment or every suicidal statement a lesson to shame. The term names direction or a created wind, not an independent spiritual agent.
Context determines whether the wind is ordinary geography, an instrument in a narrated divine act, a poetic comparison, or part of a vision.
Qadim names eastward location and especially the east wind, whose heat and force appear in famine imagery, plague, maritime destruction, lament, judgment, and creation's ordered mystery.
After them, seven other heads of grain sprouted, thin and scorched by the east wind.
In Pharaoh's dream, seven thin heads of grain are scorched by the east wind, anticipating the interpreted years of famine.
So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and throughout that day and night the Lord sent an east wind across the land. By morning the east wind had brought the locusts.
The Lord drives an east wind over Egypt until it brings the locusts announced in the plague narrative.
Your oarsmen have brought you onto the high seas, but the east wind will shatter you in the heart of the sea.
Ezekiel's lament says the east wind will shatter Tyre's richly laden trading ship in the heart of the sea.
In which direction is the lightning dispersed, or the east wind scattered over the earth?
God questions Job about how the east wind is scattered over the earth, placing it within creation beyond human mastery.
As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint and wished to die, saying, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
God appoints a scorching east wind as Jonah grows faint and voices a wish to die during the book's final confrontation.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Spatial orientation concept: "front" becomes East because ancients faced East; also denotes destructive hot wind.
Spatial orientation concept: "front" becomes East because ancients faced East; also denotes destructive hot wind.
the fore or front part; hence (by orientation) the East (often adverbially, eastward, for brevity the east wind) BDB: East Usage: east(-ward, wind).
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 69 lexical occurrence verses.
קָדִים is built from this root:
Harsh destructive force symbolizing futile pursuit.Hosea 12:1-6
Symbolizes Assyrian invasion.Hosea 13:9-16
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Qadim gives direction a physical force when it names the east wind. Grain can be scorched, locusts transported, ships shattered, and bodies exhausted. Prophets and poets use those recognizable effects to speak of famine, judgment, fragility, and futile striving. Yet the word does not make the wind a mystical signal with a stable hidden message. In Job, God questions human understanding of how such forces move across the earth.
In Jonah, the appointed wind contributes to a moment of physical weakness and suicidal speech as God confronts the prophet's disordered compassion. The text neither celebrates Jonah's wish to die nor offers it as a diagnostic pattern. Faithful teaching should hold God's sovereignty, creation's power, and human vulnerability together. A specific biblical narrative may identify God's purpose, but readers cannot transfer that explanation to every drought, storm, illness, or loss.
The lexeme encourages humility before forces we do not control and compassion for people whose bodies and hope are overwhelmed.
Job.38.24
Qadim functions as an eastward adjective or directional noun and commonly appears in a phrase rendered east wind. The same lexical form can locate gates and boundaries or describe a hot and forceful wind. The accompanying noun, verb, and literary setting distinguish direction from meteorological action.
The New Testament depicts wind as an ordinary created force, a danger on the sea, and an image in several teachings, while Jesus rejects simplistic claims that particular sufferers were worse sinners. Those connections encourage providential trust without disaster speculation or blame toward people in crisis.