What’s in a Name: The Fulfillment Metaphor in Biblical Hebrew

Abstract English speakers habitually imagine and describe words as conduits through which ideas are communicated—a cognitive framework known as the “Conduit Metaphor.” Expressions of this metaphor represent words as “full” or “empty” of information or emotions. In Biblical Hebrew, however, when utterances are described as “empty” they are inefficacious, and when they are “filled” they are enacted: a metaphorical model this article describes as the “Fulfillment Metaphor.” This juxtaposition between cognitive metaphorical models reveals a more fundamental difference in how ancient Israelite and Judean authors imagined the phenomenon of speech. This difference was recognized by earlier scholarship, though these analyses were subsequently challenged on methodological grounds. In addition to introducing and describing the function of the “fulfillment metaphor” in Biblical Hebrew, this article argues that Conceptual Metaphor Theory can be used not only to describe metaphorical models within the Hebrew Bible, but also as a critical and comparative philological tool.