Bible Dictionary
BROKEN
Broken may describe something bruised, crushed, shattered, frustrated, collapsed, or removed. Scripture uses the word both for physical damage and for the breaking down of people or purposes.
Definition
Broken may describe something bruised, emasculated, frustrated, collapsed, cracked, crushed, violently struck, shattered, dug through, or removed. The word may refer to physical damage or to the collapse and frustration of a person or purpose.
Biblical Usage
Scripture uses the term for broken or crushed objects, defeated people, frustrated purposes, and shattered things. In some passages the English rendering “broken” is corrected to meanings such as grazed, departed, or extracted.
Historical Background
The supplied material distinguishes several Hebrew and Greek verbs, including those meaning bruise, frustrate, collapse, crack, crush, dash together, dig through, and remove.
Historical Bible Dictionaries
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>bro'-k'-n: Occurs both as past participle of the verb translated "to break" and as an adjective, the former use will be dealt with here only so far as verbs occur which are thus translated but do not present the non-participial forms. Such are: meroach = "bruised," "emasculated" (Le 21:20); chathath = "to frustrate," hence, "to break down" either by violence or by confusion and fear (1Sa 2:10; Jer 48:20,39); dakhah = "to collapse" (Ps 44:19; 51:8); ratsats = "to crack in pieces" "crush" (Ec 12:6); kathath = "to bruise or violently strike," "break in pieces" (Isa 30:14); Jer 2:16 should evidently be rendered: "have grazed on the crown of thy head," instead of the King James Version "have broken," etc., for ra`ah = "to tend a flock," "pasture," "graze," but gives no hint of the meaning "to break"; `alah = "to arise," "depart" (Jer 37:11); sunthlao = "to dash together," "shatter" (Mt 21:44); exorusso = "to dig through," "to extract," "remove" (Mr 2:4).</p><p>See BREAK.</p><p>Frank E. Hirsch</p>