Exploring the Meaning of ‘Iddar (Aramaic) in Hebrew

אִדַּר (iddar) denotes an ample threshing-floor and appears in Daniel’s description of a vision in which shattered materials become like chaff on summer threshing floors and are swept away by the wind. In that scene, the word anchors the comparison in a familiar agricultural setting marked by openness and exposure to wind.

Occurrences

“Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were broken in pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away, so that no place was found for them. The stone that struck the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.” (Daniel 2:35)

In Daniel 2:35, אִדַּר stands within the phrase “the chaff of the summer threshing floors,” supplying the concrete location where chaff belongs: the broad, open surface used for threshing. The verse moves rapidly from the breaking of hard substances (“iron… clay… bronze… silver… gold”) to their reduction into something insubstantial (“chaff”). The “summer threshing floors” provide the setting that makes the image vivid: once the materials are pulverized, they are treated as the light residue left behind in threshing—exposed on a wide floor where wind can do its work.

The threshing-floor is not presented as a building or container but as a place where what is left after threshing lies out in the open. That open character is pressed by the next line: “The wind carried them away, so that no place was found for them.” The mention of the threshing floors prepares for that disappearance. Chaff is the kind of thing that, when on a threshing-floor, is vulnerable to wind; it does not remain where it fell. Thus אִדַּר helps the verse communicate total removal: what once looked substantial is now like refuse on a threshing-floor—material with no staying power when wind rises.

The “summer” element intensifies the immediacy of the picture. A summer threshing-floor evokes an active, seasonal moment associated with the processing of grain, and so it reinforces the notion of separation and dispersal: valuable grain is distinguished from worthless chaff. Within the verse’s logic, the shattered metals and clay align with what is discarded, and the threshing-floor is the scene of that discarding. אִדַּר therefore contributes not only a location but a whole situational frame—an ample working surface where separation results in the windblown vanishing of what remains.

Sense and Usage

The sense “ample; a threshing-floor” fits the verse’s stress on breadth and exposure. A threshing-floor, especially in the plural “threshing floors,” suggests a wide, open expanse rather than a narrow or enclosed spot. The comparison depends on such amplitude: chaff needs room to be caught up and swept along, and the imagery of the wind carrying everything away presumes an unobstructed space. By using אִדַּר in this context, the verse frames the outcome as something that happens on an expansive surface where light material cannot hold its place.

The word’s concreteness matters. Daniel 2:35 piles up tangible items—metals, clay, a stone, a mountain, the whole earth—and the threshing-floor belongs to that same tangible register. It keeps the comparison grounded in a physical process: things are broken into pieces, become like chaff, and are then removed by wind. The threshing-floor is the realistic stage where that final removal is imaginable. The verse does not merely say the broken pieces vanished; it pictures them as chaff in the very place where chaff is exposed and readily swept away.

Because the definition includes “ample,” the term can carry the idea of a broad threshing-floor: a place characterized by space. In Daniel 2:35 that spaciousness heightens the contrast between what is dispersed and what endures. The “chaff of the summer threshing floors” is scattered so completely that “no place was found for them,” but in the same breath “The stone that struck the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.” Against the wide threshing-floor—where chaff is driven off into nowhere—stands the mountain that expands until it occupies everything. The threshing-floor, ample in its own way, becomes the backdrop for a far greater filling: chaff disappears from the open floor, but the mountain fills the open world.

Within the single attested use, the word functions as part of a simile that communicates fragility, exposure, and swift removal. The threshing-floor is where the residue of threshing is left vulnerable to the wind. That is precisely what the verse draws out: once reduced to chaff on the threshing floors, the broken material is not merely defeated; it is rendered weightless, carried away, and erased from any settled location.

Imagery

The threshing-floor image in Daniel 2:35 is built on the contrast between heaviness and weightlessness. Iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold evoke density and permanence, yet they become like chaff on an ample threshing-floor—dry, broken, and exposed. The wide floor under open air, paired with the wind that “carried them away,” forms a picture of complete dispersal: nothing remains that can be gathered back into place. In that setting, אִדַּר serves as the quiet but decisive detail that turns the scene from mere destruction into disappearance.

Sources: Lexical data from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and the Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon. Occurrence data from the Westminster Leningrad Codex with STEPBible reference data (CC BY). Scripture quotations from the World English Bible (public domain).