StrongerBible

evah

אֵיבָה

HebrewH0342“enmity, hatred, ...”

Appears 5 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 3:15Num 35:21Num 35:22Ezk 25:15Ezk 35:5
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeay-VAHnoun

What evah means

enmity: a settled, openly recognized state of being enemies, a lasting hostile relationship rather than a passing feeling

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

This word names a relationship, not a mood. It does not describe a flash of anger or the private feeling of hating someone (Hebrew has other words for that). It describes the standing condition of being enemies: a hostility that is public, lasting, and recognized by others, the kind that has real consequences attached.

The word appears only five times, in three very different settings, yet it means the same thing in each.

  • In the garden, God himself sets enmity between the serpent and the woman and their descendants.
  • In Israel's law, a prior state of enmity between two people is what separates murder from an accidental killing.
  • In the prophets, it names the deep, old hostility of neighboring nations toward Israel.

What ties these together is that this enmity is a status you are in, not a feeling you have. It can be declared, traced back through past events, or projected forward as a permanent condition. And wherever it appears, something follows from it: a serpent struck at, a killer handed over, a nation cut off. It is never a hostility that can simply be left alone.

Nuances

1ahostility that God himself puts in place as a lasting condition between two parties
Gen 3:15
1ba prior, recognized hostile relationship between two people, the thing that marks a killing as murder rather than an accident
Num 35:21Num 35:22
Num 35:21

How to characterize the enmity that Numbers 35 makes the test for murder: as evidence of the killer's intent, or as a publicly known relationship of hostility between the parties.

  • contestedIt functions like what later law calls malice aforethought: the settled hostility shows the killing was intended, so intent is the decisive criterion.; Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (JPS Torah Commentary, 1990); Moshe Greenberg, 'Some Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law' (1960)
  • contestedIt names a publicly declared, prior relationship of being enemies, a social and legal status rather than an inner mental state; the killing is murder because that hostile relationship already stood between the parties.; Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 21-36 (Anchor Bible, 2000); Klaus-Peter Adam, Hate and Enmity in Biblical Law (T&T Clark, 2022); Pamela Barmash, Homicide in the Biblical World (Cambridge, 2005)
1cthe deep-rooted, long-standing hostility of one people toward another, reaching back into the distant past
Ezk 25:15Ezk 35:5

What scholars say about evah

The standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, Gesenius, DCH) give a single gloss, "enmity, hostility," for all five occurrences. Helmer Ringgren's TDOT article on the root is the influential treatment: he distinguishes this noun, which denotes the relationship or condition of being enemies, from שִׂנְאָה (the emotion of hatred, from שָׂנֵא) and from the active adversary named by צַר / צָרַר. NIDOTTE and Ernst Jenni's TLOT describe the same three-way lexical field. In Numbers 35 the legal contrast is explicit: verse 20 names the inner disposition and verse 21 the public state of enmity that makes a killing murder. Jacob Milgrom and Baruch Levine read the noun there as a known, prior hostile relationship rather than an abstract mental state, and Klaus-Peter Adam (Hate and Enmity in Biblical Law, 2022) and Pamela Barmash (Homicide in the Biblical World, 2005) develop it as a publicly declared social status. For Ezekiel's construct phrase (25:15; 35:5), Jenni's analysis of עוֹלָם supports a primarily retrospective sense, "ancient enmity, enmity from of old," followed by Greenberg, Zimmerli, Block, and Allen; the older "perpetual enmity" rendering is a legitimate secondary reading. The Septuagint renders the noun uniformly with ἔχθρα. On Genesis 3:15 commentators agree on the meaning of the noun (a divinely instituted, permanent, lethal enmity) while dividing over the referents of the "seed" and the genre of the verse.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDB, s.v. אֵיבָהlexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. אֵיבָהlexicon
  • D. J. A. Clines (ed.), Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. אֵיבָהlexicon
  • Helmer Ringgren, 'אָיַב', Theological Dictionary of the Old Testamenttheological dictionary
  • Carpenter and Grisanti, NIDOTTE, s.v. אָיַבtheological dictionary
  • Ernst Jenni, 'Das Wort ʿolām im Alten Testament', ZAW 64-65 (1952-53); TLOTarticle
  • Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (JPS Torah Commentary, 1990)commentary
  • Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 21-36 (Anchor Bible, 2000)commentary
  • Klaus-Peter Adam, Hate and Enmity in Biblical Law (T&T Clark, 2022)monograph
  • Pamela Barmash, Homicide in the Biblical World (Cambridge, 2005)monograph
  • Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel (Hermeneia)commentary
  • Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 21-37 (Anchor Bible)commentary
  • Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel (NICOT)commentary
  • Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11 (Continental Commentary)commentary
  • C. John Collins, 'A Syntactical Note on Genesis 3:15', Tyndale Bulletin 48 (1997)article

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of אֵיבָה

f s absolute

אֵיבָה

Gen 3:15, Num 35:21, Num 35:22

f s construct

אֵיבַת

Ezk 25:15, Ezk 35:5