StrongerBible

baraḥ

בָּרַח

HebrewH1272“flee, escape, ...”

Appears 65 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 16:6Gen 16:8Gen 27:43Gen 31:20Gen 31:21Gen 31:22Gen 31:27Gen 35:1Gen 35:7Exo 2:15Exo 14:5Exo 26:28Exo 36:33Num 24:11Jdg 9:21Jdg 11:31Sa 19:121Sa 19:181Sa 20:11Sa 21:10(11)1Sa 22:171Sa 22:201Sa 23:61Sa 27:42Sa 4:32Sa 13:342Sa 13:372Sa 13:382Sa 15:142Sa 19:9(10)1Ki 2:71Ki 2:391Ki 11:171Ki 11:231Ki 11:401Ki 12:21Ch 8:131Ch 12:15(16)2Ch 10:2Neh 6:11Neh 13:10Neh 13:28Job 9:25Job 14:2Job 20:24Job 27:22 (2×)Job 41:28(20)Psa 3:0(1)Psa 57:0(1)Psa 139:7
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeba-RAKHverb

What baraḥ means

1

to flee: to break away and run, usually a deliberate escape from danger or from someone with power over you

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

At its heart this word is the deliberate bolt for safety. It is what a person does when staying put has become too dangerous: a runaway servant, a fugitive prince, a hunted king all do this. The picture is escape, breaking loose and getting clear, and it is planned rather than panicked. Where a related word names the blind scatter of a routed army, this word names the chosen flight of someone who has decided to get out and knows where he is heading.

The same word stretches naturally in two directions. When the runner is not a person but a thing that slips quickly away, it means to vanish or pass swiftly: days that race by, a shadow that will not stay. And when someone forces the running, it means to drive off or chase away: to put an enemy to flight, or to hound a person out.

These all share one motion seen from different angles. Someone breaks away and runs; something rushes past too fast to hold; or one person makes another run. The deliberate, directed escape is the constant, which is why the word carries such weight when the one fled from is God: to run from God is a chosen rebellion, not an accident.

Nuances

1ato flee for safety, to run away from danger or from someone with power over you
Gen 16:6Gen 16:8Gen 27:43Gen 31:20Gen 31:21Gen 31:22Gen 31:27Gen 35:1Gen 35:7Exo 2:15Exo 14:5Num 24:11
1bto flee away, to slip past or vanish swiftly, said of things that will not stay
Job 9:25Job 14:2Job 20:24Job 27:22 (2×)
1cto drive away, to chase off or put to flight, when someone forces another to run
1Ch 8:131Ch 12:15(16)Neh 13:28Job 41:28(20)Pro 19:26
2

to reach across, to pass straight through from one end to the other

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

In two verses describing the tabernacle, the same word turns up in a setting that has nothing to do with escape. The middle bar of the wooden frame is said to do this: to run the whole length of the wall and pass clear through from one end to the other.

What ties this to fleeing is the basic picture under both: crossing, a quick straight passage from here to there. A person who flees crosses out of a place; a bar crosses through a frame. In fact the ordinary Hebrew word for the bolt or cross-bar of a door comes from this same root, the bar being simply the thing that runs across. So this is less a freak second word than the plain, physical heart of the word showing through in a building text, even though English needs a different word (reach across, not flee) to say it.

Exo 26:28Exo 36:33

What scholars say about baraḥ

The verb occurs about 65 times in the qal and about 6 in the hiphil. Its core sense is transverse motion, a crossing-through or crossing-out, realized verbally as flight and nominally in the related noun beriach, a door-bar or bolt (the thing that runs across). HALOT and DCH split the material synchronically into two homonyms, barach I to flee and barach II to pass through, assigning the tabernacle bar of Exodus 26:28; 36:33 and the noun to the latter. BDB and Gesenius instead keep one entry, deriving both surfaces from a sense of breaking or cutting through; comparative Semitic evidence (Arabic bariha to depart, with the diagnostic h that separates it from the unrelated shine-root; the Ugaritic Lotan epithet bthn brh; Kogan's reconstruction of a Central-Semitic root brh, traverse/depart) is generally taken to favor this unitary etymological analysis, with the two-root split surviving in the later lexicons as a convenience for describing Hebrew rather than a claim about origin. Jenni (Orientalia 47, 1978) and Gamberoni (TDOT) distinguish barach from nus: barach denotes premeditated, planned, directional flight from a personal or political adversary, against nus's reactive panic and military rout. This deliberate profile underlies the theological force of the construction barach + miliphne/mippanecha YHWH, restricted to Jonah 1:3, 10; 4:2 and Psalm 139:7, where flight from the divine presence dramatizes willful rebellion. The verbal adjective bariach of Isaiah 27:1 and Job 26:13 (the gliding/darting serpent of the Chaoskampf tradition) and the disputed imperative of Song of Songs 8:14 sit at the edge of the verb's range, both best explained by the same core of swift, darting motion rather than by separate lexical entries.

Where scholars disagree about baraḥ

Whether barach is one root carrying both flight and the tabernacle bar's reaching-through (Exodus 26:28; 36:33), or two unrelated words that happen to be spelled alike: barach I to flee and barach II to pass through.

  • contestedOne root with a core sense of crossing or passing through, from which both the verbal flee and the noun for a door-bar derive. The comparative Semitic evidence (Arabic, Ugaritic, the reconstructed Central-Semitic root) is taken to favor this unitary analysis on grounds of word origin.; BDB, s.v. ברח; Gesenius (Tregelles ed.), s.v. ברח; Leonid Kogan, Genealogical Classification of Semitic (de Gruyter, 2015)
  • contestedTwo homonyms listed separately, barach I to flee and barach II to pass through, with the tabernacle bar and the door-bolt noun assigned to the second. Treated as the cleaner description of how the word actually behaves within Hebrew.; HALOT, s.v. ברח; DCH, s.v. ברח
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. ברחlexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. ברחlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. ברחlexicon
  • Gesenius (Tregelles ed.), s.v. ברחlexicon
  • J. Gamberoni, "ברח (bāraḥ)," TDOT IItheological-dictionary
  • Ernst Jenni, "Fliehen im akkadischen und im hebräischen Sprachgebrauch," Orientalia 47 (1978): 351-359article
  • Leonid Kogan, Genealogical Classification of Semitic (de Gruyter, 2015)monograph
  • Aren Wilson-Wright and John Huehnergard, "The Vocalization of Ugaritic brḥ," VT 71 (2021): 1-12article
  • John Day, God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea (Cambridge University Press, 1985)monograph
  • Jack M. Sasson, Jonah, Anchor Bible (1990)commentary

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

All attested forms of בָּרַח

qal consecutive-imperfect 3ms

וַיִּבְרַח

Gen 31:21, Exo 2:15, Jdg 9:21, Jdg 11:3, 1Sa 19:12, 1Sa 20:1, 1Sa 21:10, 1Sa 22:20

qal infinitive-construct construct

בְרֹחַ, בָרְח, בָרְחֲ, בָרְחִ

Gen 31:27, Exo 36:33, 1Sa 23:6, Jon 1:3, Jon 4:2, Gen 35:7, Psa 3:0, Psa 57:0

qal perfect 3ms

בָּרַח

Gen 31:22, Exo 14:5, 1Sa 19:18, 1Sa 27:4, 2Sa 13:37, 2Sa 13:38, 2Sa 19:9, 1Ki 11:23

qal consecutive-imperfect 3mp

וַיִּבְרְחוּ

2Sa 4:3, 1Ki 2:39, Neh 13:10, Jer 39:4, Dan 10:7

qal imperative 2ms

בְּרַח

Gen 27:43, Num 24:11, Sng 8:14, Amo 7:12

qal imperfect 3ms

יִבְרָח, יִבְרַח

Neh 6:11, Job 27:22, Job 20:24

qal participle m s absolute

בֹרֵחַ

Gen 31:20, 1Sa 22:17, Jon 1:10

hiphil imperfect 3ms

יַבְרִיחֶ, יַבְרִיחַ

Job 41:28, Pro 19:26

qal perfect 3cp

בָּרְחוּ, בָּרָחוּ

Job 9:25, Isa 22:3

hiphil consecutive-imperfect 1cs

וָאַבְרִיחֵ

Neh 13:28

hiphil consecutive-imperfect 3mp

וַיַּבְרִיחוּ

1Ch 12:15

hiphil participle m s absolute

מַבְרִחַ

Exo 26:28

hiphil perfect 3cp

הִבְרִיחוּ

1Ch 8:13

qal cohortative 1cp

נִבְרָחָה

2Sa 15:14

qal consecutive-imperfect 3fs

וַתִּבְרַח

Gen 16:6

qal imperative 2mp

בִּרְחוּ

Isa 48:20

qal imperfect 1cs

אֶבְרָח

Psa 139:7

qal imperfect 3mp

יִבְרְחוּ

Jer 52:7

qal infinitive-absolute absolute

בָּרוֹחַ

Job 27:22

qal participle f s absolute

בֹּרַחַת

Gen 16:8

qal participle f s construct

בֹּרַחַת

Jer 4:29