flesh: the soft tissue of a body, whether as the meat people eat or as the living skin and muscle of a person or animal
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
This is the plainest, most physical sense of the word. Sometimes it is meat on a table or an altar, the part of a slaughtered animal that gets cooked, eaten, or burned. Sometimes it is the living tissue of a body still alive: the skin a priest examines for disease, the flesh that wastes away in sickness, the muscle that covers the bones.
The two shades belong together because Hebrew does not separate them the way English splits "meat" from "flesh." One word covers the steak and the skin, the sacrifice and the suffering body. Context decides which is in view: a cooking pot points to food, an open sore points to living tissue.
Hebrew also uses this word with quiet modesty to refer to the body's private parts, naming them only as "flesh" without being explicit. This is the same physical meaning, simply applied where plain speech would be indelicate.
Nuances
1ameat: the edible flesh of an animal, eaten as food or offered in sacrifice
all flesh: every living creature, or all of humanity, taken together as one whole
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
Joined with a word like "all," the term sweeps up every breathing thing under one heading. Sometimes it covers all animal life as well as people, as in the flood story where every creature of flesh is in view. Sometimes it narrows to all of humanity, all the people of the earth at once.
The force of the phrase is its totality. It is the Bible's way of saying everyone, or everything alive, without listing them. When the prophets announce that all flesh will see God's glory or come to worship, they mean the whole human race, no one left out.
This use grows naturally out of the physical sense: flesh is what every living body is made of, so "all flesh" becomes a name for all the living.
kin: a blood relative, the family bond named as shared flesh
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
Because two relatives are made of the same stuff, Hebrew can call a kinsman simply "my flesh." To say someone is your flesh and bone is to claim them as family, near enough that you owe them loyalty and they owe it to you.
This is where the famous line in the garden belongs, that a husband and wife become one flesh. The picture is not only physical union but kinship created: two people who were not family become one family. The same idiom names brothers, tribesmen, and close relatives throughout the rest of the Bible.
The sense is warm and binding. To name someone your flesh is to say you cannot treat them as a stranger.
Nuances
3aa blood relative or close kinsman, named as one's own flesh
3bthe union of husband and wife described as becoming one flesh
Gen 2:23 (2×)Gen 2:24
4
frail humanity: the human creature as weak, mortal, and small before God
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
When the Bible sets flesh against God or against spirit, the word stops being neutral and becomes a confession of weakness. To be flesh is to be the kind of thing that tires, sickens, dies, and cannot stand on its own. God is spirit and lasts; flesh is grass that withers.
This is not yet the later idea of flesh as sinful nature. The emphasis falls on creatureliness and limitation, not on rebellion. To trust in an arm of flesh is to lean on something that will fail you, because human strength is no match for God. The fear of God can make a person's flesh tremble precisely because flesh is so fragile.
In the Psalms and Job this same word also stands for the whole self in its bodily life, the place where a person feels longing, dread, and hope. My flesh and my heart faint, says the psalmist, naming his entire mortal being.
Nuances
4ahumanity as weak and mortal, contrasted with God or with spirit
Gen 6:32Ch 32:8Job 10:4Psa 56:4Psa 78:39Isa 31:3Jer 17:5
4bthe whole mortal self in its bodily life, where a person feels longing, pain, and dread
the Hebrew stresses the body as soft, perishable tissue and as a sign of mortality, more than as a structured wholePsa 63:1
Both
both can name a person's physical self, washed or wasting2Ki 5:14
Only body
the English word suggests an organized, bounded frame, missing the note of frailty the Hebrew carries
“kin”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“mankind”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How basar differs from similar Hebrew words
שְׁאֵרnames a blood relative directly as a kinship term and can also mean food-meat; this word reaches kinship only by calling a relative one's own flesh, and ranges far wider into the body, all living things, and human frailty
Is the sweeping word for every living creature, the whole realm of what breathes, so that "all flesh" means all animate life on the earth.Gen 6:17Gen 7:21Gen 9:11
Is the ordinary, everyday word for meat, the flesh that is cooked and eaten, whether given as food or offered in sacrifice.Exo 16:12Lev 7:15
Names the physical body and its skin as living tissue, including the "flesh" of the foreskin that circumcision cuts.Exo 4:7Gen 17:11
Carries kinship through broad idioms of shared flesh, "one flesh" in marriage and "my bone and my flesh" for a relative.Gen 2:24Gen 29:14
Both
Both name the flesh of the body, and the two are yoked together as "flesh of one's flesh" to mark a close blood relative.Lev 18:6Lev 25:49
Both denote the physical flesh that is consumed and wastes away, whether devoured by an enemy or worn out at life's end.Pro 5:11Mic 3:3
Literal meat and the soft tissue of a body: the flesh you eat, that grows on bones, or that disease attacks.Exo 16:12Gen 41:2Lev 13:10
Humanity seen from outside as weak and mortal, creatures of perishable flesh set against the eternal God.Isa 40:6Psa 78:39Jer 17:5
Kinship and shared bodily nature: one's own flesh and blood, the bond of being made of the same stuff.Gen 2:23Gen 29:14
Both
Both can name the whole living being, but נֶפֶשׁ pictures the creature as an animate, needy self while בָּשָׂר pictures the same creature as a body of frail flesh.Ezk 18:4Gen 6:17
Both appear together as a way of saying the entire person, body and inner life, longing for God or wasting away under affliction.Psa 63:1
The creature seen alive from within: the breathing, feeling, craving self that hungers, longs, and grieves.Psa 42:1Pro 13:251Sa 1:15
A person's own self standing in for "me" or "myself", the willing subject who speaks and chooses.Gen 27:4Psa 103:1
The life that can be taken, ransomed, or laid down, life as the inner principle that animates a body.Lev 17:111Ki 19:4
רוּחַthe breath or spirit that animates and that belongs to God; this word is its frail counterpart, what is left weak and mortal when set against spirit
names the physical substance of a body: the soft tissue that can be eaten, wounded, circumcised, and wasted away, making it the word for mortal creatureliness as something tangible and perishableGen 2:21Gen 9:4Isa 40:6
stands for shared biological kinship: to be someone's flesh is to be their blood relative, so the bond of family is expressed as shared fleshGen 2:23Gen 29:14
Both
the two words appear together as antithetical poles of creaturely existence: flesh is the weak, mortal side of a human being, while spirit is the vital breath from God that sustains it, so creatures who rely on flesh rather than spirit are doomedGen 6:3Isa 31:3
both words cover all living creatures collectively: every creature that has both flesh and the breath of life belongs to the created order that God sustains and judgesGen 6:19Num 27:16
is the animating breath God gives that makes a body alive, and when God withdraws it the creature returns to dust, so life and death turn on whether the spirit is presentGen 6:17Psa 104:29Ecc 12:7
is the word for the empowering presence of God that comes upon leaders, prophets, and the people, so it belongs to God and can be poured out, withheld, or granted as a giftNum 11:25Isa 61:1Ezk 36:27
Names flesh as meat: the edible part of an animal, cooked for a meal or burned on the altar. A body as a whole object is never what is eaten or offered.Exo 12:8Lev 7:15Num 11:41Ki 17:6
Names the living tissue itself, the skin and muscle a priest inspects for disease or a sufferer watches waste away, so it is the material a body is made of rather than the body counted as one thing.Lev 13:32Ki 5:14Job 7:5
Widens to take in every living creature at once, or the whole human race, in the sweeping expression English gives as "all flesh". A single body can never be stretched that far.Gen 6:17Isa 40:5Jol 2:28
Names kinship: a relative is called your own flesh, and husband and wife become one flesh, so shared bodily substance stands for the family bond.Gen 2:24Gen 29:142Sa 5:1
Carries the freight of human weakness and mortality, the creature set against God or against spirit and found small, short-lived, and no help to anyone who trusts it.Gen 6:3Psa 78:39Isa 31:3Jer 17:5
Both
Both can name the physical body of a living person, which is why English uses "body" for each of them, once in the washing laws and once in a plea to Pharaoh.Lev 14:9Lev 15:16Num 19:7Gen 47:18
Both name what is left of the dead and left exposed, the unburied remains that birds and beasts come to feed on.Gen 40:191Sa 17:44Isa 66:24Psa 110:6Nam 3:3
Both are used of animals as freely as of people, so neither word is reserved for human beings.Exo 21:28Lev 11:8Jdg 14:8Jdg 14:9
Counts the body as one whole object that can be handled, hung on a wall, carried away, or piled in heaps, and the word covers the entire figure rather than the tissue on it.1Sa 31:101Sa 31:12Nam 3:3
Narrows to the trunk, the main frame that a face, wings, arms, or feet belong to, when a vision lists the parts of a figure one by one.Ezk 1:11Ezk 1:23Dan 10:6
Stands for the person himself as a possession that can be handed over or ruled, the last thing left to sell or surrender when land and livestock are gone.Gen 47:18Neh 9:37
It is the ordinary word for meat on the table: the roasted lamb of the Passover night, and the portion of a peace offering that had to be eaten the same day. A sinew is never what is being served.Exo 12:8Lev 7:15
It can stand for a whole living creature, and in the phrase usually rendered "all flesh" it sweeps up every living thing on earth at once. No single body part carries that reach.Gen 6:12Gen 6:17Gen 9:11
It names kinship. To call someone your bone and your flesh is to claim them as family, whether a wife, an uncle, or a brother you are reluctant to kill.Gen 2:23Gen 29:14Gen 37:27
It can point to the body as a visible surface or condition, so it describes cattle that look well fed and it names the part of the body that circumcision marks.Gen 41:2Gen 17:11
Both
Both name living tissue laid over a skeleton, and both turn up in the same short inventory when a body is described as something assembled: bones, then these, then skin.Job 10:11
Both are counted among the things a corpse lacks and a living body has. In the valley of dry bones each is added in turn, and the bones are still lifeless until breath arrives.Ezk 37:6Ezk 37:8
It names one particular cord in the body, precise enough that Israel could single out the tendon at the hip socket and refuse to eat that one piece.Gen 32:32
It pictures strength as tight cabling: the thigh cords of the great beast are woven together like braided rope.Job 40:17
It supplies an image of stubbornness, a neck stiffened into an iron cord that will not bend. Soft tissue would ruin the picture.Isa 48:4
Kinship: being someone's "own bone and flesh" is how Hebrew says a person is family. דָּם never carries this bond.Gen 29:142Sa 5:1Gen 37:27
"All flesh" gathers every breathing creature, people and animals alike, into one class of living things. דָּם is a substance and never names a class of creatures this way.Gen 6:17Gen 7:21Isa 40:5
Creaturely weakness set against God: to be flesh is to be perishable and unable to save, so trusting flesh is folly.Psa 78:39Isa 31:3Jer 17:5
The living body as the place where health, disease, and pain are seen and treated: what a priest inspects and what healing restores.Lev 13:32Ki 5:10Job 33:25
Both
Both words are pressed into the one claim that life resides in a body: the life of the flesh is in the blood, so the blood is what makes atonement.Lev 17:11
Both are what a slaughtered animal yields, and the same food law names them in one breath, permitting the flesh at the table while requiring the blood to be poured out on the ground.Deu 12:23
Both are paired in pictures of total slaughter, where a sword or a scavenging bird eats flesh and drinks blood until nothing living is left.Deu 32:42Ezk 39:17
Both carry ritual charge in the sin offering and must be disposed of with care, the flesh burned outside the camp and the blood washed out of anything it touches.Lev 16:27Lev 6:27
Bloodshed as guilt: spilled blood cries out, clings to the killer, and must be answered for. בָּשָׂר never carries legal liability.Gen 4:10Gen 9:62Sa 3:28
The substance actually handled in worship: put on doorposts, thrown against the altar, sprinkled toward the covering. Flesh is burned or eaten, but it is never applied like this.Exo 12:7Lev 1:5Lev 16:14
"Innocent blood" as a standing charge against a ruler, a city, or a whole nation, the accusation that names murder as a public crime.2Ki 21:16Jer 22:17Ezk 22:2
Blood as a visible red liquid: water turned to it, a pool of it in a chariot, the moon looking like it. Flesh is never a color or a liquid sign.Exo 7:202Ki 3:22Jol 2:31
Names flesh as the soft tissue of a living body, still attached and whole: God closes up the flesh where the rib was taken, and Moses' leprous hand comes back like the rest of his flesh.Gen 2:21Exo 4:7
Stands for the whole living creature, people and animals together, in the sweeping phrase usually rendered "all flesh": everything the flood wipes out, and everything the rainbow promise protects.Gen 6:17Gen 9:11
Marks blood relationship, where sharing flesh means belonging to the same family: Laban greets Jacob as his own bone and flesh, and Judah pleads for Joseph as their brother, their own flesh.Gen 29:14Gen 37:27
Sums up human frailty over against God: because a person is only flesh, his lifespan is cut short to a set limit.Gen 6:3
Names meat as ordinary food on the table, with no cutting or ritual in view: the pots of meat Israel remembers in Egypt, and the meat God promises them by evening.Exo 16:3Exo 16:12
Both
Both name the meat of a slaughtered animal as it is handled at the altar: the bull's flesh carried outside the camp, and the pieces of the burnt offering laid on the altar fire.Lev 4:11Lev 1:8
Both can be what goes into a cooking pot: flesh boiled in a holy place for the priests, and pieces gathered into the pot in Ezekiel's picture of the besieged city.Exo 29:31Ezk 24:4
Only ever names what butchering has produced. The animal has to be cut apart before there is anything this word can point to, so it turns up right after the instruction to divide the carcass.Lev 1:6Exo 29:17
Treats those cut parts as a countable set that gets arranged in order: the priest lays the pieces out on the wood, and the offering is handed over to him in its pieces along with the head.Lev 1:8Lev 9:13
Carries butchery language outside the altar, to shocking effect: the Levite divides the dead woman into twelve pieces and sends them through Israel, and Ezekiel makes Jerusalem the pieces pulled one by one out of a boiling pot.Jdg 19:29Ezk 24:6
carries the extended sense of all living things or all humanity as a class, where H6106 does not stretch this farGen 6:12Isa 40:6Jol 2:28
used of the soft, mortal, creaturely substance of living bodies (the part subject to disease, impurity, and decay) in contexts where H6106 would not fitLev 13:2Job 7:5
forms the idiom "one flesh" for marital union, a usage H6106 never carriesGen 2:24
used metaphorically for what is merely human or earthly in contrast to God, where H6106 is absentIsa 31:3Jer 17:5
Both
paired together in the kinship formula "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh," naming the closest possible bond between personsGen 2:23
used together to name the full physical substance of a living person (hard frame and soft tissue) in both anatomical and poetic contextsJob 10:11
both appear in declarations of tribal or national solidarity, where a people identify themselves with their leader as sharing the same substance2Sa 5:1
carries the extended sense of one's very self or person ("selfsame"), a usage H1320 does not shareExo 12:17Deu 32:48
used of the dry, durable remains of the dead (skeletal relics), a sense where H1320 does not appearGen 50:252Ki 23:14Ezk 37:1
the dominant image in poetry for the innermost seat of pain and anguish, where affliction penetrates to the core of the personPsa 22:14Psa 32:3Lam 1:13
basar in the other biblical languages
σάρξGreek“flesh”the Greek word that renders this one and inherits its range, then pushes the frailty sense further into flesh as sinful human nature opposed to God's Spirit, a charge the Hebrew does not yet carry
Plainly means meat, the cooked or sacrificial flesh of an animal that people eat. There is no moral overtone, only food.Exo 16:12Lev 7:151Sa 2:15
Names a blood relative or kin: someone who shares your flesh is family, a brother or close relation.Gen 29:14Gen 37:27
Refers to the visible skin and body tissue of a living person, especially in laws about disease and the body's condition.Lev 13:3Job 10:11
Both
"All flesh" stands for the whole of humanity, or all living creatures, seen in their mortality before God.Isa 40:6Gen 6:12Luk 3:6Rom 3:20
In marriage a man and woman become "one flesh," a single joined life. The Greek of the Gospels uses this word to quote the Hebrew text directly.Gen 2:24Mat 19:51Co 6:16
Names the soft tissue of a living body, the flesh on the bones of a creature.Ezk 37:6Luk 24:391Co 15:39
In Paul, names human life turned away from God and set against his Spirit, a power that produces sin. This moral and theological charge is what the Greek word developed and the Hebrew word does not carry.Rom 8:5Rom 8:8Gal 5:17
Stands for the sphere of weak, self-trusting human nature whose desires and works are listed and condemned, something a believer is told not to live by or make provision for.Gal 5:19Rom 7:18Rom 13:14Gal 6:8
σῶμαGreek“body”the Greek word for the body as an organized whole; this word is the substance the body is made of, and unlike body it readily means meat, kin, and mortal weakness
Means flesh as the soft tissue itself, and so also meat: the muscle of an animal cooked, eaten, or burned on the altar.Exo 12:8Lev 7:15Num 11:4
Names blood kinship, a shared substance between relatives: my own flesh, bone of my bone.Gen 2:23Gen 29:14Gen 37:27
Sweeps up every living, breathing creature as all flesh, the whole frail mortal order set against the eternal God.Gen 6:17Isa 40:6Psa 145:21
Both
Both name the physical human body as the seat of bodily life, what suffers, wastes, is healed, or dies.Job 19:26Mat 6:25
Both can name the dead human body, the flesh or corpse left after death, which is why Greek reaches for soma where Hebrew uses flesh for the body that is buried or devoured.Gen 40:19Mat 27:58
Names the body as an organized whole, a single structured unit made of many cooperating parts, which Paul turns into the picture of the church as one body of many members.1Co 12:12Rom 12:5Eph 4:16
Stands for the whole living person as a self, the body you present and discipline, not merely the tissue you are made of.Rom 12:11Co 9:27
Carries the hope of a transformed, raised body, the same person re-embodied in a new kind of physical existence.1Co 15:44Php 3:21
It is the ordinary word for meat: what is boiled, roasted, eaten at a meal, or burned on an altar.Exo 12:8Lev 7:15Num 11:13
It names the body itself, the skin and muscle a person can see, touch, wound, or watch heal.Gen 2:21Lev 13:22Ki 5:14Job 19:20
It carries a family sense: to call someone your flesh is to claim them as a blood relative with the loyalty that comes with it.Gen 29:14Gen 37:272Sa 5:1
In the phrase usually rendered "all flesh" it sweeps up every living thing, people and animals together, as one category of creature.Gen 6:17Gen 9:11Isa 40:5Jol 2:28
Both
Both words mark the merely human as weak and short of God. The Old Testament says a person is only flesh, and that Assyria's strength is an arm of flesh while Judah has the LORD; the New Testament says the weapons and the wisdom Christians rely on are not the fleshly kind.Gen 6:32Ch 32:82Co 10:42Co 1:12
The Greek word grows out of the same picture the Hebrew noun paints. Greek renders the Hebrew word for flesh with the noun that this adjective is built on, so calling a desire "fleshly" reaches back to the Old Testament image of people as flesh, mortal and passing like a breath.Psa 78:391Pe 2:11
Both set flesh opposite spirit as the basic dividing line. Isaiah says Egypt's horses are flesh and not spirit, and Jeremiah curses trusting in flesh for strength, which is the same contrast Paul makes when he calls a way of living fleshly rather than spiritual.Isa 31:3Jer 17:51Co 3:3
It never names a body or a piece of meat. It is a label put on something else to say which side of life that thing belongs to: weapons, wisdom, cravings, or goods can all be called "fleshly".2Co 10:42Co 1:121Pe 2:11
It can be a rebuke aimed at how people are behaving. Paul calls the Corinthian believers "fleshly" because of their jealousy and quarreling, and Peter warns against cravings that make war on the soul.1Co 3:31Pe 2:11
It can also mean simply "material" with no criticism at all, naming food, money, and practical support as the ordinary return for spiritual gifts received.Rom 15:271Co 9:11
What scholars say about basar
The standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH) and the major theological treatments agree on a layered range built on one concrete base: the soft tissue of the body and the meat of an animal, extended to the living body, to living creatures collectively ("all flesh"), to blood kinship ("flesh and bone," "one flesh"), and to the frailty and mortality of the creature set over against God. Scholarship is careful to stress that the Old Testament's flesh names creaturely weakness, not a sinful principle; the moral, anti-God sense belongs to the later Greek word in Paul, and reading it back into the Hebrew is a recognized error.
Sources
BDB, s.v. בָּשָׂרlexicon
HALOT, s.v. בָּשָׂרlexicon
David J. A. Clines, ed., Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH), s.v. בָּשָׂרlexicon
G. Gerleman, "בָּשָׂר bāśār," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), vol. IIreference-work
N. P. Bratsiotis, "בָּשָׂר bāśār," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), vol. IIreference-work
Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT), s.v. בָּשָׂרreference-work