to provoke conflict: to kindle strife or throw oneself into a quarrel or war against another
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This verb is always about conflict. Its subject is never neutral activity but trouble: strife, anger, or war roused into the open. It works in two closely related ways.
In Proverbs it describes a person who makes quarreling flare up among others. A hot-tempered or proud person "stirs up strife," setting people against each other, as the opposite of the patient person who quiets a dispute.
In the histories and in Daniel it describes a person or nation that throws itself into a fight against a named opponent, whether that means recklessly picking a quarrel or marching out to war. Here the word almost always comes with "against": to provoke Edom, to engage a king in battle, to contend against the LORD. The two uses share one core: rousing conflict into motion, either between others or against a chosen foe.
Nuances
1ato stir up strife: to kindle quarreling and contention, usually among other people
Pro 15:18Pro 28:25Pro 29:22
1bto provoke a fight against someone: to throw oneself into a quarrel or war with a named opponent
The stirring is always toward strife: it names provoking quarrels and contention between people, with strife itself as the thing stirred up.Pro 15:18Pro 29:22Pro 28:25
It covers meddling in or provoking a military conflict, contending against an adversary rather than leaving him alone.Deu 2:242Ki 14:10Jer 50:24
Both
Both can mean to incite or rouse to war; Daniel 11:25 uses one word for rousing the northern king's strength and the other for stirring the southern king to battle, both rendered "stir up."Dan 11:25
Both describe stirring up a nation or army against an enemy, setting a hostile force in motion.Dan 11:10Isa 13:17
The core image is rousing from sleep or dormancy to wakefulness and action, waking a sleeper or calling oneself to awake.Sng 2:7Psa 57:8
God is often the one who rouses, stirring a person's spirit or raising up a chosen deliverer to act.Ezr 1:1Isa 41:2Isa 41:25
Worshippers summon God himself to awake and act on their behalf, a use with no hint of provoking a quarrel.Psa 35:23Psa 59:4Isa 51:9
רִיבCarries on a dispute or a legal case, pressing a grievance in words; this word provokes or enters the fight itself.
garah in the other biblical languages
ἐρεθίζωGreek“to provoke/irritate”The Greek verb for provoking or irritating someone to anger; this Hebrew word aims more at inciting open strife or war.
What scholars say about garah
The standard lexica (HALOT, BDB) treat this as a single root meaning "to stir up, provoke," kept distinct from the homonyms for the ruminant's cud and for the weight/coin. The piel is transitive with an object such as madon ("strife") in the Proverbs sayings, while the hithpael is used with the preposition be- ("against") for provoking or engaging an opponent in conflict, whether reckless quarrel (2 Kings 14:10) or open war (Deuteronomy 2:24;Daniel 11:10, 25). The sense is stable across the corpus and undisputed.