to blaze: to kindle a fire and let it burn hotly, and by the same picture to chase someone with burning fury
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
At its heart this verb means to blaze. It is what a fire does once it takes hold and roars, and what a person does to a fire when they get it going.
The same picture reaches in three directions:
setting a fire alight and letting it consume, as when a cook heaps on wood to make the flames leap
the inward heat of a person, whether wine that sets the drinker on fire or lips that burn with feigned warmth
the fury of a hot chase, running an enemy down the way flame races through dry stubble
That last use is the surprising one for an English reader. Hebrew can hear a chase as a kind of burning: to be after someone with such heat that the very word for kindling a fire becomes the word for hunting them down. It sits close to the plain verb for pursuit, רָדַף, but adds the fire that ordinary word lacks.
For simple burning it overlaps with בָּעַר, the everyday word for a fire that consumes, and with שָׂרַף, to burn a thing up completely. This word leans toward the kindling and the blaze itself rather than toward the ash left behind.
Nuances
1ato kindle a fire and let it burn and consume
TranslatabilityApproximate
Ezk 24:10Oba 1:18
1bto set ablaze figuratively: to inflame with heat, whether of drink, of fervent speech, or of a flaming arrow
Psa 7:13(14)*Pro 26:23*Isa 5:11
1cto pursue hotly: to chase someone hard, with burning fury
It reaches beyond fire to picture chasing an enemy fiercely, the way a blaze races across dry ground: Laban pursuing Jacob, Israel chasing down the Philistines, the wicked hotly hunting the poor, enemies running the fugitives across the mountains.Gen 31:361Sa 17:53Psa 10:2Lam 4:19
When it does mean fire it stresses the fierce kindling and flare rather than a steady, ordinary burn: wine that inflames the drinker, and lips glazed with heat masking a wicked heart.Isa 5:11Pro 26:23
Both
Both name literal fire that catches and consumes: the fire that burned among the people, and the blaze the house of Jacob becomes to devour Esau or that is kindled under the cooking pot.Num 11:1Oba 1:18Ezk 24:10
This is the ordinary Hebrew word for a fire that burns and eats up whatever it touches, used across the widest range of scenes: the bush that burned yet was not consumed, the fire that fell and burned among the people, and the flame kept burning on the altar.Exo 3:2Num 11:1Lev 6:12
It carries a settled figure of speech the fiercer word never does: to "burn away" or sweep out evil from the community, the standing call to purge the guilty person entirely from among the people.Deu 13:5Deu 17:7Deu 24:7
שָׂרַףto burn a thing up completely so as to destroy it, where this word is to set it alight and make it blaze.
Names the flame itself catching and blazing, the fire coming alight rather than the thing it feeds on.Ezk 24:10
Stretches into figurative heat: a hot, relentless chase after an enemy, where the pursuer is said to "burn" after his prey.Gen 31:361Sa 17:53Psa 10:2Lam 4:19
Names inner heat as well: passion or lips inflamed, wine that sets a person on fire.Isa 5:11Pro 26:23
Both
Both put literal fire to work on a physical object: one has the flames blaze up under it, the other has the fire consume it.Ezk 24:10Jos 6:24
Burns a thing UP: fire as the means of total destruction, reducing a city or an object to ash.Jos 6:24Jos 11:11Exo 32:20
Carries the technical sense of disposal by fire: burning up what must be consumed away from the camp, such as the remains of an offering or an unclean thing.Lev 4:12Lev 16:27Exo 12:10
Names judicial burning: execution or punishment carried out by fire.Gen 38:24Lev 20:14Jos 7:25
רָדַףthe plain verb for pursuit; this word adds the burning heat, a chase driven by fury rather than mere motion.
Its root sense is to burn or blaze, so it can describe fire and heat with no chase in view at all: a flaming arrow, the empty pot left to glow on the coals, the house of Jacob become a fire that consumes.Psa 7:13Ezk 24:10Oba 1:18
When it does mean pursue, it pictures pursuit as something that burns: a hot, inflamed chasing right on the heels of its object, stressing the heat and closeness of the chase rather than the bare act of following.Gen 31:361Sa 17:53Psa 10:2
It reaches into figurative heat that has nothing to do with motion, such as smooth speech masking a burning heart, where the image is glowing intensity, not a runner overtaking a target.Pro 26:23
Both
Both can name an aggressive chase after fleeing people, the swift hot pursuit of fugitives who are being run down on the open ground.Lam 4:19
Both can picture a relentless going-after that consumes a person, whether running hard after strong drink or being inflamed by it, two sides of the same single-minded chase.Isa 5:11
It is the ordinary, everyday word for chasing someone down, especially routing a defeated enemy in war and running them to the ground, with no note of fire or burning in the picture.Gen 14:14Gen 14:15Jos 8:16
It readily turns to hostile pursuit of a person over time, hounding or persecuting them, and even to the good pursuit of an abstract goal such as justice, neither of which the burning word reaches.Deu 16:20Deu 30:7
קָדַחto kindle or catch fire, close to this word's fire sense but without its reach into the imagery of hot pursuit.
Reaches past fire into the picture of hot pursuit: burning after someone in a relentless chase. This metaphorical stretch is entirely its own, and nothing in the other word carries it.Gen 31:361Sa 17:53Psa 10:2Lam 4:19
Names the figurative heat of human appetite and speech, where the burn is inner rather than an actual flame: lips that smolder over a bad heart, or drink that inflames the drinker.Pro 26:23Isa 5:11
Both
Both name a real fire that blazes up and consumes in scenes of judgment, the flame devouring what it reaches.Oba 1:18Deu 32:22
Fixes on the moment a fire is kindled and catches: fuel set alight, firebrands strapped on, brushwood taking the flame. The stress falls on ignition, the fire starting to take hold, not on a chase or an inner burn.Isa 50:11Isa 64:2
dalaq in the other biblical languages
καίωGreek“to kindle/burn”the ordinary Greek verb for burning, kindling, or keeping a lamp lit, matching only this word's fire side.
Hot pursuit: דָּלַק can mean to chase a fleeing enemy fiercely or to hound the weak, a sense of pressing hard after someone that has nothing to do with literal flame.Gen 31:361Sa 17:53Psa 10:2Lam 4:19
Both
Both name the kindling of a fire that consumes: to set flames burning against what they destroy.Ezk 24:10Oba 1:18Jhn 15:6Rev 8:8
Both can describe a fire that burns inside a person: feeling or fervor kindled within.Isa 5:11Pro 26:23Luk 24:32
Lighting a lamp so it gives off light: καίω is the ordinary word for kindling a lamp and setting it where it can shine, an everyday sense of household or symbolic illumination.Mat 5:15Luk 12:35Jhn 5:35Rev 4:5
διώκωGreek“to pursue”the Greek verb for pursuing and persecuting, matching this word's hot-pursuit side but without the fire in it.
It means to burn, blaze, or set alight, a sense the Greek word never carries. Fire kindles, catches, and devours what stands in its path.Oba 1:18Ezk 24:10
The same fire becomes an image of heat inside a person: lips that look warm over a cold heart, or wine that inflames those who chase it. The Greek word has no such flame in it.Pro 26:23Isa 5:11
Both
Both name the hot chase of a fleeing person, closing in on someone who runs. This is the overlap: the Greek word matches the Hebrew word's pursuit, just without any fire.Gen 31:361Sa 17:53Rev 12:13
Both describe the strong hounding the weak or the righteous, hostile pursuit aimed at the vulnerable.Psa 10:2Lam 4:19Mat 5:10Act 9:4
It reaches for a positive goal, the settled word for going hard after a virtue: peace, love, righteousness, hospitality. The Hebrew word never turns its chasing toward something good this way.Rom 14:191Co 14:11Ti 6:11Heb 12:14
It pictures a runner straining forward, pressing on toward a prize still ahead. The image is effort aimed at winning, not heat or flame.Php 3:12Php 3:14
What scholars say about dalaq
The standard lexica (BDB; HALOT) treat דָּלַק as a single root meaning to kindle or burn hotly, with the sense "pursue hotly" understood as a figurative extension of the burning image rather than a separate homonym. The fire sense is transparent in the causative uses (Ezekiel 24:10;Isaiah 5:11, of wine inflaming; Obadiah 1:18, of Jacob consuming Esau like fire in stubble) and in the participle at Proverbs 26:23, though that verse is textually contested, with a common emendation reading "smooth/glazed" lips. The hot-pursuit sense is secure in Genesis 31:36,1 Samuel 17:53,Lamentations 4:19, and Psalm 10:2, where the verb parallels or replaces רָדַף. Psalm 7:13 is genuinely ambiguous: לְדֹלְקִים is read either as flaming arrows or, taking the participle substantively, as the pursuers/persecutors the arrows are made against.