pregnant: carrying a child, expecting to give birth
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
This word describes a woman who is pregnant, already carrying a child and waiting to give birth. It names a state, not the moment of becoming pregnant, which is a closely related verb (הרה, "to conceive"). Wherever it appears, it points to a woman visibly or knowingly with child.
The same plain description turns up across very different scenes:
the joyful announcement to a mother-to-be ("you are with child and shall bear a son")
a woman's own quiet report of her condition ("I am pregnant")
the picture of a woman in the pangs of labor, used to describe overwhelming distress
the atrocities of war, where invaders rip open pregnant women
That last group is the darkest use. Because a pregnant woman and her unborn child are utterly defenseless, the prophets point to the slaughter of expectant mothers as the clearest measure of an enemy's cruelty (as in the judgment oracles against Israel's neighbors). The word itself stays simple throughout: it only tells you that a woman is with child.
describes a woman as being in the ongoing state of pregnancy right now, labeling her "with child" at a given moment rather than reporting the act that started itGen 16:11Gen 38:241Sa 4:19
turns up starkly in scenes of wartime cruelty, where the horror is named by pointing to the victims who are pregnant2Ki 8:122Ki 15:16Amo 1:13
Both
both point to one and the same pregnancy, the verb for the conceiving and the adjective for the resulting condition, so a single report can use both: Bathsheba conceives and then sends word that she is with child2Sa 11:5
names the event of conceiving, the moment a pregnancy begins, and in narrative it is almost always joined to giving birth in the set phrase "conceived and bore a son"Gen 4:1Gen 21:21Sa 1:20
stretches into a vivid image for hatching a scheme, where a person "conceives" trouble or mischief and then "gives birth" to itPsa 7:14Job 15:35Isa 59:4
הריוןthe abstract noun "conception" or "pregnancy" itself, the condition named in the abstract rather than the woman described as pregnant
Describes the present, ongoing condition of a woman already carrying a child: she is visibly "with child" or "pregnant" right now.Gen 16:112Sa 11:5
Names a specific pregnant woman as the object of an event or a threat, treating her condition as a fact about the person rather than as a process.Exo 21:22Amo 1:13
Both
Both come from the same root and belong to the language of a woman bearing a child, appearing in accounts that move from becoming pregnant to giving birth.Isa 7:14Rut 4:13
Runs through the grimmest scenes in the Bible, naming the pregnant women whom invading armies rip open, so the word carries the full weight of war's cruelty toward the most vulnerable.2Ki 8:122Ki 15:16Amo 1:13Hos 13:16
Appears in law that shields an expecting woman, fixing a penalty when brawling men strike her and bring on an early delivery.Exo 21:22
Anchors the fixed announcement of a coming birth, where a woman is told she is pregnant and will bear a son and give him a name.Gen 16:11Jdg 13:5
Both
Both simply name a woman as pregnant, describing the present bodily state of carrying a child.Gen 38:24Luk 2:5
Both can describe a mother carrying a child of great promise whose birth Scripture treats as pivotal.Isa 7:14Luk 2:5
Marks a woman in the visible, late stage of pregnancy, near to giving birth, and notes it plainly within an ordinary civic setting, here a tax registration.Luk 2:5
Is a single word describing the woman herself, so it can be reported flatly as news or as evidence of what has happened: Tamar is found to be pregnant, and Bathsheba sends David the single message "I am pregnant".Gen 38:242Sa 11:5
Carries a heavy weight in Old Testament law and in the language of wartime cruelty, where harm done to a pregnant woman marks either a case the law must settle or the very bottom of an enemy's savagery.Exo 21:222Ki 8:12Amo 1:13
Can name the pregnant woman as one of the weak whom God gathers and carries home, rather than as someone at risk.Jer 31:8
Both
Each is the ordinary way its language announces a birth still to come, in the same pattern: you are pregnant, and you will bear a son.Gen 16:11Luk 1:31
The Greek expression is what the New Testament reaches for when it quotes the Hebrew word: the promise that a young woman is pregnant and will bear a son is repeated with the Greek wording for being pregnant.Isa 7:14Mat 1:23
Both stand at the center of the same picture of labor pains, where the sudden grip of birth pangs on a pregnant woman shows how unavoidable a coming distress is.Isa 26:171Th 5:3
Both mark pregnant women as the ones most exposed when disaster falls on a place, whether in a report of an attack or in a warning about days ahead.2Ki 15:16Mat 24:19
Names a body part, the belly, so it can be used for plain appetite with no thought of childbearing: Paul quotes a saying that calls the Cretans lazy "bellies", a picture of greedy idleness.Tit 1:12
Says "pregnant" only as part of an expression, literally to have or to hold something in the belly, so the meaning comes from the whole phrase rather than from one describing word.Mat 1:18Rev 12:2
What scholars say about harah
The lexica treat הָרֶה as a verbal adjective of the root הרה, denoting a woman who is pregnant; HALOT and BDB both gloss it "pregnant, with child" and distinguish it from the finite verb (H2029) and the abstract noun הֵרָיוֹן (H2032). The form is consistent across its occurrences, functioning both predicatively ("she is pregnant") and attributively ("pregnant women"). TDOT's treatment of the root notes its concentration in birth narratives and in war oracles, where the killing of pregnant women marks the extremity of atrocity. The construct phrase הָרַת עוֹלָם in Jeremiah 20:17 (a womb "pregnant forever") is the one poetic outlier, but it uses the same sense.