זַעֲוָה“horror”The word za'avah, "horror," is the spelling used in seven of the eight places this noun appears, and it is the better known of the two. It belongs to a fixed threat in the prophets and in the covenant curses: God hands a people over "to be a horror" to every kingdom that sees them, so that onlookers shudder at what has become of them. The other spelling of the same noun, zeva'ah, simply reverses the order of two of its letters and means exactly the same thing.