to reject: to cast off decisively, refusing to keep or accept
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This verb names a decisive putting-away, the opposite of choosing or holding onto someone. Most often God is the one who acts and his people are the ones cast off, which makes this the signature word of the community's laments: the anguished "why have you rejected us?" that runs through the Psalms and Lamentations.
Because it so often describes God turning away from the very people he had chosen, the rejection lands as a broken relationship rather than a cool verdict on merit. It is frequently paired with other words for abandonment, such as עָזַב, and stands close to the harsher מָאַס, "to spurn as worthless." The laments protest against it as much as they report it: the same prayers that cry "you have cast us off" also plead "do not cast us off forever," so the word marks a felt, prayed-against abandonment.
A handful of uses put people in the acting role. Israel "spurns the good" in Hosea, and in Chronicles kings drive out the priests or discard the temple vessels. In each case the sense holds steady: to reject and cast aside what should have been kept.
to become foul: (of standing water) to grow stagnant and rancid
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyObscure
A rare look-alike verb, spelled the same but unrelated in meaning, appears once, in Isaiah's oracle against Egypt. As the Nile fails, its side channels and canals "become foul," the picture of a nation's lifeline drying into stagnant, stinking pools. The surrounding words reinforce the image: the same verse says the streams "dwindle" and "dry up."
Because it occurs only here and in an unusual form, translators handle it differently, and readers should treat it as a separate, rarely used word rather than a shade of the common "reject" verb.
in the Psalms it is the reverse of God's choosing, so the rejection lands as broken relationship rather than a verdict on meritPsa 74:1
Both
both refuse to keep or accept somethingHos 8:3
Only reject
English "reject" can suggest a calm evaluation that finds something wanting, missing the personal anguish of being cast aside
“spurn”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“forsake”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How zanaḥ differs from similar Hebrew words
מָאַסto spurn as worthless or refuse outright; this word instead casts off something once accepted, so it stresses the severing of a bond more than a judgment of worth.
Its picture is being cast off and thrown aside, so the wound it names is abandonment and removal from God's presence rather than a verdict of worthlessness; this is why it fills the anguished lament cry "why have you cast us off?"Psa 44:9Psa 74:1Psa 88:14Psa 43:2
It reaches down to a concrete, physical discarding: throwing objects away as refuse or pushing people out of a standing role.2Ch 29:192Ch 11:14
Both
Both name a decisive rejection of a covenant partner, and the poets pair them for weight in the same breath when God turns against his anointed.Psa 89:38
It carries a judgment of worth, spurning something offered as worthless: the word of the LORD, his instruction, or his correction is weighed and thrown out.1Sa 15:23Isa 5:24Pro 3:11
It runs from people toward God, naming the human refusal of God himself and of his kingship, a direction the other word almost never takes.1Sa 8:71Sa 10:19
It can turn back on the speaker as self-loathing, despising one's own self or one's own life.Job 42:6Job 7:16Job 9:21
עָזַבto forsake or desert, to walk away and leave behind; this word adds the note of active, decisive spurning, and the two are often paired in the same lament.
names an active, angry repudiation: to spurn someone or throw them away. It is the raw cry of the laments that God has cast his people off, not merely stepped back from them.Psa 44:9Psa 89:38Lam 2:7
Both
Both describe the rupture of a bound relationship, and are paired in the same breath: forsake the LORD and he will cast you off, or the Levites leave their lands and Jeroboam casts them off from the priesthood.1Ch 28:92Ch 11:14
covers plain, non-hostile leaving with no thought of rejection: setting a thing down, quitting a place, or leaving crops behind for the poor to gather.Gen 2:24Gen 39:12Lev 19:10
is the standard word for the human side of covenant desertion: Israel walking away from the LORD and turning to other gods.Jdg 2:12Deu 28:201Sa 8:8
נָטַשׁto let go, leave lying, or loosen one's hold on; this word is a more pointed rejection that deliberately ends favor.
Names an active spurning driven by anger. It is the anguished cry of lament that God has cast off his people and turned his wrath on them, so the rejection is charged with hot displeasure rather than mere departure.Psa 89:38Psa 74:1
Repudiates someone or something out of an accepted standing, stripping it of its former place. The Levites are thrown out of the priesthood, the sacred vessels are discarded, the altar is spurned.2Ch 11:14Lam 2:7
Both
Both describe God turning away from his own covenant people, whether in the fearful cry that he has done so or in the promise that he never will.Psa 44:9Jer 12:7
Carries a concrete spatial sense of spreading out or being spread abroad, with no notion of rejection at all. Troops fan out for battle and a raiding party is scattered across the countryside.1Sa 4:21Sa 30:16
Means simply to let go, leave be, or let something lie, a neutral release with no hostility. A father is denied the chance to let his grandchildren go with a kiss, and the land is left to lie fallow in the seventh year.Gen 31:28Exo 23:11
The prayer word for God withdrawing his presence and help: the complaint is that he no longer goes out with the armies and no longer answers the one crying to him.Psa 60:10Psa 44:9Psa 43:2
Almost always measured in time, so the ache is how long the abandonment will last: forever, for all time, with no end in sight.Psa 74:1Psa 77:71Ch 28:9
Describes concrete removal from a place or a job: priests barred from serving, temple vessels put out of use, an altar simply left behind.2Ch 11:142Ch 29:19Lam 2:7
Both
Both stand beside the ordinary Hebrew word for rejecting and add a shade that plain refusal lacks, one supplying disgust and the other supplying abandonment.Lev 26:15Psa 89:38
Both describe God turning against his own covenant people, and both are flatly denied to reassure that he has not finally done so.Lev 26:44Zec 10:6
Both also run the other direction, with the people as the ones doing the rejecting: they loathe the rules given to them, they throw off what is good for them.Lev 26:43Hos 8:3
Names the gut reaction itself: the one doing the loathing is the "soul", so the word reports a feeling of revulsion rather than a decision to dismiss anyone.Lev 26:11Lev 26:30Jer 14:19
Takes God's own rules and commands as the thing loathed, so it can describe a people sickened by the very terms of the covenant they live under.Lev 26:15Lev 26:43
Works in plain bodily and everyday settings with no covenant frame at all: a woman sickened by her own husband and children, a warrior's shield fouled on the battlefield, a bull whose breeding never fails.Ezk 16:452Sa 1:21Job 21:10
zanaḥ in the other biblical languages
ἀπωθέωGreek“to reject”the Greek verb for pushing or thrusting away; the old Greek translation used it for this Hebrew word, and Paul echoes it when he asks whether God has rejected his people.
Carries the prayer-language of covenant abandonment: the anguished lament that God has cast off his own people, repeated across the Psalms as the wound of feeling forsaken in defeat and exile.Psa 44:9Psa 74:1Psa 88:14
Names the breaking of covenant from the human side as well: a people or a king forsaking what is good and casting off God, set against the assurance that the Lord's own casting-off is never final.Hos 8:31Ch 28:9Lam 3:31
Both
Both words are rendered "to reject" or "to cast off," and the very cry the Hebrew voices in lament, the fear that God has cast off his people forever, is the question Paul takes up in Greek and answers with a flat denial: God has not cast away those he foreknew.Psa 44:23Rom 11:2
Keeps a concrete, physical shove alive underneath the idea of rejection: one person literally thrusting another aside. Stephen describes the Israelite who pushed Moses away, and the same word for the whole nation refusing Moses as their leader.Act 7:27Act 7:39
Names a deliberate human repudiation of what God holds out: shoving away the gospel word when it is preached, or thrusting aside one's own good conscience and so making shipwreck of faith.Act 13:461Ti 1:19
God is normally the one casting off, and the word belongs to prayers that protest it. Worshippers ask him why he has done it and how long it will last, which makes it the vocabulary of complaint rather than of assessment.Psa 43:2Psa 74:1Psa 88:14
What is lost is a bond and the place that went with it, not a passing grade: the promise to the king, the altar and holy place, the nation itself. Nothing is said about the rejected party failing a test.Psa 89:38Lam 2:7Psa 60:1
It also covers putting objects out of service and people out of office: Ahaz cleared the temple equipment away, and the priests and Levites were pushed out of their work.2Ch 29:192Ch 11:14
The people can be the ones doing it, and then what they throw away is the good God gave them rather than an unwanted candidate.Hos 8:3
Both
Both are commonly rendered "reject" or "cast off" in English, and both name one decisive act that strips someone of a standing already held, not a mood or a passing dislike: the anointed king is cast off, and Jesus is rejected by the leaders.Psa 89:38Mrk 8:31
In both, the rejection turns out not to be the last word. God promises his people will be treated as though he had never cast them off, and the very verse that reports the discarded stone goes on to say it became the cornerstone.Zec 10:6Lam 3:31Mat 21:421Pe 2:7
The refusal comes after an inspection. Builders handle a stone, measure it against the wall they are raising, and set it aside because it will not do, so the word carries the sense of a verdict reached by someone who looked the thing over first.Mat 21:42Mrk 12:101Pe 2:4
The ones rejecting are people who claim the standing to rule on a person, and the rejection is their official finding: the elders, chief priests and scribes decide against Jesus, and a whole generation returns the same answer.Mrk 8:31Luk 9:22Luk 17:25
It can describe a person turned away with no way to get the answer changed: Esau asked for the blessing back with tears and still found the door shut.Heb 12:17
What scholars say about zanaḥ
The standard lexica distinguish two homonymous roots written זנח. The first, well attested with roughly nineteen occurrences, means "to reject, cast off, spurn" (BDB; HALOT I). It is concentrated in the Psalms and Lamentations, where God is characteristically the subject and his people or their king, altar, or sanctuary the object, giving the verb its function as a fixed term of the communal lament and the antonym of divine election. The hiphil in Chronicles carries the causative nuance of removing or excluding persons or cultic objects from their proper place. The second root (BDB; HALOT II) is confined to Isaiah 19:6, where the hiphil form הזניח is generally taken to mean "become foul, stink," describing the stagnation of the Nile's channels; the parallelism with דלל ("dwindle") and חרב ("dry up") supports a sense of putrefaction, though the anomalous prosthetic aleph of the form and its status as a hapax leave the derivation debated, and older renderings assimilated it to root I. TWOT and TDOT treat the two roots separately.