ḥazaq

• physically seizing or gripping something with the hand, a literal, concrete grasping1Sa 15:27
• hardening or making stubborn, used of Pharaoh's heart being made firm against relentingExo 9:12
• strengthening or repairing a physical structure, putting it in a firm and secure state2Ki 22:5
• rallying one's own spirit to take bold action in a crisis, gathering interior strength to press through difficulty1Sa 30:6

• the paired command to be strong and courageous before a daunting task, where both words appear together as a hendiadys of firmness and boldnessDeu 31:6
• exhorting God's people to press forward without fear as they face a great challenge, trusting God's presenceJos 1:9

• the inner steeling of resolve to face a frightening task or daunting role, the courage to step forward when the challenge is formidableRut 1:18
• upholding or bracing someone whose strength is faltering, the encouraging support that restores another person's confidenceJob 4:4

• Strengthens and emboldens a person, building up their courage and resolve. This positive sense, urging someone to take heart, is foreign to קשׁה.Jos 1:6Deu 31:62Sa 2:7Isa 35:3
• Means to take hold of, seize, or grip something firmly with the hand. קשׁה never describes physical grasping.Exo 4:4Jdg 16:262Sa 13:11
• Means to repair, reinforce, and make a structure firm again, as in rebuilding broken walls and the temple. קשׁה has nothing of this constructive, restoring force.Neh 3:42Ki 12:52Ch 24:12
• Means to be strong, to overpower, or to prevail, including an impersonal force such as a famine gaining the upper hand. The word can simply state that strength wins out.Jos 1:9Gen 41:562Sa 24:4

• Both describe a heart made unyielding and obstinate, most famously the hardening of Pharaoh's heart so that he refuses to bend. The exodus narrative uses both words for the same stubborn refusal to obey.Exo 7:13Exo 7:22Exo 7:3Exo 13:15

• Means to be hard or difficult in the sense of a painful, demanding ordeal, used of a labor that goes badly in childbirth and of a legal case too hard to decide. חזק does not carry this idea of difficulty.Gen 35:16Gen 35:17Deu 1:17
• Describes a harsh, heavy burden laid on people, such as a crushing yoke of labor and service. The word frames hardness as oppressive weight on others, which חזק does not.1Ki 12:4Deu 15:18
• Means to be fierce or cruel, naming anger that is savage and unrelenting. This negative edge of harshness is absent from חזק.Gen 49:7

• Built on the idea of strength and firmness: to be strong, to grow strong, or to make something strong.Deu 11:82Sa 10:12
• Used to urge courage and resolve: "be strong and of good courage," steeling a person to act without fear.Jos 1:6Deu 31:6Psa 27:14
• Means to take hold of, grasp, or seize, often physically laying hold of a person or thing.Gen 19:16Exo 4:42Sa 13:11
• Means to repair or fortify something, putting it back into sound, strong condition.2Ki 12:5Neh 3:4
• Means to prevail or overpower, where one side's strength wins out over another's.2Sa 24:4Jdg 1:28

• Both describe an unyielding, hardened heart, especially Pharaoh's stubbornness in Exodus, where English Bibles render either verb as "hardened."Exo 9:12Exo 9:34
• Both come together in God's purpose at the Red Sea: he strengthens Pharaoh's heart to pursue and is honored through the outcome.Exo 14:4

• Built on the idea of weight: to be heavy or to make heavy, including a load or affliction pressing down on someone.Exo 5:9Lam 3:7Neh 5:15
• Means to honor or treat as weighty in esteem: to give someone their due regard and worth.Exo 20:121Sa 2:30Pro 3:9
• Means to glorify or be glorified, ascribing weighty splendor to God or showing his weight in an event.Psa 86:12Isa 24:15Exo 14:18

• Means to be or grow strong, to gain the upper hand, to prevail: a famine, a battle, or a stubborn will gets the better of someone. This is the core idea of overpowering force that H8610 never carries.Gen 41:56Exo 7:13
• Means to make someone strong, to put courage into them, to firm up their resolve: the standing call to be strong and courageous. H8610 has no encouraging or empowering sense.Jos 1:6Isa 41:6
• Means to repair or reinforce something so it stands firm: rebuilding the temple's damage or shoring up a city wall. This building-up sense is foreign to H8610.2Ki 12:5Neh 3:4

• Both can describe laying firm physical hold of a person or object with the hand, taking and keeping a grip on it.Gen 19:16Gen 39:12
• Both describe the grip a hand keeps on a weapon: in one verse a broken arm can neither be bound up strong again nor grasp the sword, using each word side by side for that grip.Ezk 30:21

• Means to capture in war, to take a city or carry off a king as a prisoner: the conqueror's word. H2388 is about overpowering strength but never about taking a place or a captive.Deu 20:191Sa 15:82Ki 25:6
• Means to seize a person in order to detain or arrest them, to take them into custody. H2388 can describe gripping someone but not the legal act of apprehending them.Jer 26:8Jer 37:13
• Means to handle or be skilled with an instrument: the one who plays the harp, the one who wields the sword or bow, the one who works the oar. H2388 never describes wielding or being expert with a tool.Gen 4:21Amo 2:15Ezk 27:29

• Its core is not gripping but force or firmness: to be or grow strong, and to make strong, as when one is urged to be strong and courageous.Deu 31:6Jos 1:6Psa 27:14
• Used of a power that prevails over someone or something: the famine that grew severe, and the repeated hardening of Pharaoh's heart.Gen 41:56Exo 7:13Exo 14:4
• Means to make firm again by repair, used throughout the rebuilding of Jerusalem's wall.Neh 3:42Ki 12:5

• Both can mean to lay hold of and keep a firm grip, so that a verse may pair them: take the serpent by the tail, the snare that seizes the heel, pangs that grip a person fast.Exo 4:4Job 18:9Jer 49:24

• Pictures the moment a hand closes on something and catches it: the ram caught in the thicket, the newborn gripping his brother's heel, taking the cloth in hand.Gen 22:13Gen 25:26Rut 3:15
• Extends from gripping with the hand to taking lasting possession of land: holding property and settling in it.Gen 34:10Gen 47:27Num 32:30

• Names taking physical hold: gripping, seizing, or grasping something with the hand so as not to let go.Gen 19:16Jdg 16:26Exo 4:4
• Names bracing someone from the inside: the summons to be firm and of good courage, steadying the heart to face a hard task.Deu 31:6Jos 1:6Deu 3:28
• Names becoming firm or set fast, as a heart is made unyielding and will not bend, an inner hardening rather than a victory over anyone.Exo 7:13Exo 7:22Exo 9:12

• Both can describe one side overpowering another in a struggle, so either may be rendered as prevail or be too strong when a conflict is decided.2Sa 1:231Ki 16:22

• Names being the mightier party who prevails: coming out on top in a contest of strength so that one side wins and the other gives way.Exo 17:11Lam 1:16Psa 12:4
• Pictures a force rising up and overwhelming everything by sheer mass, as the flood waters swell and tower over the earth.Gen 7:18Gen 7:19Gen 7:20
• Measures a quality that towers above a limit, so a blessing or a mercy is said to be surpassingly great rather than merely present.Gen 49:26Psa 103:11Psa 117:2

• Describes being or growing strong, with strength prevailing over resistance: a famine that tightens its grip on the land, or one side overpowering another.Gen 41:56Gen 41:57Jdg 1:28
• Means to make someone strong, to encourage or steel them for a hard task, a sense H1692 never carries.Deu 31:6Deu 31:7Jos 1:6
• Can mean to harden, stiffening a heart so it will not yield, as repeatedly of Pharaoh.Exo 4:21Exo 14:4

• Both can picture taking firm hold and not letting go: one clings to a person, the other grasps and grips them tight.Rut 1:14Gen 19:16Jdg 16:26

• Pictures sticking fast by adhesion, one surface bonded to another so it will not come loose: tongue glued to the roof of the mouth, bone clinging to skin, scales locked together.Psa 137:6Job 19:20Job 41:17
• Names covenant loyalty as staying joined to God, holding to him and refusing to be parted from him.Deu 10:20Jos 23:82Ki 18:6

• It can describe a hand closing on something, which is why angels take Lot by the hand, a torn robe is grabbed, and a frightened man clutches the horns of the altar.Gen 19:161Sa 15:271Ki 1:50
• It is the standard word for telling someone to be brave in the face of a hard task, so leaders hear it as a command before battle or before building.Deu 31:6Jos 1:61Ch 28:20
• It can name a resolve that has set hard against God, the settled stubbornness that keeps Pharaoh from letting Israel go.Exo 7:13Exo 9:12Exo 14:4
• It can describe a pressure that grows overwhelming, as when a famine tightens its grip on a land or a city until there is no food left.Gen 41:562Ki 25:3Jer 52:6

• Both describe putting a run-down building back in working order, and one account of the temple repairs uses them of a single job: workmen are hired to renew the house and metalworkers to mend it.2Ch 24:122Ch 24:42Ki 12:5
• Both belong to the language of a king setting worship right, and they stand in one sentence about Asa, whose nerve held firm while the altar of the LORD was made new.2Ch 15:8
• Each can name help that comes from outside to people too far gone to help themselves: God makes their days new again, and he takes hands that have given out and makes them firm.Lam 5:21Isa 35:3Isa 41:13

• It reaches back to a good condition that has been lost and brings that condition back, so a people can ask for their days to be as they once were and a worn-out life can be young again.Lam 5:21Psa 103:5Psa 104:30
• It can mean doing the same thing over again from the start, so a kingship is confirmed a second time and Job can complain that a fresh round of the same accusations keeps arriving.1Sa 11:14Job 10:17
• What it produces is a fresh state of the thing rather than a firmer hold on it: the prayer is for a heart made clean and a spirit made new, and ruined towns come back as places fit to live in again.Psa 51:10Isa 61:4

• Takes hold of something physically, by hand and by force: a hand gripped to pull a man out of danger, a beard grabbed to kill a lion, a body seized in a fight. The heart verb never touches a body.Gen 19:161Sa 17:35Deu 25:11
• Braces a person for what is ahead, and is the word behind the charge "be strong and courageous": what it supplies is firmness for a hard task, not a change in what a person feels or understands.Deu 31:6Jos 1:9Deu 3:28
• Works on things as readily as on people, and in the building reports it means to reinforce or repair, patching up a wall or a temple that has fallen into disrepair.Neh 3:42Ki 12:52Ch 24:12
• Can describe a whole situation growing more powerful rather than a person being acted on, as when a famine tightens its grip on a country or a besieged city.Gen 41:562Ki 25:3
• When it does reach a person's inner life, the heart has to be named separately beside it, and what it does there is stiffen a heart against giving in, as with Pharaoh.Exo 4:21Exo 9:12

—

• The heart is inside the verb itself, coined from the ordinary word for the inner self, so nothing has to be named alongside it: one glance and one bead of a necklace act straight on the man's inner self.Sng 4:9
• Pictures an inner self taken hold of rather than made strong: after one look the man is no longer in command of himself, which is why English versions reach for "ravish" or "steal my heart".Sng 4:9
• Can mean acquiring an inner self a person never had, so that a hollow man finally gets some sense, rather than adding force to what someone already has.Job 11:12
• Also names a kitchen task: making by hand the small cakes that are themselves called after the word for heart, cooked in front of a man who has taken to his bed.2Sa 13:62Sa 13:8

• As a verb, names the active process of becoming or being made firm over time, not just a fixed state. It carries the repeated charge to take courage and stand firm, given to Joshua and others as they enter a hard task, resting on a promise rather than a private summoning of nerve.Deu 31:6Jos 1:9
• Extends to a literal grip: seizing or grasping something by force or by the hand, and holding fast to it once taken. This physical sense of grabbing and clinging has no equivalent built from the other word.Gen 19:16Exo 4:4
• Names the famous, debated hardening of a heart or will, making it firm and unyielding, and also covers the plain work of repairing a wall or building. Both are about something made solid or set firm by deliberate effort, a sense the other word never develops.Exo 4:21Neh 3:4

• Both size up the raw military strength of a people or nation in the same plain, neutral register: one names an army or people actually growing strong and prevailing, the other names a people already reported strong and formidable as an obstacle.Jdg 1:28Num 13:28

• Freezes into a set idiom, strong of face, meaning a brazen, shameless defiance that shows no deference to anyone. This fixed phrase for hard-faced shamelessness has no equivalent built from the other word.Deu 28:50Dan 8:23
• Regularly labels force turned against a victim as fierce, harsh, or cruel: violent anger, a rough answer, a nation's terror. The other word can describe a will made stubborn, but it does not carry this moral coloring of menace directed at someone.Gen 49:7Pro 18:23
• Reaches into lyric poetry to cast love itself as a force as unstoppable as death. The other word, tied to a process of strengthening or gripping, is never used for this kind of elevated, personified intensity.Sng 8:6

• It is the ordinary word for physically taking hold of something and not letting go: a hand, a beard, a person's arm. The strength is in the grip.Gen 19:161Sa 17:352Sa 13:11
• It covers hands-on repair: bracing what has fallen apart and mending what has gone slack. This is the word that runs down the whole list of workers who rebuilt Jerusalem's wall, and the word for propping up drooping hands.Neh 3:4Neh 3:8Isa 35:3
• It is the standing command to a person facing a daunting job: take courage and get on with it. Moses says it to Israel, God says it to Joshua, David says it to Solomon before the temple work.Deu 31:6Jos 1:61Ch 28:20
• It is the word for a heart made unyielding, the refrain of the plagues narrative where Pharaoh's inner resolve is set hard so that he will not release Israel.Exo 4:21Exo 9:12Exo 14:4

• Both say that one side turns out to be the stronger and gets its way, which is why English Bibles render either one "prevail" or "be too strong for". Solomon overpowers Hamath-zobah with the one word; the hand of a judge, and then the hand of Midian, presses down on its enemy with the other.2Ch 8:32Sa 10:11Jdg 3:10Jdg 6:2
• At their plainest both simply mean to be or grow strong, with nothing further added, so a translation can say "be strong" for either and the reader cannot tell which word stands underneath.Jdg 1:28Psa 89:13
• Both can paint a person pressing forward with assurance, and one verse uses them together for the same woman in the same moment: she takes hold of the young man, and she puts on a bold face as she speaks.Pro 7:13

• It carries a note of brazen nerve that the other word never has: strength worn as defiance, whether in a face put on hard to stare someone down or in a man who grows bold in his own ruinous ways.Pro 21:29Psa 52:7
• Where the other word calls people to be strong for a task, this one asks God to bring out his own power, and it names the power that fixed the world in place when the springs of the deep were set firm.Psa 68:28Pro 8:28

• Taking a firm physical grip: seizing, grasping, or holding fast to something or someone.Gen 19:16Exo 4:41Ki 1:50
• Inner firmness of will: the summons to be resolute and take courage.Deu 31:6Jos 1:6Psa 27:14
• Becoming hard and unyielding, as a heart set stubbornly against yielding.Exo 7:13Exo 9:12Exo 14:4
• Reinforcing what is weak: repairing a wall or steadying a person's hands.Neh 3:42Ki 12:5

• Both can describe one party growing strong enough to outmatch another, a strength measured against a rival.2Sa 10:11Gen 26:16

• Growing vast in number: a people multiplying until their sheer size becomes overwhelming.Exo 1:7Exo 1:20Psa 105:24
• Being too many to count: enemies, sins, or wonders beyond reckoning.Psa 40:5Psa 40:12Jer 15:8
• Swelling into overwhelming might by sheer mass, a power that grows great.Dan 8:8Dan 8:24Isa 31:1

• Describes strength with no opponent anywhere in view: limp hands are told to grow strong, and a new leader is charged to be strong and brave before he faces anyone.Isa 35:3Jos 1:6Deu 31:6
• Covers a physical grip: the visitors take Lot by the hand and pull him out of the city, and Moses is told to grab the snake by its tail.Gen 19:16Exo 4:4
• Applies to things as readily as to people, and is the standard word for building work: each family repairs its own stretch of Jerusalem's wall, and a king fortifies his cities.Neh 3:42Ch 11:11
• Can make a will unyielding rather than merely powerful: it is the word for God making Pharaoh's heart hard so that he will not listen.Exo 9:12Exo 14:4
• States by itself which of two sides is the stronger, without needing any further word: Israel grew strong enough to put the Canaanites to forced labor, and Joab plans for the possibility that the Arameans prove too strong for him.Jdg 1:282Sa 10:11

• Each can put a person and God on opposite sides of one struggle, and in these two verses each is followed by the very same Hebrew word for prevailing: Jacob contended with God "and prevailed," while the prophet protests that God was stronger than he was "and prevailed."Jer 20:7Gen 32:28
• Both measure strength against someone else rather than describing a lone effort, which is why English versions reach for the same handful of renderings, "be strong," "prevail," and "hold out": Israel became strong and so mastered the Canaanites, and Jacob is remembered for holding out against God.Jdg 1:28Hos 12:3

• Always sets one party against another, and in both of its verses that other party is God: Jacob is told he has contended "with God and with men," and the prophet sums up the same night by saying he contended with God.Gen 32:28Hos 12:3
• A nation's name hangs on this one word: Genesis draws the new name Israel out of it, and Hosea replays the same wordplay generations later.Gen 32:28Hos 12:3
• Everything the word can mean has to be read off a single story, since its only two appearances both describe Jacob's night-long contest at the river.Gen 32:28Hos 12:3