to become sick, weak, or wounded: to lose strength, whether by illness, exhaustion, or injury
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
This is the ordinary Hebrew word for losing one's strength. Most often it names physical illness, the body failing so that a person takes to bed, sends for a prophet, or dies. But the same word reaches past disease to any draining of strength: a worn-out body that can no longer keep up, a lover undone by longing, a soldier struck down in battle.
The three senses below are one idea seen from different angles. Sickness is strength lost to disease, faintness is strength simply spent, and a wound is strength taken by force. Hebrew lets one verb cover all of them because each is the same event at heart: a living thing brought low.
The word is also a favorite of the prophets for a nation's ruin. A defeated or judged people is described as a body with a sickness that will not heal, a blow too deep to bind up. The picture is deliberate: the illness is real enough to be felt, and beyond any human cure.
to entreat someone's favor: to soften a superior's face, to plead and appease
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
In a fixed expression, almost always paired with the word for face, this verb means to seek someone's goodwill: to coax, soften, or win over a person whose favor you need. Most often the one being entreated is God, and the phrase becomes the standard way to describe earnest prayer that asks the LORD to relent. It is also used of currying favor with a generous or powerful human patron.
Ancient and modern lexicons usually treat this as a separate word that happens to be spelled the same, though some connect it to the idea of making a hard face soft, the same softening that illness works on a strong body. Either way, the meaning in use is steady and distinct: not to be weak, but to make another willing.
Nuances
2ato entreat the LORD's favor, to implore God to relent
in the phrase with face this verb is to soften and win over a superior, almost always God in earnest prayer; this is a separate sense from being sickExo 32:11Zec 8:21
Both
—
Only entreat
the English word sounds like polite asking, while the Hebrew idiom is the stronger picture of making a stern face relent
How ḥalah differs from similar Hebrew words
דָּוֶהthe adjective sick, describing the settled condition; this verb names the act of falling sick or growing weak
This is the everyday word for falling ill, and it leaves the outcome open. People described this way take to bed, send for a prophet, and often get well again.Gen 48:12Ki 20:12Ki 8:71Ki 17:17
It also covers weakness that is not disease at all, strength simply drained away by exhaustion or by longing.Jdg 16:71Sa 30:13Sng 2:5
It carries a second and quite separate use, in a set phrase about someone's face, where it means to beg for favor, most often God's.Exo 32:111Ki 13:6Psa 119:58
Both
Both belong to the prophets' picture of a defeated people as a battered body, and they stand side by side in the same line: one names the blow or the sickness, the other declares it beyond cure.Jer 30:12Isa 17:11
This word is a verdict rather than a report. It does not say that a wound is deep, it says the wound has already passed the point where any help can reach it, so the sufferer stops expecting relief.Jer 15:18Mic 1:9Job 34:6Jer 30:15
It stretches past bodies to anything past mending: what is wrong inside a person, and a day of ruin that cannot be called back.Jer 17:9Jer 17:16
When it does describe a person taking ill, the outcome is settled from the start: the illness runs to death rather than to recovery.2Sa 12:15
This is the ordinary word for falling ill. A person takes to bed, the family sends for a prophet, and the sickness may end in death. The other word never names an illness.Gen 48:11Ki 17:172Ki 20:1
It also covers strength simply running out where there is no disease and no wound at all: Samson explaining what would leave him as weak as any other man, or a servant abandoned in a field because he had collapsed three days before.Jdg 16:7Jdg 16:171Sa 30:13
The prophets use it for a whole nation pictured as a body, so the ruin of a people is described as a blow past curing rather than as pain being felt.Jer 10:19Jer 30:12Nam 3:19
It carries a second use with nothing to do with suffering at all: a fixed expression for seeking a superior's favor, softening the face of God or of a ruler so that he relents or shows kindness.Exo 32:111Ki 13:6Zec 7:2Mal 1:9
Both
Both can describe someone brought low by injury, which is why English Bibles render each of them "wounded" or "hurt" in places: a king struck by an arrow in battle, and men still sore from their wounds days afterward.1Ki 22:34Gen 34:25
Neither one is limited to the body. Both reach into what a person feels inwardly, so a lover can be undone by longing and a sufferer can name his pain alongside his poverty.Sng 5:8Psa 69:29
With both, God can be named as the one behind the suffering and not only as the one who lifts it: he says he has struck his people and left them ill, and Job's friend says the same hand that wounds also binds up.Mic 6:13Job 5:18
It names the sensation rather than any loss of strength. Job pictures a man's own flesh hurting on him, an ache felt from the inside with no collapse, no illness, and no cure in view.Job 14:22
Because it names pain and not a failing body, it can sit right alongside outward wellbeing: a heart that aches in the middle of laughter.Pro 14:13
Once it is aimed at land instead of a living body, when Israel is told to spoil every good field by covering it with stones. The other word is never used of ground.2Ki 3:19
ḥalah in the other biblical languages
ἀσθενέωGreek“be weak: ill”the common Greek verb for being weak or sick, which covers the same range of bodily weakness and illness
Carries the set idiom of softening or entreating someone's favor (literally making a face weak), used of pleading with God or a powerful person.Exo 32:111Sa 13:12Psa 119:58
Names the sickness that brings kings and patriarchs to their deathbeds, the recurring scene of someone falling ill before they die.Gen 48:12Ki 13:142Ki 20:1
Both
Both name falling physically ill, the ordinary sickness of the body that needs healing.2Ki 20:1Jhn 11:1
Both can describe being worn down or made feeble by love or grief, not only by disease.Sng 2:5Php 2:26
Reaches beyond bodily illness to moral and spiritual weakness: a fragile conscience, a faith too frail to bear certain freedoms.Rom 14:1Rom 14:21Co 8:11
Becomes a positive boast in the New Testament: human powerlessness is the very place God's strength is shown, so the apostle gladly owns it.2Co 12:102Co 13:42Co 13:9
A verb that narrates the onset and worsening of illness: someone falls sick, and often is sick to the point of death, so it can track the whole course of a disease rather than just naming a sufferer.1Ki 17:172Ki 20:1Isa 38:1
Stretches figuratively to emotional anguish, describing a person as sick with love or worn down and made ill by grief and longing.Sng 2:5Sng 5:82Sa 13:2
Carries an entirely separate sense with no illness in view at all: to entreat, to implore, to seek the favor of someone (literally to soften or sweeten another's face). The Greek word for the sick has nothing answering to this.Exo 32:111Ki 13:6Psa 45:12
Both
Both are the ordinary word for real bodily illness of a person, including grave, life-threatening sickness that calls for healing or rescue. The Hebrew verb is the standard Old Testament term for falling ill, and the Greek adjective is the standard New Testament term for the sick who are brought to be healed.2Ki 20:1Mat 14:14
An adjective used as a label for people: the sick, the standing class of ill folk brought to be healed. It tags a person's ongoing condition rather than narrating the event of getting sick, and in the Gospels it is the crowd of sufferers on whom Jesus and his disciples lay hands.Mat 14:14Mrk 6:5Mrk 16:18
Stays with plain bodily illness in the New Testament and never carries the figurative or emotional stretches the Hebrew word takes on. It simply marks the physically infirm, whether anointed with oil for healing or grown feeble and dying under discipline.Mrk 6:131Co 11:30
is a verb naming the EVENT of falling ill, the body giving way so that a person takes to bed, sends for a prophet, and may not recover.2Ki 20:11Ki 14:12Ki 13:14
covers being physically wounded or struck down in battle, a bodily blow from an enemy rather than sickness from within.1Ki 22:342Ch 35:23
stretches to being undone by longing, the strength drained out of a person by love rather than by disease or injury.Sng 2:5Sng 5:8
Both
both describe bodily sickness, the body failing through illness in a way that calls for healing or care.Mat 25:43Isa 38:1
both cover the ordinary draining of strength short of disease, the frailty and faintness of a body that can no longer keep up.Mat 26:41Jdg 16:7
is an adjective naming the settled state of being strengthless, and it reaches past the body to social standing: it labels the lowly and powerless who cannot help themselves, the very people God deliberately chooses over the strong.1Co 1:271Co 1:25Rom 5:6
brands a thing, not just a person, as having no power to deliver what it promises: a rule or a religious practice that is useless and cannot accomplish its end.Heb 7:18Gal 4:9
marks a fellow believer whose faith or conscience is fragile, the weak person to be supported and borne with rather than despised or made to stumble.1Co 8:91Co 9:221Th 5:14
It names the body itself giving way, so it covers wounds taken in battle just as readily as disease, and a king shot by an archer says it of himself.1Ki 22:342Ch 35:23
It stretches to longing that leaves a person physically weak, which is how the love poetry says someone is faint with love.Sng 2:5Sng 5:8
It carries a fixed expression for softening someone's face, meaning to press an urgent appeal until the other party relents, which is how Israel begs a favor of God.Exo 32:111Ki 13:6Psa 119:58
Both
Both are the plain way a narrative reports that someone is ill, the flat statement of fact that sets up a visit, a message, or a request for healing.Gen 48:12Ki 8:7Mrk 1:32Mat 9:12
Both are used of illness grave enough that death is the expected outcome, so the sick person's case is put before someone who can save him.2Ki 20:11Ki 17:17Luk 7:2
It is not a word for sickness at all. It simply means "badly", and it only says "sick" when it is attached to a word for having or being in a state, so the very same word covers speaking badly and asking badly.Jhn 18:23Act 23:5Jas 4:3
Because it measures how badly something is going rather than naming a condition, it can intensify any kind of torment, including affliction that is not disease.Mat 15:22Mat 17:15
It can describe the bad end someone is brought to rather than the bad state someone is in, so it works as a word for a wretched destruction.Mat 21:41
Reaches beyond the body to the will: growing weary in spirit, losing heart, and giving up under prolonged strain.Heb 12:3Rev 2:3
What scholars say about ḥalah
The standard lexica list two verbs spelled חלה. The first and far more frequent means to be or become sick, weak, or wounded, with a causative use for making sick or wounding (HALOT; BDB; DCH). Its range runs from literal illness through faintness and exhaustion to battle wounds and, in the prophets, the figurative ruin of a people. The second, חלה II, appears almost only in the fixed expression with the word for face and means to entreat, appease, or seek favor, most often of imploring the LORD (BDB; HALOT). Lexicographers debate whether the two are genuinely unrelated homonyms or whether the entreaty sense developed from the idea of softening or weakening another's hard face; the dictionaries keep them as separate entries while noting the connection.
Where scholars disagree about ḥalah
Whether the sickness verb and the entreaty idiom are two unrelated homonyms or one root, with the entreaty sense having grown from the picture of softening or weakening a hard face.
majorityTwo separate verbs that happen to share a spelling; listed as distinct entries.; BDB, s.v. חלה I, II; HALOT, s.v. חלה I, II
minorityOne root, with the entreaty idiom derived from making another's face soft or weak.; K. Seybold, "חלה chalah," in TDOT, vol. 4
Sources
HALOT, s.v. חלה I, IIlexicon
BDB, s.v. חלה I, IIlexicon
DCH, s.v. חלהlexicon
K. Seybold, "חלה chalah," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), vol. 4theological-dictionary