a sickness: an illness or disease of the body, and by extension the suffering or ruin that sickness pictures.
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
At its core this is the plain word for being ill. Most of the time it simply reports that someone has fallen sick: a king takes to his bed, a prophet catches the illness he will die of, a child grows too sick to breathe. It is also the word the covenant warnings use for the diseases that can come on a disobedient people, and the word for the recovery the LORD can grant.
Because a failing body is such a vivid picture, the word stretches beyond the sickroom. Isaiah can describe a whole nation as a body sick from head to foot, and the prophets can call a people's ruin or a heavy personal calamity a kind of sickness that has to be carried. The image is always the same: something has gone wrong deep inside and cannot simply be shaken off.
Its most discussed appearance is in Isaiah 53, where the servant is called a man who knows this word firsthand and is said to bear it for others. There the word points to suffering taken up on someone else's behalf, and English Bibles usually render it grief or sorrow rather than illness. Whether the servant carries literal disease or human suffering in the wider sense has long been debated, which is why the same small word can look so different from one translation to the next.
in Hebrew this is the same word used for bodily disease, so the grief is pictured as an illness the sufferer carries, not just a feeling.Isa 53:4
Both
both name a heavy suffering that weighs a person down.Isa 53:3
Only grief
the English word is purely emotional, dropping the picture of a diseased body that the Hebrew word still carries.
“disease”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“affliction”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How ḥoli differs from similar Hebrew words
מַחֲלָהanother noun for disease from the same root; it tends to name a particular malady or ailment, where this word is the broader state of being ill.
Names a specific person's own diagnosed illness inside a narrative, often the one that will kill him: a widow's son stops breathing, a king takes to his sickbed, Elisha lies dying of the sickness he will not recover from.1Ki 17:172Ki 13:142Ch 16:12
Stretches past the sickbed into a metaphor for a whole nation's ruin or grief: Isaiah pictures the people as a body sick from head to foot, and the servant of Isaiah 53 is said to carry this very sickness on others' behalf, a use English Bibles usually render as grief rather than disease.Isa 1:5Isa 53:3Isa 53:4
Appears in the covenant curse warnings naming the diseases of Egypt that could fall on a disobedient people, a use the other word never carries.Deu 28:59Deu 28:61
Both
The only verse holding both words puts them side by side for the same affliction: the general sickness is named twice with one word, framing the ordeal as a whole, while the other word names the specific ailment (a bowel disease) at its center.2Ch 21:15
Occurs only six times, and every time as one item named in a fixed covenant formula rather than in a story about a particular person's illness: a blessing that removes it on condition of obedience, or a set list of national calamities a besieged people might suffer.Exo 15:26Exo 23:251Ki 8:372Ch 6:28
In its one wisdom-literature appearance, it is the private, ordinary infirmity a person's own spirit can bear, set against the far worse case of a spirit already broken, rather than a sickness God sends or removes.Pro 18:14
תַּחֲלֻאִיםa related plural noun, diseases, from the same root; it turns up mostly in lists of grievous illnesses sent as judgment, where this word covers illness of any kind.
Names a literal bodily illness that a king is struck down with, one severe enough that people ask directly whether he will recover from it.2Ki 8:82Ki 8:9
Marks the specific illness, tied to a named part of the body, that eventually kills the person it strikes.2Ch 16:122Ch 21:182Ki 13:14
Listed among the covenant curses God threatens to send or promises to remove, itemized alongside other named diseases.Deu 7:15Deu 28:61
Both
Both words describe the suffering servant in the same two verses: he is called a man familiar with the one, and said to carry the other, so together they cover the full weight of what he bears on behalf of others.Isa 53:3Isa 53:4
names a concrete bodily disease that seizes a person, keeps them bedridden, and runs a course toward either recovery or death, often with a prognosis attached: will the patient get well or not.1Ki 17:172Ki 1:22Ch 16:12
can picture a whole people as a diseased body, so that a nation's corruption or coming ruin is spoken of as a sickness spreading through it.Isa 1:5Hos 5:13
Both
both stretch past their core to name deep, drawn-out suffering a person must carry, and translators reach for grief to render each.Isa 53:3Job 16:6
names pain as the raw felt hurt itself, whether a wound that will not stop throbbing or the ache of a heart in mourning, rather than the illness behind it.Jer 15:18Isa 65:14Psa 39:2
ḥoli in the other biblical languages
νόσοςGreek“illness”the ordinary Greek word for disease or illness in the New Testament.
It names one particular person's illness inside a private narrative, where the story turns on whether that individual will live or die.1Ki 17:172Ki 8:8
It stretches past bodily illness to picture a whole nation's moral ruin or a grief a person must carry, an extension the Greek word's healing-summary use never reaches.Isa 1:5Jer 10:19
Both
Both plainly name an ordinary bodily illness, the kind a sufferer hopes to recover from or be healed of.2Ki 8:8Mrk 1:34
Matthew ties the two words to the same servant-song line: he says Jesus healing the sick fulfilled Isaiah's word that the servant bore this Hebrew word for sickness, using this Greek word to carry it into the New Testament.Isa 53:4Mat 8:17
In the Gospels this word almost always shows up inside a set summary line about Jesus or his sent-out followers curing crowds of every disease, paired with a companion word for affliction, rather than naming any one person's illness in a story.Mat 4:23Mat 9:35Mat 10:1
It can name a disease that leaves a sick person even without the healer's presence, carried away by an object that has touched him.Act 19:12
ἀσθένειαGreek“weakness: weak”weakness or infirmity, the Greek word for bodily frailty and illness; Matthew 8:17 uses both it and the word for disease when it quotes Isaiah 53:4.
Stays with concrete bodily disease, often a specific, named, or fatal malady localized in the body.2Ch 16:122Ch 21:182Ki 13:14
Frequently names disease sent as judgment, the dreaded sicknesses God brings on or spares from.Deu 7:15Deu 28:59Deu 28:61
Both
Both name the sickness a sufferer bears: Matthew renders Isaiah's picture of borne sickness with the Greek word when he says Jesus took our infirmities.Isa 53:4Mat 8:17
Both cover ordinary bodily illness that lays a person low and from which they may recover.Isa 38:9Jhn 5:5
Reaches beyond disease to every kind of weakness: human frailty, moral and spiritual inability, and the mortal condition Paul boasts in.Rom 8:262Co 12:9Heb 4:15
Names frailty as the weak state of mortal flesh set against divine power, apart from any specific ailment.1Co 15:432Co 13:4
What scholars say about ḥoli
The standard lexicons treat choli as a single noun, sickness or disease, formed from the verb chalah, to be or become sick (BDB, HALOT, DCH). Beside its plain medical use in the historical books they recognize a figurative extension to national calamity (Isaiah 1:5;Hosea 5:13;Jeremiah 6:7) and to grief or suffering (Isaiah 53:3 and 4). K. Seybold's treatment of the chalah word group in the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament surveys the range and the theology of sickness as covenant curse and divine chastening. The rendering at Isaiah 53:4 is contested: the ancient versions already diverge there, most modern translations give grief or sorrow, and the New Testament citation at Matthew 8:17 takes the term as physical disease.
Sources
BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. חֳלִיlexicon
HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. חֳלִיlexicon
DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. חֳלִיlexicon
K. Seybold, "חלה chalah," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), vol. 4dictionary