ḥalaph

At its root this verb is about passing. Something moves past you, goes on further, rushes through a land, or slips out of existence entirely. The same picture covers a spirit gliding by in the night, a flood tearing across a country, the rain finishing and moving on, and a human life running out like a fast ship on the water.

Because passing can be gentle or violent, the word stretches across a wide field. When a weapon passes clean through a body it means to pierce or strike through. When someone passes beyond a boundary that was set for them, it edges toward overstepping or breaking a law. Whether the motion is soft or forceful, the constant idea is that of moving on, through, or away.

This is also the sense that carries the word's most famous note of sadness: things that pass do not last. Rain, idols, and mortal life all pass, and the verb lets a poet say so in a single stroke.

When the verb is used in a way that makes something else pass on, it means to change or exchange. You take off one set of clothes and put on another, you swap someone's wages again and again, or you trade one animal for a different one. The old thing passes out and a new thing takes its place.

This is a plain, everyday use with no special weight to it. It covers changing your garments before entering a royal court, replacing fallen brick buildings with better ones, and the warning in the law that a person may not quietly substitute one dedicated animal for another. The core is simple: one thing goes, another comes in its stead.

The same idea of one state passing into another can turn hopeful. Instead of the old thing merely being replaced, the thing itself comes up new. A tree that has been cut down sprouts again from its stump. Grass springs up fresh in the morning. A warrior's bow feels new in his hand. Most memorably, those who wait on the Lord renew their strength and rise up like eagles.

Here the passing is a passing into freshness. The word does not simply mean to repair or patch up. It pictures a genuine new growth or a new supply arriving to take over from what was spent, so that the tired or the cut-down starts again as if young.