godless: a person cut off from God by moral corruption; impious, profane, defiled.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
Underneath this word lies the idea of being polluted or defiled, and from there it comes to describe a person who is spiritually corrupt and cut off from God. It does not name someone who has broken a single rule; it names the whole bent of a life turned away from God.
The book of Job leans on it again and again as the opposite of the upright person. The godless one may seem to prosper, but his hope perishes, his joy lasts only a moment, and he has nothing to fall back on when God calls him to account. In Job it stands close to the word for the wicked (רָשָׁע), yet where that word points to guilt and wrongdoing, this one points to the inner rot that estranges a person from God.
Isaiah stretches the same word from the single person to a whole people, calling a nation godless when its common life is soaked in injustice and hollow religion. Whether it lands on one man or a whole society, the constant note is the same: estrangement from God showing itself in a corrupt life.
the Hebrew carries an older note of being polluted or defiled, so the godlessness is a kind of moral stain, not merely the absence of religion.Job 8:13Job 27:8
Both
both describe a person who lives with no regard for God.Job 20:5Isa 33:14
Only godless
in modern English "godless" can simply mean irreligious or atheistic, a matter of belief; the Hebrew always carries the added weight of moral corruption and defilement.
“profane”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
the Hebrew names a person who is openly and truly godless, not one who merely puts on a false front.Job 13:16Job 8:13
Both
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Only hypocrite
English "hypocrite" means someone who fakes goodness while hiding wickedness; the Hebrew word carries no idea of pretending, so this old rendering points readers in exactly the wrong direction.
How ḥaneph differs from similar Hebrew words
רָשָׁעthe wicked or guilty person, the usual opposite of the righteous; it points to wrongdoing and guilt, while this word points to the moral pollution that cuts a person off from God.
Points to inner defilement and godlessness, the person who is polluted and alienated from God rather than merely a doer of bad deeds, so its natural opposite is the God-fearing and the clean.Job 13:16Job 17:8
Fixes on the emptiness of the godless person's hope, whose religion is a sham that collapses the moment God calls him to account.Job 8:13Job 27:8
Can brand a whole nation or community as profane and defiled, describing a corrupt collective and not just an individual offender.Job 15:34Isa 10:6
Both
Both name the person set against God whose seeming prosperity is short-lived, and Job 20:5 pairs them in one line to say the triumph of the one and the joy of the other last only a moment.Job 20:5
Both stand as a foil to the upright in Israel's wisdom, each one's confidence pictured as doomed to perish.Job 8:13Job 18:5
Is the courtroom word for the guilty party, the one a judge condemns as being in the wrong, standing opposite the one declared in the right.Deu 25:1Exo 23:71Ki 8:32
Is the standard, everywhere-used label for the wicked as the settled opposite of the righteous, running through the Law, the Prophets, and the wisdom books.Psa 1:6Gen 18:23
Marks the wrongdoer by his acts of violence and injustice against others, the guilt showing itself in how he treats his neighbor.Exo 2:13Psa 10:2
Only the adjective carries a verdict about how such a life ends, which is the whole burden of the argument in Job: the godless man's hope dies, his gladness lasts a moment, his household comes to nothing, and he has nothing left to ask for when God takes his life away. The verb never looks at the outcome of a person like this.Job 8:13Job 20:5Job 15:34Job 27:8
Only the adjective works as a settled name for a kind of person, set face to face with the upright and the righteous: honest people are shaken by him, his talk destroys his neighbor, and God keeps him from ruling. The verb never appears in that contrast, because it names something happening rather than a type of person.Job 17:8Pro 11:9Job 34:30
This is the word older English Bibles rendered "hypocrite", so it is the one a reader is most likely to meet in misleading dress: Job says such a man will never come before God, and elsewhere speaks of those who are godless at heart. It does not mean someone faking goodness; it means someone truly turned from God. The verb was never dressed up that way.Job 13:16Job 36:13
Both
Both name real godlessness in a person, not a ritual slip and not a pretense. The verb says the priests and prophets in Jerusalem have become godless; the adjective names the man whose whole life is turned away from God. In each case the trouble is a corrupt life, not an accidental uncleanness that washing could fix.Jer 23:11Job 8:13
Both stretch from single people to a whole nation. The verb is used of a people whose unfaithfulness leaves their own land ruined, and the adjective is used of a nation God calls godless and sends an enemy against. Either word can widen out to describe a shared public life rotted through.Jer 3:1Isa 9:17Isa 10:6
Only the verb is said of the ground itself. Blood shed in murder and children killed for idols leave a land polluted, and Numbers 35:33 is blunt that no offering clears it, only the death of the murderer. Enemies who surround Zion want to see her defiled in exactly that way. The adjective is never used of a land, a city, or a place.Num 35:33Psa 106:38Mic 4:11
Only the verb traces the damage to the ones who caused it, and lets that damage spread over territory. Israel's betrayal of God is said to have defiled the land, and the ruin finally reaches the whole earth because its people broke faith with him. So this word can name an act with someone to blame, where the adjective only reports the finished state of a person.Jer 3:2Jer 3:9Isa 24:5
Only the verb describes one person dragging others into godlessness: a ruler wins over those who abandon their agreement with God and turns them godless with him. Nothing the adjective does reaches beyond the person it labels.Dan 11:32
ḥaneph in the other biblical languages
ἀσεβήςGreek“ungodly”the Greek word for the ungodly or impious person, one who fails to reverence God; it stresses irreverence, where the Hebrew stresses defilement and estrangement from God.
Its home is the argument of Job, where the godless man is the example the friends keep holding up against Job: his hope perishes, his triumph lasts only a moment, and he has nothing left when God takes his life away. The word is a move in a dispute about how life turns out, not a sentence handed down from outside it.Job 8:13Job 20:5Job 27:8
Stretches from one man to a whole people. Isaiah calls the entire nation godless, and God then sends Assyria against a godless nation. The Greek word is never used of a nation in this way.Isa 9:17Isa 10:6
Is often measured by the damage such a person does to those around him: with his mouth he ruins his neighbor, and a godless man left to rule is a trap set for the whole people.Pro 11:9Job 34:30
Both
Both stand as the settled opposite of the person who is right with God, and both work as a label for a kind of person rather than for one wrong act.1Pe 4:18Job 17:8
Both describe someone whose apparent security gives way: what he leans on will not hold, and the road ends in ruin.2Pe 2:5Job 8:13
The Greek Old Testament regularly reached for this Greek word to carry the Hebrew one, which is why English Bibles can render either as "godless" and why meeting that word in translation does not tell a reader which of the two stands behind it.1Ti 1:9Isa 33:14
Paul turns the word around and makes it the description of the person God rescues: God is the one who puts the godless in the right, and Christ died for the godless while they were still helpless. The Hebrew word is never used that way; there the godless man is precisely the one who cannot come before God.Rom 4:5Rom 5:6
Names the fault as reverence withheld from God rather than as harm done to the people nearby. Jude's intruders are charged with denying the Master who bought them, and the generation swept away by the flood is described purely by its standing toward God while Noah is kept safe.Jud 1:42Pe 2:5
Points forward to one announced day of reckoning: the present sky and earth are being kept for a day of judgment and ruin for the godless, and the Lord comes to convict every one of them. The Hebrew word keeps its accounting inside a lifetime, in an argument about how such a man's years actually turn out.2Pe 3:7Jud 1:15
This word names a kind of person rather than a practice, and it is a settled verdict on the whole of them, not a habit they could put down. Terror takes hold of such people when God draws near, and even those who are innocent are shaken at the sight of them.Isa 33:14Job 17:8
Because it is a description of people, it can be said of a whole nation and become the reason God sends an army against it.Isa 10:6Isa 9:17
The harm it does is open damage, not a false front: such a person pulls a neighbor down by what he says, and he is found among those who mock and jeer.Pro 11:9Psa 35:16
Both
Both are words of exposure and judgment rather than neutral description, and in both the accusation is that God sees something other than what is on display. Greek-speaking Jewish translators reached for this Greek word family when they rendered the Hebrew word, which is a large part of why pretending, in the New Testament, carries the older charge of being foul before God and not merely putting on a show.Isa 33:14Mat 23:28
Both locate the trouble inside a person, where only God can read it. The Hebrew word can call people godless in heart, and Jesus knows the pretending of the men questioning him before they have given anything away.Job 36:13Mrk 12:15
This word names the pretending itself, not the pretender, so it can be spoken of as something a person is carrying and can get rid of. Peter lists it among the habits believers are to strip off, and Jesus says the religious leaders are full of it underneath a righteous-looking surface.1Pe 2:1Mat 23:28
Because it is a practice rather than a verdict on a person, it can spread from one person to others. Jesus calls it the "leaven" of the Pharisees, the small thing that works through the whole batch, and at Antioch it carried along even Barnabas, so that people who knew better joined in.Luk 12:1Gal 2:13
It can be pinned to one particular act of speaking: a flattering question asked only to trap the person answering, or teaching passed on by people who do not believe what they are saying.Mrk 12:151Ti 4:2
The core is being godless and defiled before God, corrupt at the root rather than merely play-acting. Such a person has turned away entirely, and the word can carry the weight of one who pollutes the land.Isa 9:17Isa 10:6Job 8:13
Its end is doom: the hope of such a person perishes, and they will not come before God. The accent falls on their ruin and their exclusion, not on any outward performance.Job 13:16Job 27:8Job 20:5
It is paired with hard-hearted defiance and stored-up anger toward God, naming an inner wickedness rather than a mask worn for others.Job 36:13Job 34:30Job 15:34
Both
Both name a person who is hollow before God, whose true state does not match what religion or appearance would suggest, and both stand under condemnation. Greek-speaking Jewish tradition came to render the Hebrew word with the Greek one, lending the play-actor word its heavier weight of the corrupt and godless.Job 8:13Mat 23:13
The core image is the stage actor: someone playing a part, putting on a public show of devotion that does not match the heart behind it. Jesus uses it for those who give, pray, and fast to be seen by others.Mat 6:2Mat 6:5Mat 6:16
It targets the gap between appearance and reality: clean on the outside, corrupt within, like a tomb that looks beautiful but is full of death.Mat 23:27Mat 23:25Luk 11:44
It can name a failure to read or act on what is plain: people who judge the weather but will not judge the present time, or who fault a healing they would gladly do themselves.Luk 12:56Luk 13:15Mat 7:5
What scholars say about ḥaneph
The adjective חָנֵף derives from the root חנף, whose base sense is "to be polluted, defiled" (used of land polluted by bloodshed, Numbers 35:33;Psalm 106:38) and, morally, "to be godless, apostate." Standard lexica (BDB; HALOT) gloss the adjective as "profane, godless, irreligious"; it functions substantivally as "the godless one" and is concentrated in the wisdom disputes of Job as the antithesis of the righteous and the upright. The traditional rendering "hypocrite" (the Septuagint's occasional ὑποκριτής, and following it the King James Version) reflects a later semantic development attested in post-biblical Hebrew and Aramaic and is now generally regarded as anachronistic for the biblical usage. In Isaiah the term broadens to characterize a whole apostate people (Isaiah 9:17; 10:6). Psalm 35:16 and Job 36:13 present textual and lexical difficulties in their surrounding phrases but are conventionally construed within the same "godless" range.
Sources
BDB, s.v. חָנֵףlexicon
HALOT, s.v. חָנֵףlexicon
Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT), s.v. חנףdictionary
Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), s.v. חָנֵףdictionary