a thing placed under God's irrevocable claim, so that it is either destroyed or given to him permanently and can never be reclaimed for ordinary use
TranslatabilityUntranslatableCertaintyStrong
This word marks something that has been taken out of everyday life for good and handed over entirely to God. Once a thing is treated this way, the transfer cannot be undone: it may not be bought back, sold, or put to normal use again.
The surprising thing is that this single idea pulls in two opposite directions. Sometimes the thing is handed over by being destroyed, as when a city or an enemy is doomed to total defeat in war, or when God threatens to strike a land with ruin. Other times the very same word describes a gift so completely given to God that it becomes the most holy property of the priests, like a field or possession that a person dedicates and can never take back. Both outcomes share one core: the object is removed from human ownership forever and belongs wholly to God.
Because the ban is so absolute, taking anything from it is treated as a grave offense. When Achan kept spoil from Jericho that had been placed under the ban, the guilt spread to all Israel and the word for the doomed spoil is even applied to the people themselves, who became liable to the same fate.
Nuances
1asomething doomed to destruction: a person, city, or object given over to be wiped out in war or judgment, and the guilt of taking what has been so doomed
1bsomething dedicated to God permanently: a most holy gift set aside for the sanctuary and the priests, which can never be redeemed or sold
Lev 27:21Lev 27:28 (2×)Num 18:14Ezk 44:29
2
a net for catching fish or prey
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is a completely different word that happens to be spelled the same way: a net used by fishermen and hunters to trap what they are after. Standard lexicons keep it separate from the word for a thing under the ban, because the two have nothing to do with each other beyond their shared spelling.
The Bible rarely mentions the net as a plain object. More often it is a picture of capture that cannot be escaped. A conquering army is compared to a fisherman who hauls in whole nations with his net and then honors the net as if it were a god. A ruined coastal city becomes nothing but a bare place where fishermen spread their nets to dry, and a seductive woman is described as a snare and a net that traps the unwary.
names something placed under God's irrevocable sentence and set apart to be destroyed, so dangerous that keeping any of it brings the same doom on the one who takes itJos 6:18
Both
both mark the object as banned and dangerous to touch or keepDeu 7:26
Only accursed thing
the English word accursed suggests a magical hex or general loathing, which the original does not carry
the prophets rarely use it for a literal net; it usually pictures an inescapable capture, even a conqueror hauling in whole nationsHab 1:15
Both
both name a mesh device for catching fish or preyEzk 47:10
Only net
the plain English word net is just a tool, without the overtones of doom and entrapment the biblical writers give it
How ḥerem differs from similar Hebrew words
חָרַםthe matching verb, to place something under the ban: to devote it to God irrevocably, whether by destroying it or by handing it over to the sanctuary.
קֹדֶשׁholiness or a holy thing in general; a devoted thing is the most extreme, irreversible form of holiness, one that can never be bought back.
Names the most extreme and irreversible form of giving something over to God: a devoted thing cannot be redeemed, ransomed, or sold back, and a person placed under the ban is put to death.Lev 27:29Jos 6:18
Very often it means devotion by destruction: an enemy and everything belonging to them is wiped out as God's due in war, not preserved for his service.Deu 13:171Sa 15:211Ki 20:42
The devoted thing is treated as dangerously contagious: whoever keeps any of it brings the whole community under the same doom, as when Achan's theft made Israel liable.Deu 7:26Jos 7:1Jos 7:12
Both
Both name what is taken out of ordinary use and handed over to the LORD as his exclusive possession, no longer free for common human use.Lev 27:28Lev 27:21
At the point of total surrender the two meet: a thing placed under the ban is itself called most holy to the LORD, so the ban is the sharpest edge of the sacred.Lev 27:28
Names the whole sphere of the sacred that is set apart for God's ongoing worship and service: holy ground, the holy place, holy garments, the holy anointing oil.Exo 3:5Exo 28:2Exo 30:25
Holiness comes in degrees, dividing what is holy from what is most holy, and it belongs supremely to God himself rather than describing an object marked for ruin.Exo 15:11Exo 26:33
רֶשֶׁתthe ordinary word for a net or mesh trap; it overlaps with the net sense of this word and often appears alongside it in the same verse.
In its net sense this is specifically the fisherman's dragnet, the large seine hauled through water to bring up a whole catch at once. The imagery is always the sea and the mass sweep: fishermen spread their nets to dry along a ruined coast, and a conqueror is a fisherman who gathers up entire nations in his dragnet and even worships the net that made him rich.Hab 1:15Hab 1:16Ezk 47:10
Both
Both are catching nets that are spread out over a victim, and both serve as an image of a powerful captor seizing people who cannot escape. Ezekiel pairs the two words in one oracle: God spreads his net over Pharaoh and then hauls him up in his dragnet.Ezk 32:3
This word can name a fixed lattice or meshwork rather than a catching net at all: the bronze grating built into the altar of the tabernacle is a rešet, a network of metal, an object of craftsmanship with no prey in view.Exo 27:4Exo 27:5Exo 38:4
As a trap it is above all the fowler's net secretly laid for the unsuspecting, and this is its dominant use in the Psalms as a picture of the concealed snare enemies set for the innocent, who are caught in the very trap they hid.Psa 35:7Psa 140:5Pro 1:17
מָצוֹדa hunting net or snare for catching prey; a near-synonym for the net sense, paired with it when the image is of trapping people.
Only this word doubles as the ban: a person, a city, or an object put under God's permanent claim, either wiped out in war or handed over to the sanctuary and never bought back. That whole religious use is absent from the other word, which never leaves the world of traps and walls.Lev 27:28Lev 27:29Deu 7:26Jos 6:171Sa 15:21
Its net is real working gear with a place on the map: the flat shore where fishermen spread their catch nets out to dry. Ezekiel promises exactly that fate for ruined Tyre, and pictures the same drying ground on the healed sea where the fishing is rich.Ezk 26:5Ezk 26:14Ezk 47:10
It is the wide dragnet whose haul is a whole population at once, so the catch is measured in nations rather than in one victim. The conqueror grows so fat on it that he burns offerings to the gear itself, then empties it out and starts again.Hab 1:15Hab 1:16Hab 1:17Ezk 32:3
Both
Both name mesh gear that closes on a catch, and both get turned on people rather than only on fish and game. Ecclesiastes 7:26 stacks them side by side in one line for a single image: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whom the one who displeases God cannot escape.Ecc 7:26
This word swings away from trapping altogether toward built works of war: the great ramps a besieging king throws up around a small town, the armies ringing the city with their siege lines, and the fortified place a captured king is dragged into so that his voice is heard no more.Ecc 9:14Isa 29:7Ezk 19:9
Its trap is felt from the inside, by the one already taken. A suffering man protests that God has drawn it tight around him, and it stands for the way a bad time closes on people who never saw the moment coming, the way fish are seized in a net.Job 19:6Ecc 9:12
ḥerem in the other biblical languages
ἀνάθεμαGreek“devoted”the Greek word the Septuagint used to translate the ban; in the New Testament it means something accursed or handed over to God's judgment.
It is a concrete object or population, not just a spoken word: a city and everything in it, or captured spoil, set apart to the LORD by being destroyed.Jos 6:17Jos 7:11Sa 15:21
It also names property handed permanently to the sanctuary that can never be sold or bought back, a transfer rather than a curse on a person.Lev 27:28Num 18:14
Touching or keeping back such a banned thing infects the one who holds it, so the contagion of the ban is a feature the New Testament word does not carry.Deu 7:26Deu 13:17
Both
Both name someone or something irrevocably handed over to God under a curse, with no taking it back: the Greek word is the New Testament's heir to the Old Testament ban.Lev 27:291Co 12:3
Both attach to a binding vow or oath that cannot be undone: the devoted thing is sworn to the LORD, and the curse formula seals an oath the speaker swears to keep.Lev 27:28Act 23:14
In the New Testament it is a spoken sentence laid on a person, not a physical thing: a formula that consigns someone to God's judgment, as Paul does to anyone who preaches another gospel.Gal 1:8Gal 1:91Co 16:22
It can be turned on oneself as a self-curse one is willing to bear, with no warfare or property in view at all.Rom 9:3
It backs a binding oath, where the speakers bind themselves under a curse to carry out a vow.Act 23:14
δίκτυονGreek“net”the ordinary Greek word for a fishing net, matching the net sense of this word.
Its dominant meaning has nothing to do with a net: a person or thing placed under God's irrevocable ban, devoted to him and commonly given over to destruction.Jos 6:17Lev 27:28
Even where it does mean a net, the net is an instrument of capture and doom: spread to trap a nation, or sacrificed to by the conqueror who trusts it.Mic 7:2Hab 1:16
Both
Both name a net let down into the water to take fish and then hauled in with its catch.Jhn 21:6Hab 1:15
In each the net stands for a sweeping, total capture: the Galilee net enclosing a great shoal, the prophet's net dragging up a whole people.Luk 5:6Ezk 32:3
Always an ordinary, literal fishing net, the working gear of Galilee fishermen that the first disciples leave behind or let down at Jesus' word.Mat 4:20Luk 5:5
Carries no menace: it is simply the tool of the trade, and even a miraculous overload of fish does not tear it.Jhn 21:11Luk 5:6
What scholars say about ḥerem
Lexica list two homonyms under this spelling: חֵרֶם I, the ban or devoted thing, and חֵרֶם II, the net. For חֵרֶם I the semantic core is irrevocable consecration, the removal of an object from common use and its transfer to the deity, with two outcomes: destruction (the war ban of Deuteronomy and Joshua, and the judgment oracles) and dedication as most holy priestly property (Leviticus 27; Numbers 18:14;Ezekiel 44:29).Leviticus 27:28-29 sets both outcomes side by side, distinguishing a devoted object (irredeemable, retained as most holy) from a devoted person (irredeemable, put to death). Lohfink's TDOT article and Stern's monograph treat the ban as a sacral institution rather than mere slaughter, which accounts for the overlap between the destructive and dedicatory poles. חֵרֶם II, the net, is unrelated and largely figurative, standing parallel to reshet and metsod (Ezekiel 32:3;Ecclesiastes 7:26).
Sources
HALOT, s.v. חֵרֶם I, IIlexicon
BDB, s.v. חֵרֶםlexicon
N. Lohfink, "חָרַם ḥāram; חֵרֶם ḥērem," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 5reference
Philip D. Stern, The Biblical Ḥerem: A Window on Israel's Religious Experience (Brown Judaic Studies 211; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991)monograph
Jackie A. Naudé, "חרם," in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesisreference