to burn dry: to be scorched, charred, or parched by fire or heat
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
At its core this is the language of heat drying something out: fire blackening wood, a pot glowing red, skin and bones burning with fever. The picture is not so much bursting into flame as being scorched, charred, and parched, the surface darkened and the moisture gone.
The same image stretches naturally in several directions:
objects a fire has ruined, from the refiner's bellows to a charred vine branch to an empty cooking pot left on the coals
a body worn down from the inside, a throat cracked from weeping or bones that feel like a furnace
a whole land whose people are scorched dry under a curse
once, in Proverbs, an active use: a quarrelsome person who keeps a fire of strife burning
This is close to the ordinary words for burning, but with its own slant. Where שָׂרַף is to burn something up and destroy it, this word is to be scorched and dried by the heat, often without being consumed. It should not be confused with its near-twin חָרָה, which sounds almost the same but describes the heat of anger rather than of fire.
Nuances
1ascorched or charred by fire: wood, metal, or a pot blackened and dried out by flame
Jer 6:29Ezk 15:4Ezk 15:5Ezk 24:10Ezk 24:11
1bparched or feverish: the body burning and drying up from thirst, fever, or grief
Job 30:30Psa 69:3(4)Psa 102:3(4)
1cscorched under judgment: a whole population dried up and wasted under a curse
Isa 24:6*
1dto kindle or inflame: to make something hot, used of stirring up a quarrel
means the surface is scorched and dried, not necessarily consumed, so a charred vine branch or a person's bones can be "burned" and still be thereEzk 15:4Psa 102:3
Both
both describe fire or fierce heat acting on something until it is blackened and driedJer 6:29
Only burned
the English word can suggest something reduced to ash and destroyed, which this word does not require
“scorched”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“parched”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“kindle”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How ḥarar differs from similar Hebrew words
שָׂרַףto burn something up and destroy it completely, reducing it to ash, whereas this word is to be scorched and dried out by heat, often without being consumed
Describes a body scorched or parched by heat rather than an object set ablaze: skin turned black and bones burning as if with fever (Job 30:30,Psalm 102:3), and a throat dried up from crying out (Psalm 69:3).Job 30:30Psa 102:3Psa 69:3
Points to glowing, kindling heat and its scorching aftermath: coals fanned red-hot to kindle a fire (Proverbs 26:21), and a land whose inhabitants are left scorched and wasted (Isaiah 24:6).Pro 26:21Isa 24:6
Both
Both can describe fire consuming wood. A vine branch charred and eaten through by the flames (Ezekiel 15:4) overlaps with wooden images and war chariots burned up with fire (Deuteronomy 12:3,Joshua 11:9).Ezk 15:4Deu 12:3Jos 11:9
The ordinary verb for setting something on fire to consume and destroy it, used of cities burned to the ground (Joshua 6:24,Joshua 11:11) and of idols and images burned with fire (Exodus 32:20,Deuteronomy 7:5).Jos 6:24Jos 11:11Exo 32:20Deu 7:5
Names burning a person as a legal penalty (Genesis 38:24,Leviticus 20:14,Leviticus 21:9) and the disposal by fire of leftover sacrificial flesh and refuse outside the camp (Exodus 29:14,Leviticus 4:12).Gen 38:24Lev 20:14Lev 21:9Exo 29:14Lev 4:12
Can be a controlled, deliberate firing, as when bricks are burned hard in a kiln (Genesis 11:3).Gen 11:3
בָּעַרto catch fire and blaze, the active flaming of a fire, whereas this word is the scorching and drying that heat leaves behind
Names the scorched, parched, blackened state that heat leaves behind: skin turned black in fever, a throat gone dry, bones burned dry like a hearth. It is burning felt as charring and dryness on the body, not an open flame.Job 30:30Psa 69:3Psa 102:3
Describes material charred and ruined by heat: the bellows scorched in the smelting, the vine already burned at both ends. The stress falls on being seared and spoiled rather than on the flame that does it.Jer 6:29Ezk 15:4
Both
Both describe fire consuming what it takes hold of: a blaze that eats up a forest, and a fire that has charred and devoured wood down to nothing. Where fire destroys vegetation, either word can carry the burning.Psa 83:14Ezk 15:5
Names the flame itself catching and blazing: fire set alight and burning, whether the bush that burned yet was not consumed or the fire of the LORD breaking out in the camp. The picture is an open, active flame.Exo 3:2Num 11:1
Extends to divine anger "kindling" and blazing like fire, the settled metaphor of wrath catching flame. This word carries that idiom for burning anger, which the other word never does.Psa 2:12Psa 89:46
חָרָהsounds almost the same and shares the image of heat, but describes anger flaring up hot rather than fire scorching an object
This is the word that does the actual burning: the middle of a vine branch charred through by fire, bronze made to glow on the coals, a metalworker's bellows scorched by the flame.Ezk 15:4Ezk 24:11Jer 6:29
It describes a body dried out by heat, with no anger anywhere in view: bones that burn like a hearth, a throat gone parched from calling for help, skin blackened and bones hot from drought.Psa 102:3Psa 69:3Job 30:30
It can put people themselves in the fire as judgment falls on the land, so that the inhabitants of the earth are scorched and only a few are left.Isa 24:6
In a doubled form it means setting something else alight: as charcoal gets embers going, a quarrelsome man kindles a fight. Here the burning is what a person does to a dispute, not something rising inside him.Pro 26:21
Both
Several of their forms are spelled alike, so only the subject matter tells a reader which word a verse is using. The brothers who נִחֲרוּ against the girl in the Song are angry with her, while the bones that נִחָרוּ in the psalm are burned like a hearth.Sng 1:6Psa 102:3
Both rest on the same picture of heat rising until something gives, which is why English reaches for fire words in each case: anger is "kindled" and grows "hot," while bones and bronze are "burned" and made to glow.Exo 32:10Ezk 24:10
The heat is always a feeling and never a real fire. At Taberah God's anger grows hot and a fire then does break out in the camp, but the burning of that fire is said with a different Hebrew word; this one stays on the anger. The same holds when Moses' fury flares at the golden calf and when Cain's temper rises: nothing is alight.Num 11:1Exo 32:19Gen 4:5
It normally travels with אַף, the word for the nose that also serves as the ordinary word for anger, and it names the person the anger is aimed at: God's anger grew hot "against" Uzzah, "against" Balaam on the road.2Sa 6:7Num 22:22Exo 32:10
It is the Bible's standard way of reporting that God's wrath has broken out against his own people, used again and again in the histories and the psalms of Israel's failures.Psa 106:402Ki 13:3Deu 6:15
In its shorter phrasing, with no word for anger beside it, the heat can read as bitter distress rather than rage: Cain's face falls, Jonah says it burns in him "unto death," and translators have long split over whether to render these "was angry" or "was grieved."Gen 4:6Jon 4:1Jon 4:9
Used of solid things left charred by a real fire: vine wood burned through in the middle, the bellows burned out at the smelter, an empty pot set on the coals until its bronze glows.Ezk 15:4Jer 6:29Ezk 24:11
Used of a living body burning from within or dried right out: bones on fire with fever, bones burned like a hearth, a throat gone dry from long weeping.Job 30:30Psa 102:3Psa 69:3
Reaches whole populations, not just individuals: under the curse on the land the people who live in it are left burned, and only a few of them remain.Isa 24:6
Stretches into a figure of speech for stirring people up, where a quarrelsome person is the one who gets a dispute burning.Pro 26:21
Always names the thing the heat has worked on and never the heat that did the work: the charred wood, the bones left in the cooking pot.Ezk 15:5Ezk 24:10
Both
Both stand in scenes of dry, punishing heat rather than gentle warmth, the kind of heat that withers and consumes whatever it reaches: the desert wind God sends against a prophet, and the burning that leaves a land's people few.Jon 4:8Isa 24:6
In both, the heat is something people suffer under and not something they put to use: it beats on a man until he wants to die, and it leaves a body burning inside.Jon 4:8Job 30:30
Describes the air itself rather than anything the heat has ruined: it qualifies the east wind God sends across Jonah, so the word tells you what the wind is like as it blows.Jon 4:8
Turns up exactly once in the whole Hebrew Bible, so its force has to be read out of that single scene, where the wind arrives with the sun beating on a man's head until he is ready to faint. English versions differ widely as a result, from "scorching" to "sultry" to "vehement".Jon 4:8
ḥarar in the other biblical languages
καυματίζωGreek“to scorch”the Greek verb for being scorched by burning heat, as the sun scorches a plant, the closest counterpart to this word's picture of being parched dry
Names what fire chars and consumes as it burns through something. The useless vine wood is burned at both ends, and the failed smelting leaves the bellows themselves scorched.Ezk 15:4Ezk 15:5Jer 6:29
Describes the body dried and burned from within by fever or thirst: skin blackened and peeling, bones that feel like a burning hearth, a throat parched dry.Job 30:30Psa 102:3Psa 69:3
Both
Both name the destructive drying that fierce heat brings to living things, leaving them withered, spent, and consumed.Isa 24:6Mat 13:6
The scorching agent is the sun. Seed with no depth of root springs up quickly, then withers away once the sun rises and its heat burns the young plants.Mat 13:6Mrk 4:6
In final judgment the sun itself is given power to burn people with fierce heat, so that they are seared by the blaze and yet refuse to repent.Rev 16:8Rev 16:9
πυρόωGreek“to burn”the Greek verb for being set on fire or made red-hot, close to this word's picture of a pot glowing on the coals
It describes the drying, withering effect of heat on a living body: skin turned black, a throat gone dry, bones that feel as if they burn like a hearth.Job 30:30Psa 69:3Psa 102:3
It pictures wood charred until it is fit for nothing, a vine already scorched at both ends and useless for any work.Ezk 15:4Ezk 15:5
It can be used figuratively for setting a quarrel alight, the way charcoal feeds glowing coals, so that a contentious person kindles strife.Pro 26:21
Both
Both name the plain physical action of fire burning a material object, heating it until it is consumed or transformed.Ezk 24:112Pe 3:12
It most often names an inward burning that is a feeling, not a flame: the ache of sexual longing that is better satisfied in marriage, and the hot indignation Paul feels when a fellow believer is made to stumble.1Co 7:92Co 11:29
It carries the sense of a fire that purifies rather than destroys, leaving metal brighter and cleaner than before: bronze glowing from the furnace and gold refined to true value.Rev 1:15Rev 3:18
What scholars say about ḥarar
The verb belongs to the root ḥrr denoting heat, and across its ten occurrences it is overwhelmingly stative or passive: to be hot, scorched, charred, or parched (niphal and qal forms in Jer 6:29;Ezek 15:4-5; 24:10-11; Isa 24:6;Ps 69:4 [ET 69:3]; 102:4 [ET 102:3]; Job 30:30). The single outlier is the reduplicated form לְחַרְחַר in Prov 26:21, an intensive causative sense "to kindle, inflame" (strife). Standard lexica (BDB; HALOT; DCH) treat this heat-root as distinct from the homonymous ḥrr "to be free/noble" (cf. חֹרִים "nobles") and from ḥrr "hole," and as related to but distinguishable from ḥrh "to burn with anger." The chief textual crux is Isa 24:6, where MT חָרוּ ("are scorched/dried up") is rendered quite differently by the LXX (πτωχοὶ ἔσονται, "will be poor"), prompting some commentators to posit withering/paling rather than burning; the lexica nonetheless retain the scorching sense under this root.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. חרר Ilexicon
BDB, s.v. חָרַר [I]lexicon
David J. A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. חררdictionary
R. Laird Harris et al. (eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, entry 736 חָרַרdictionary
Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 13-27 (Continental Commentary; Fortress, 1997), on 24:6commentary