yaḥal

This is the plain, everyday side of the verb: holding still and letting time run out before doing the next thing. There is no special weight of trust or longing here, just the patience of staying put until a deadline arrives or a signal comes.

It usually attaches to a fixed span, very often seven days. Noah lets another week go by before sending the dove out again; Saul is told to hold off seven days until Samuel comes. The waiting can be obedient (keeping to the appointed time) or strained (Saul cannot bear to wait the whole week), but in either case the focus is on the clock, not on the one waited for.

This is the heart of the word and the reason it matters. It is not wishing that something might happen; it is the settled, forward-leaning stance of someone who expects an outcome and refuses to give up on it. The whole person waits: eyes lifted, attention fixed, ready for the thing hoped for to arrive.

Overwhelmingly the one waited for is God, or his word, or his loyal love. In the Psalms and the laments this becomes a deliberate act of the will, often spoken to oneself as a command: the soul is downcast, so the psalmist orders it to hope in God anyway. The waiting is steady through delay and even through despair, as when one sufferer asks why he should keep hoping in the LORD and yet keeps waiting all the same.

The word can also be aimed at things other than God: a span of welcome news, the counsel of a wise man, rain for parched fields, a prophet's promise that proves false. In these places the expectation is just as real, but the object is human or earthly, and the text sometimes notes that such hope can be disappointed.