to burn: of a fire that is alight and keeps on burning, rather than one that consumes what it touches
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
All nine times this word appears, fire is what does the burning. It is never a person setting something alight, and it is never the thing being burned up. In English you can burn a field or burn a letter, but this word does not work that way: it describes fire in the act of blazing, and above all fire that keeps on blazing. Where something is destroyed, Hebrew reaches for a different verb (שָׂרַף).
That emphasis on continuing explains why the word turns up in two settings that otherwise have little in common. Three times in the instructions for the altar it carries the standing rule that the fire must keep burning and must not go out, with the priests laying on fresh wood every morning. The same idea of a fire that will not stop makes it a natural picture of God's anger: in Deuteronomy and twice in Jeremiah a fire is lit in God's anger and then simply burns on, in one case with "forever" attached to it.
The word's relatives keep the same picture. Isaiah 10:16 sets the verb beside the matching noun for "a burning" (יְקוֹד) and then says it a third time, so that the judgment on Assyria burns "like the burning of fire." The place on the altar where the fire was kept has a related name (מוֹקְדָה), and the Aramaic chapters of Daniel use the matching Aramaic verb (יְקַד) of the furnace heated for Daniel's three friends.
Nuances
1aa fire kept alight and not allowed to go out
Lev 6:9(2)Lev 6:12(5)Lev 6:13(6)
1bfire as the picture of God's anger and judgment, lit and then burning on
Deu 32:22Isa 10:16*Isa 65:5*Jer 15:14Jer 17:4
2
a hearth: a burning fire, or the place it burns, from which live coals can be scooped
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
Once, in Isaiah 30:14, the word names a thing rather than an action. The picture is a clay jar smashed so completely that not one piece is left big enough to carry live coals from a fire or to dip up water from a pool. Households borrowed fire rather than starting it from nothing, so a shard too small for that everyday errand is a sharp image of total ruin.
The lexicons describe this form as a fire or a fire-place, and a word built from the same root names the burning place on the altar in Leviticus (מוֹקְדָה). "Hearth" is the usual English rendering and gets the picture across, though the Hebrew points at the burning fire itself rather than at a built fireplace in a wall.
carries the sense that someone is answerable for the fire not going out, which is the whole point of the instruction to the priestsLev 6:12
Both
both describe a fire that continues rather than a fire that is being startedJer 17:4
Only be kept burning
the English phrase suggests tending and upkeep, which suits the altar but not the same Hebrew word used of anger burning against people with nobody feeding it
“kindle”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“hearth”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How yaqad differs from similar Hebrew words
שָׂרַףburns something up, always with a thing named, a body, a city, a scroll, and the thing ends up destroyed
Fire itself is what burns. The word describes a flame that is alight and blazing, so the fire is the actor rather than a person setting something alight: the altar flame burns, a fire burns all day long, and even when the Lord starts it, what he sets going is a blaze rather than a target he consumes.Lev 6:13Isa 65:5Isa 10:16
It is the word for keeping a fire going without a break. The law of the burnt offering uses it three times to require that the altar flame stay alight through the night and never be allowed to go out, which makes it a word about how long a fire lasts rather than about damage done.Lev 6:9Lev 6:12Lev 6:13
It carries the set picture of God's anger catching fire and blazing on: a fire lit in his anger that burns down to the depths below, or that keeps burning against his people with no end in sight.Deu 32:22Jer 15:14Jer 17:4
The same word supplies a name for the place a fire is kept, so Isaiah can picture a broken piece of pottery being used to scoop live coals out of a hearth. Nothing is being consumed there at all; the word only marks where the fire is burning.Isa 30:14
Both
Both are plain words for real fire and both come into English as "burn", and each can put the fire itself in the acting position: a fire that keeps burning all day, and a fire that burns people up like dry stalks.Isa 65:5Isa 47:14
Both belong to the priestly vocabulary of fire at the sanctuary, and Leviticus 6 uses them within a few lines of each other: the altar flame that must never be let out, and the sin offering that has to be burned up instead of eaten.Lev 6:12Lev 6:30
Both carry Jeremiah's warning to Judah, one for the anger that has been set alight and keeps burning against the people, the other for the city that the attacking army will set on fire.Jer 17:4Jer 34:22
This is the word for someone deliberately putting a thing into the fire so that it is destroyed. There is always a burner and something burned up: a captured city, a molten calf, a written scroll the king did not want to hear.Jos 6:24Deu 9:21Jer 36:27
It is the standard term of the sacrificial law for getting rid of what may not be eaten or kept: meat left over past its day, and the animals carried outside the camp after the blood has been used.Lev 7:17Lev 16:27Lev 6:30
It names death by fire as a sentence carried out on a person, from Judah's order against Tamar to the destruction of Achan and his household.Gen 38:24Jos 7:25Lev 20:14
It also covers everyday work and household fire, where no judgment is in view: baking mud bricks hard enough to build with, or putting half a log on the fire to roast meat and warm yourself.Gen 11:3Isa 44:16
It is the word Israel's writers reach for when they name the horror of child sacrifice, where sons and daughters are put into the fire for another god.Deu 12:31Jer 7:31
יָצַתsets something alight so that a fire starts where there was none, a gate, a field, a whole city
This word is for a fire that is simply alight and staying alight, with nobody named as lighting it. The altar fire is "kept burning" through the night and must never be allowed to go out.Lev 6:9Lev 6:13
When it pictures God's anger, the weight falls on a fire that goes on with no limit in sight: burning down to the depths of the grave, burning forever, burning all day long.Deu 32:22Jer 17:4Isa 65:5
It also names the blaze itself and the spot where a fire sits: a burning kindled under the proud king's splendor "like the burning of a fire," and the hearth a broken shard is too small to scoop live coals from.Isa 10:16Isa 30:14
Both
Both name a real fire actually alight and consuming, and one verse uses them side by side of the same altar fire: the fire is kept burning there, and the priest burns wood on it every morning.Lev 6:12
Both picture God's anger as fire: his jealousy burning like fire against his people, and a fire kindled in his anger that burns against his enemies.Psa 79:5Jer 15:14
Both carry God's judgment falling as fire that leaves nothing behind, and Isaiah's oracle against Assyria puts them in back to back lines: a wasting blaze under the king's glory, then the Holy One burning up the thorns and briers in a single day.Isa 10:16Isa 10:17
This is the word for putting fire to something, with a person doing the lighting. Israel is forbidden to kindle a fire in any home on the Sabbath, and a household gets the oven fire going to bake its cakes.Exo 35:3Jer 7:18
It also covers the work of keeping a fire or a lamp supplied so that it does not die: the priest piles wood on the altar every morning, the temple lamps are tended every evening, and the yearly wood offering is brought in for the altar.Lev 6:122Ch 13:11Neh 10:34
It is the standing legal word for purging evil out of Israel, with no fire in view at all. The community is told to "put away" the wrongdoer from its midst, Josiah cleared the mediums and idols out of Judah, and Jehoshaphat swept away the Asherah poles.Deu 17:7Deu 22:212Ki 23:242Ch 19:3
It reaches into ruin caused by fire and into plain stripping bare, which is why the law can hold someone liable for it: whoever starts the blaze pays for the burnt field, Samson torches the Philistine grain, and Israel's leaders are charged with having eaten up the vineyard.Exo 22:5Jdg 15:5Isa 3:14
It can describe heat inside a person: the king's rage burning in him, and the prophet who cannot keep quiet because the message is like a fire shut up in his bones.Est 1:12Jer 20:9
לָהַטthe flame licking and scorching what it reaches, standing in the same line of Deuteronomy 32:22 where the fire sets the roots of the mountains ablaze
This is the word for a fire that is kept alight over time, where the whole point is that it does not go out. The altar fire is to stay burning on the hearth all night and to be kept burning morning after morning, and the fire of God's anger against a faithless people is said to go on burning without end.Lev 6:9Lev 6:12Lev 6:13Jer 17:4
It is the ordinary word for the working fire of altar and hearth, the everyday blaze you can carry live coals away from. Isaiah pictures a smashed jar so thoroughly broken that not one piece is left big enough to scoop fire out of the hearth with.Isa 30:14Lev 6:12
It reports that a fire is burning without naming anything the fire eats. Isaiah speaks of a fire simply burning all day long, and pairs the verb with its own noun for "a burning", so the attention stays on the blaze itself rather than on a victim.Isa 65:5Isa 10:16
Both
Both name what fire actually does once it is going, not the striking of the spark. In the one line the two words share, the fire kindled in God's anger goes on burning down to the depths and sets the foundations of the mountains alight.Deu 32:22
Both belong to the poetry of judgment, where a burning fire is the picture for God's anger falling on land and people, and they can stand side by side as partners in a single poetic line, so neither is a technical term reserved for one special kind of fire.Deu 32:22
This word almost always names what gets scorched, and the target is the striking part of the picture: it sets coals alight, catches the mountains, scorches every tree in the open country, and burns up the wicked and God's enemies.Job 41:21Psa 83:14Jol 1:19Psa 106:18Mal 4:1
Its typical subject is a flame, the tongue of fire that reaches out and catches whatever it touches, which is why it turns up in scenes of fire spreading across a landscape: a flame catching the hills, a flame licking through a company of people, a flame following behind an advancing army.Psa 83:14Psa 106:18Jol 2:3
It pictures the scorching closing in on its victim from every side. Fire goes ahead of God and burns up his foes all around, and the fury of war set Israel ablaze on every side while she still failed to grasp what was happening.Psa 97:3Isa 42:25
It stretches past literal fire to describe fierceness in living beings. The psalmist says he lies down among men who blaze at him like lions, and God's servants are called a flaming fire.Psa 57:4Psa 104:4
יְקוֹדthe noun for the burning itself, set beside the verb in Isaiah 10:16 for emphasis
מוֹקְדָהthe burning place on the altar, where the whole offering lay through the night
yaqad in the other biblical languages
יְקַדAramaic“to burn”the Aramaic verb from the same root, used in Daniel of the furnace heated for Daniel's three friends
The Hebrew word is the one used for the fire God kindles in his anger, burning against a people and reaching far past anything a person could set alight, down to the depths and into the roots of the mountains.Deu 32:22Jer 15:14Jer 17:4Isa 65:5
It also names the altar fire that the priests are ordered to keep alight through the night and every morning so that it never goes out, so the burning can be careful tended worship rather than a threat.Lev 6:9Lev 6:12Lev 6:13
It reaches past the burning itself to the place where fire is kept, the household hearth a person scoops live coals out of with a piece of broken pottery.Isa 30:14
It can picture an empire wasted from the inside, its wealth and splendor burned away by a blaze the Lord sends rather than one anybody lit.Isa 10:16
Both
Both name fire that is actively blazing, at full heat, not smoke or ash or embers dying down.Isa 65:5Dan 3:6
In each language the word normally sits alongside the plain word for "fire", adding the flare and the heat to it rather than naming something different, which is why English versions render both with the same word "burning".Isa 10:16Dan 3:11
In both, the burning is deadly by nature: whatever is put in its way is not expected to come through it.Deu 32:22Dan 3:20
The Aramaic word belongs to one scene only, the furnace Nebuchadnezzar orders heated, and it comes back in the same repeated phrase for that furnace every time, so it never ranges over fires of different kinds the way the Hebrew word does.Dan 3:6Dan 3:11Dan 3:20
Here the blazing is a king's instrument: a fire stoked on human orders to punish men who will not bow, and heated hotter still when they refuse.Dan 3:15Dan 3:20Dan 3:21
It names a fire people are thrown into bound and then walk out of alive, so the story turns on rescue from the blaze rather than on what the blaze destroys.Dan 3:17Dan 3:23Dan 3:26
καίωGreek“to kindle/burn”the Greek verb for a fire or lamp that is alight, and the closest Greek counterpart when a fire is simply said to be burning
The Hebrew word carries the one fire Israel was commanded never to let die: the fire on the altar, fed with wood every morning and kept alight day and night. A flame under standing obligation, tended as an act of worship, is not something the Greek word is ever asked to say.Lev 6:9Lev 6:12Lev 6:13
The Hebrew is used where the thing burning is God's anger itself. A fire is kindled in his anger and then burns down to the depths, or burns against a people with no end in sight, so the word is describing an emotion at work and not an object in flames.Deu 32:22Jer 15:14Jer 17:4
The Hebrew word reaches past the flame to the place where fire is kept. Isaiah pictures a jar smashed so thoroughly that not one shard is left big enough to carry a coal from the hearth.Isa 30:14
Both
Both words describe a fire that is already alight and going, not just the moment it catches. The altar fire had to be burning through the night, a fire in Isaiah burns all day long, the servants' lamps stay lit while they wait, and the lamps before the throne go on burning.Lev 6:13Isa 65:5Luk 12:35Rev 4:5
Both are used of fire as God's judgment: the fire he sends against a people and the land, and the fire prepared for the condemned.Jer 17:4Deu 32:22Rev 21:8Rev 19:20
Both are plain, everyday words for fire doing what fire does, so the horror in the heavier verses comes from what is on fire rather than from the choice of word.Isa 10:16Rev 8:8
Most of the Greek uses are about light rather than damage: a lamp lit and set on its stand, lamps kept burning through the night, torches before God's throne, and John the Baptist described as a lamp that was "burning and shining". None of the Hebrew word's uses involve a lamp.Mat 5:15Luk 12:35Jhn 5:35Rev 4:5
The Greek word can turn inward and describe a person rather than a thing: two disciples say their hearts were burning while the Scriptures were opened to them. The Hebrew word stays with fire you could stand in front of.Luk 24:32
The Greek also covers fuel being eaten by a fire, as with dead branches gathered up and thrown in. The Hebrew keeps its eye on the blaze itself rather than on what feeds it.Jhn 15:6
What scholars say about yaqad
The standard lexicons treat יקד as a single root with no proposal of homonymy, listing the qal as intransitive ("burn, be kindled") and the hophal as "be kept burning" (BDB; HALOT; DCH). The nine Masoretic occurrences fall into two groups: the perpetual altar fire of Leviticus 6:1-6 in Hebrew numbering (English 6:8-13), where Milgrom treats the unextinguished hearth fire as a ritual requirement of the burnt-offering regimen rather than a symbol in its own right, and the prophetic fire-of-wrath language of Deuteronomy 32:22 together with the Jeremiah doublet at 15:14 // 17:4, whose textual relationship Holladay discusses at length. Isaiah 10:16 pairs the verb with the cognate noun יְקוֹד and repeats the root a third time in the comparison כִּיקוֹד אֵשׁ, an emphatic repetition noted in the Isaiah commentaries (Wildberger); the subject of יֵקַד there is disputed, with the lexicons taking the verb intransitively rather than as a causative act of the Lord. The masculine noun יָקוּד at Isaiah 30:14 is filed in the lexicons under this root as a fire or fire-place, the source from which a potsherd might carry live coals, and Strong's numbering (followed by the STEPBible tagging behind this entry) places it here rather than under a separate number.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. יָקַדlexicon
BDB, s.v. יָקַדlexicon
David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. יקדlexicon
Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16 (Anchor Bible), on Leviticus 6:1-6commentary
William L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1 (Hermeneia), on Jeremiah 15:13-14 and 17:3-4commentary
Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1-12 (Continental Commentary), on Isaiah 10:16commentary
Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 28-39 (Continental Commentary), on Isaiah 30:14commentary