StrongerBible

yirah

יִרְאָה

HebrewH3374“fear, reverence, ...”

Appears 45 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 20:11Exo 20:20Deu 2:252Sa 23:32Ch 19:9Neh 5:9Neh 5:15Job 4:6Job 6:14Job 15:4Job 22:4Job 28:28Psa 2:11Psa 5:7(8)Psa 19:9(10)Psa 34:11(12)Psa 55:5(6)Psa 90:11Psa 111:10Psa 119:38Pro 1:7Pro 1:29Isa 29:13Isa 63:17Jer 32:40Ezk 1:18Ezk 30:13Jon 1:10Jon 1:16
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeyir-AHnoun

What yirah means

fear: from raw dread of danger, through awe before the holy, to the reverent devotion to God that the Old Testament calls the beginning of wisdom.

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This is a single word for fear whose meaning bends with what is feared. At one end it is the ordinary terror anyone feels facing a storm, an enemy, or a threat. At the other end it is the settled reverence toward God that the wisdom books treat as the foundation of a good and knowing life. The same word does both jobs, and the line between them is not always sharp.

The reason one word can cover so much is that the feeling at its core never fully disappears. Even where the word clearly means devotion, loyalty, or moral seriousness, an undertone of genuine awe before someone far greater is still there. So when the Bible speaks of the fear of God, it does not mean either cringing terror or polite respect, but a reverence that takes God seriously enough to obey him, shaped by a real sense of his greatness.

This is why the phrase the fear of the LORD became almost a technical term for true religion in Israel, especially in Proverbs, Job, and the later Psalms. It names a whole posture toward God in which awe, trust, loyalty, and obedience hold together. Other peoples around Israel described their own piety with strikingly similar language, so this is not a notion unique to the Bible; what is distinctive is how Israel tied that reverence to wholehearted loyalty to one God.

Nuances

1araw fear or dread, the ordinary alarm felt before danger, an enemy, or any threat.
Deu 2:25Psa 55:5(6)Isa 7:25Ezk 1:18Ezk 30:13Jon 1:10
1bawe before God himself, the trembling reverence that a glimpse of his presence or power calls out.
Exo 20:20Psa 2:11Psa 5:7(8)Psa 90:11Jon 1:16
1cthe fear of the LORD: reverent devotion to God that shows itself in loyalty, moral seriousness, and obedience, and that the wisdom books call the foundation of true knowledge.
Gen 20:112Sa 23:32Ch 19:9Neh 5:9Neh 5:15Job 4:6Job 6:14Job 15:4Job 22:4Job 28:28Psa 19:9(10)Psa 34:11(12)

Disputed

Whether the religious uses of this word name a distinct sense of reverence or piety, or are simply the basic emotion of fear directed at God.

  • majorityIt is a genuinely flexible word that came to carry a near-technical sense of reverence and piety in covenant and wisdom texts, while keeping its emotional base.; Siegfried Plath, Furcht Gottes (1962); Joachim Becker, Gottesfurcht im Alten Testament, AnBib 25 (1965); H. F. Fuhs, "ירא," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) 6:290-315
  • minorityThe word always denotes the emotion of fear, and the lexicons have mistaken the actions and consequences of fearing God in context for a separate sense of reverence.; David J. A. Clines, Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH), s.v. ירא; David J. A. Clines, "The Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom (Job 28:28)," in Job 28: Cognition in Context, ed. E. van Wolde (2003)

What scholars say about yirah

The standard lexica and theological dictionaries agree that this noun and its parent verb cover a wide affective and religious range, from ordinary fear of danger through numinous awe to the so-called fear of YHWH that functions as a near-technical designation for piety in Deuteronomy, the later Psalms, and the wisdom corpus. The major dispute, framed by the developmental hypothesis of Plath (1962), Becker (1965), and Fuhs (TDOT), is whether the religious uses constitute a distinct sense of reverence or piety; Clines (DCH; 2003) argues that the word always denotes the emotion of fear and that the lexica have confused sense with reference. HALOT notably declines to list reverence as a separate sense, treating fear God as a contextual specification of the basic emotion. The wider Near Eastern field is decisive for the comparative picture: Akkadian palahu and Egyptian fear-of-god language exhibit the same fusion of affect, conduct, and cultic devotion, and Aster (2012) maps the Akkadian radiance-and-awe pair (melammu / puluhtu) onto biblical glory and fear. The Wisdom motto of Proverbs 1:7 is itself contested, between Fox's intellectualist-epistemological reading (fear as the precondition of knowing), Waltke's ethical-affective-relational reading, and the foundational-principle reading of von Rad and Blocher; Longman distinguishes positive fear (awe, reverence) from negative fear (dread) across Proverbs and Qoheleth. Standing behind the whole modern discussion is Rudolf Otto's analysis of the holy as mysterium tremendum, mediated into Old Testament theology by Eichrodt, though recent work (Ellis 2014; Knox 2024) cautions that Otto treated fear only as an analogy for the numinous.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. ירא / יראהlexicon
  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. יראlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH), s.v. יראlexicon
  • H. F. Fuhs, "ירא," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) 6:290-315dictionary
  • H.-P. Stahli, "ירא," in Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (TLOT) 2:568-578dictionary
  • M. V. Van Pelt and W. C. Kaiser, "ירא," in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDOTTE)dictionary
  • Siegfried Plath, Furcht Gottes (1962)monograph
  • Joachim Becker, Gottesfurcht im Alten Testament, AnBib 25 (1965)monograph
  • David J. A. Clines, "The Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom (Job 28:28)," in Job 28: Cognition in Context, ed. E. van Wolde (2003)article
  • Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1-9, Anchor Bible 18A (2000)commentary
  • Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, NICOT (2004-2005)commentary
  • Tremper Longman III, The Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom (2017)monograph
  • Henri Blocher, "The Fear of the Lord as the Principle of Wisdom," Tyndale Bulletin 28 (1977)article
  • Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (1972)monograph
  • Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (1967)monograph
  • Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige (1917)monograph
  • Shawn Zelig Aster, The Unbeatable Light: Melammu and Its Biblical Parallels, AOAT 384 (2012)monograph
  • Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (1972)monograph
  • Phillip Michael Lasater, Facets of Fear, FAT II (2019)monograph

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of יִרְאָה

f s construct

יִרְאַת

Gen 20:11, 2Sa 23:3, 2Ch 19:9, Neh 5:9, Neh 5:15, Job 6:14, Job 28:28, Psa 19:9

f s absolute

יִרְאָה

Job 15:4, Psa 2:11, Psa 55:5, Ezk 1:18, Ezk 30:13, Jon 1:10, Jon 1:16

f s construct

יִרְאָתְךָ, יִרְאָתֶךָ, יִּרְאָתְךָ, יִּרְאָתֶךָ

Deu 2:25, Job 4:6, Psa 90:11, Psa 5:7, Job 22:4, Isa 63:17

f s construct

יִרְאָתִי

Jer 32:40

f s construct

יִרְאָתָם

Isa 29:13

f s construct

יִרְאָתוֹ

Exo 20:20

qal infinitive-construct construct

יִרְאָתֶ

Psa 119:38