to be left over: to still be there after the rest is gone, used up, or destroyed
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
This is the side of the word that simply happens to something. After a portion is eaten, taken, or wiped out, whatever stays behind is what is left over. The same word covers leftover food on a table, the few people who survive a disaster, and the one man still standing when everyone else has gone.
The senses below differ only in what is doing the remaining. The picture is always the same: a larger whole is reduced, and a smaller part stays. That is why a single word can move from a piece of meat kept past morning to a nation reduced to a handful of survivors.
This remaining is often heavy with meaning in the Bible. When a people is cut down and only a remnant is left, that surviving few becomes the seed of hope, the part God keeps for himself. So an ordinary word for leftovers also carries the weight of survival and continuance.
Nuances
1aof things or food: to be left over after part is used, eaten, or destroyed
Gen 32:24(25)Gen 44:20Jdg 9:51Ki 18:221Ki 19:101Ki 19:14Isa 1:8Isa 30:17
2
to leave over: to set part aside so it stays, to have more than enough, or to spare someone alive
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
This is the side of the word where someone makes the remaining happen. Instead of something simply being left, a person leaves it: keeps part back, ends up with a surplus, or lets a survivor live.
The senses run from a flat command (do not leave any of it until morning) to a promise of abundance (you will have so much that plenty is left over) to the grim or merciful act of leaving survivors after a slaughter. What ties them together is a deliberate result: because of what someone did, a remainder exists.
In the prophets this becomes God's own action. He is the one who leaves a remnant alive after judgment, so that not everything is destroyed. The same verb that measures leftover bread measures the mercy that keeps a people from vanishing.
Nuances
2ato leave (something) over, to let part remain rather than use it all up
carries the note of abundance: not merely that some is left, but that there is more than was needed2Ki 4:432Ch 31:10
Both
both name a remainder beyond what was usedExo 36:7
Only have left over
the English phrase can sound like a bare surplus with no sense of blessing or provision behind it
How yatar differs from similar Hebrew words
שָׁאַרthe other main verb for remaining; שָׁאַר leans toward what is left behind or kept back, often survivors, while יָתַר leans toward what exceeds or is in surplus.
Names what is left over as surplus or remainder, the extra portion of food or offering that stays once the rest is used.Exo 12:10Exo 16:19Lev 2:3Lev 7:16
Can carry the sense of having more than enough, an abundance left to spare.Exo 36:7Deu 28:11Deu 30:9
Both
Both can mean simply to be left or remain in a place, and stand together when speaking of who or what is left behind.Jos 11:22Jer 34:7
Both describe the surviving remnant left when the rest are gone, naming the few who are spared.Isa 4:3Gen 7:23
Carries the survivor or remnant sense: those left alive after a killing or disaster, the few who remain when the rest are gone. עָדַף never means this.Num 26:65Jdg 21:7Jdg 9:5
Names the leftover portion of food or an offering, what is set aside or kept back until later rather than a quantity above a required count.Exo 16:19Lev 7:16Rut 2:14
Both
Both describe something left over once a need is met: the amount that is more than required and so stays behind.Exo 16:19Exo 16:18
Specifically means to exceed a fixed count or measure: one tally is more than another, so there is a surplus to account for. The focus is on the amount over, not on what survives.Num 3:46Num 3:48Exo 16:18
Describes extra length or material that hangs over, the part of a curtain or covering that is more than enough to reach and so drapes past the edge.Exo 26:12Exo 26:13
יֶתֶריֶתֶר is the noun from this same root, the remainder, rest, or surplus itself, where יָתַר is the action of being or leaving left over.
שָׂרִידשָׂרִיד names the survivor or escapee as a person, the one who is left after disaster, while יָתַר is the act of remaining.
Names the plain act of being left over in everyday, non-catastrophic settings: food that remains after a meal, material left over after a task, the surplus that is more than enough.Exo 12:10Lev 7:16Rut 2:142Ki 4:43
Carries a positive sense of abundance, of God leaving His people with plenty left over in produce, cattle, and prosperity.Deu 28:11Deu 30:9
Describes a group that remains or is spared from a larger whole without the verse framing them as escapees from slaughter, the people God lets stay alive.Ezk 6:8Ezk 12:16
Both
Both describe the few who are left alive after near-total ruin: in one verse the survivors that the LORD caused to remain.Isa 1:9
Names a survivor specifically: the one person left alive after a battle or destruction that killed everyone else, the escapee from the slaughter.Num 21:35Jos 8:22Jos 10:28
Used in the total-destruction formula of leaving no one remaining, where the point is that not a single survivor was spared.Deu 2:34Deu 3:3Jos 10:33
Marks the lone survivor of a household or family wiped out by calamity, the one nothing is left to.Job 18:19Job 27:15
Speaks of people who are still alive when the rest are gone, which is the language of survivors and of a surviving remnant: not one of the wilderness generation was left except Caleb and Joshua, none of the Anakim were left in Israel's land, a third of the land is left alive after judgment, and Judah escapes Sodom's fate only because the LORD left it a few survivors.Num 26:65Jos 11:22Zec 13:8Isa 1:9
Covers food left after a meal or a sacrifice, usually with a rule attached about what may be kept and what must be burned: none of the Passover lamb may be left until morning, what is left of a vow offering may be eaten the next day, and Ruth eats her fill and still has some left.Exo 12:10Lev 7:16Rut 2:14
Describes causing there to be more than enough, so the word becomes a promise of plenty: God makes a people overflow in children, herds, and crops, and Elisha tells his servant the hundred men will eat and have food left.Deu 28:11Deu 30:92Ki 4:43
Both
Both name the part that is over and above what has already been used or accounted for. Saul says the animals he did not spare, "the rest" of them, were destroyed; the builders had material enough for the whole work with some over; and the priests receive whatever remains of the grain offering once its portion has been burned.1Sa 15:15Exo 36:7Lev 2:3
Weighs one thing against another and asks whether the extra actually amounts to anything: what does a wise person gain over a fool, what does anyone gain from piling up words, what wisdom adds for those who live under the sun. Haman uses the same weighing when he assumes the king wants to honor someone "more than" himself.Ecc 6:8Ecc 6:11Ecc 7:11Est 6:6
Marks going too far, where the extra is a danger rather than a gain: do not be wise "beyond measure", and if the same fate meets the wise and the fool, what was the point of being wise to excess.Ecc 7:16Ecc 2:15
Opens a sentence as a connector meaning something close to "besides that" or "on top of all this", carrying a writer from one point to the next rather than describing any leftover thing at all.Ecc 12:9Ecc 12:12
yatar in the other biblical languages
περισσεύωGreek“to exceed”περισσεύω is the Greek for having more than enough or a surplus left over, matching the abundance side of this word, as in the leftovers gathered after the crowds were fed.
Carries a survivor sense the Greek word lacks: the people left ALIVE after war, plague, or judgment, the remnant who outlast a catastrophe. This is being left over as the one not destroyed, not merely having a surplus.1Ki 19:10Isa 1:9Ezk 6:8Zec 13:8
Both
Both name what is left over after a need is met: the leftover food once people have eaten their fill. The Greek word regularly renders this idea in the feeding miracles, the broken pieces left after the crowd is satisfied.2Ki 4:44Rut 2:14Jhn 6:12Mat 14:20
Pictures spiritual abundance as a positive, overflowing quality: a person or community made to brim over with love, hope, grace, or good work. The Hebrew word never reaches for this sense of thriving fullness.Rom 15:13Php 1:91Th 3:122Co 8:7
Means to have more than enough, to surpass or exceed a standard: a measure of righteousness greater than the experts', hired hands with bread to spare, a life that does not consist in a surplus of possessions.Mat 5:20Luk 15:17Luk 12:15
λεῖμμαGreek“remnant”λεῖμμα is the Greek remnant, the few left after judgment, the loaded survivor sense this verb carries when a people is reduced to a faithful few.
A verb for the everyday act of being left over or kept back, with no built-in religious overtone: leftover food that must be eaten or burned.Exo 12:10Lev 7:16
Used for ordinary surplus and remaining property or people of any kind, including those an enemy spared or those simply still on hand.Exo 10:152Sa 8:4
Both
Both speak of the few who survive after a great reduction, a people left over once judgment or disaster has cut down the rest.Isa 1:9Ezk 6:8Rom 11:5
Names the surviving group itself as a thing (a remnant), not the action of being left; in the New Testament it carries a specifically theological weight: the small body of Israel preserved by God's choosing grace.Rom 11:5
Is the ordinary word for the leftovers of a thing once it has been used: food not eaten by morning, the part of an offering the priests still have, grain still in the bowl after everyone is full.Exo 12:10Lev 2:3Rut 2:142Ki 4:43
Counts who is still standing after a killing or a disaster has run its course, whether that is nobody, one man, or a handful of survivors.Num 26:65Jos 11:221Ki 19:10Ezk 14:22
Can mark being left alone as the only one there, with no charge against anyone for leaving.Gen 32:241Ki 18:22
Turns positive when there is more than enough: a harvest that overflows, or supplies so far beyond the need that the workers are told to stop bringing them.Deu 28:11Deu 30:9Exo 36:7
Both
Both can mean leaving a remainder alive, and Paul's quotation of Isaiah is the place they meet: the Greek verb carries the Hebrew promise that the LORD "left us" a few survivors, without which Israel would have gone the way of Sodom.Isa 1:9Rom 9:29
Each is used with God as the one who does the leaving, so what survives depends on his decision: he keeps a remnant back from the sword, and he pledges never to walk away from his people.Ezk 6:8Heb 13:5
Accuses someone of walking out on a person who was counting on them, so the pain sits with the one left behind.Mat 27:462Ti 4:162Co 4:9
Describes deserting a shared commitment: giving up on the gathered church, or loving the present world more than a friend in prison.Heb 10:252Ti 4:10
Can mean leaving a person stranded in a place he cannot get out of, which is why the promise that God would not do this to the Holy One is the heart of the resurrection argument.Act 2:27Act 2:31
What scholars say about yatar
The standard lexica treat יָתַר as a single root whose meaning divides along grammatical lines: an intransitive sense be left over, remain and a causative sense leave over, have remaining, spare. BDB and HALOT both organize the entry this way, and DCH follows. The noun יֶתֶר (remainder, rest, excess) and the abundance idea (a surplus, more than enough) belong to the same root, which is why the word can mean both the bare fact of remaining and the positive note of plenty. Theological dictionaries (TDOT, TWOT) note that the verb feeds the biblical remnant theme: the survivors who are left after judgment are the part God preserves.