of fire or light: to go out, or to put it out
This is the everyday word for a fire, flame, or lamp ceasing to burn. It works in both directions: a fire can simply go out on its own once the fuel runs low, or a person can actively put a fire out. The same verb covers both, so context tells you whether something died down or was deliberately extinguished.
Because fire and light stand for so much in the Bible, the word reaches naturally into word-pictures. A blazing fire that no one can put out becomes the image of God's judgment falling on a nation, and the phrase "it shall not be quenched" repeats through the prophets as a warning that the coming disaster is unstoppable. A lamp or a live coal, on the other hand, pictures a person's life or a family line: to snuff it out is to end them, and to keep it burning is to keep them alive.
Across all of these the core idea never changes. Something that was burning stops burning, or is made to stop. The literal fire, the fire of judgment, and the flame of a human life are the same action seen in three settings:
- a cooking or altar fire dying for lack of wood
- a judgment fire so fierce that no one can put it out in time
- the lamp of a life or a love that is snuffed out, or that refuses to be snuffed out