lahav

• Only this word names the blade of a sword or a dagger, and it does so as one of its regular senses. Ehud drives his dagger into Eglon so hard that the handle goes in after the blade (Judges 3:22), and battle poetry uses it of a sword lifted in a charge and of a spear held ready (Nahum 3:3, Job 39:23).Jdg 3:22Nam 3:3Job 39:23
• This is the word Hebrew puts on a living body. The faces of people watching Babylon fall are flames, gone hot and red with fright (Isaiah 13:8), and a flame comes out of the mouth of the sea beast in Job (Job 41:21). The commoner word for flame is never used of a face or of a creature's breath.Isa 13:8Job 41:21
• In storm and battle scenes this word describes how the fire looks, one item standing beside thunder, wind and hail rather than the thing that does the burning. God comes with "a flame of devouring fire" (Isaiah 29:6, Isaiah 30:30), and an advancing army sounds like "a flame of fire" running through dry stubble (Joel 2:5).Isa 29:6Isa 30:30Jol 2:5

• Both name the visible tongue of fire that rises off whatever is burning, not the fire or the burning as a whole, which is why each is regularly set next to the ordinary word for fire.Jdg 13:20Psa 105:32
• Both are used of fire that eats up what lies in front of it, and both are used of dry stubble catching alight.Jol 2:5Isa 5:24
• Both picture God's anger against a nation as a burning flame.Isa 66:15Lam 2:3
• Both can name the gleaming metal head of a weapon, since a polished point catches the light the way a flame does. The shorter word does this often, of a dagger and a sword; the commoner word does it just once, of the head of Goliath's spear.Nam 3:31Sa 17:7

• This is the word that regularly stands as the thing doing the burning, the flame itself as the actor. The flame burns up the wicked (Psalm 106:18), it eats the chaff (Isaiah 5:24), and it has burned every tree in the field (Joel 1:19).Psa 106:18Isa 5:24Jol 1:19
• Only this word is used of God himself and of his sheltering presence. The Holy One of Israel is a flame (Isaiah 10:17), a covering of flaming fire hangs over Zion by night (Isaiah 4:5), and he promises that the flame will not catch on the people he keeps (Isaiah 43:2).Isa 10:17Isa 4:5Isa 43:2
• Only this word names a whole people or a city as the flame. The house of Joseph is a flame that burns the house of Esau like stubble (Obadiah 1:18), and a flame goes out from Sihon's city to swallow Moab (Numbers 21:28, Jeremiah 48:45).Oba 1:18Num 21:28Jer 48:45

• Names the gleaming metal edge of a weapon, the blade of a dagger, sword, or spear, and not only fire. English versions render it "blade" or "glittering spear" here.Jdg 3:22Job 39:23Nam 3:3

• Both name a tongue or flash of flame, the visible blaze of fire.Jdg 13:20Jol 2:5Gen 3:24

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• Only this word also names the metal blade of a weapon, the part that flashes like a tongue of fire. The hilt sinks into the flesh after the blade in Judges 3:22, and it is the blade of a spear in Job 39:23 and of a drawn sword in Nahum 3:3.Jdg 3:22Job 39:23Nam 3:3
• It is the ordinary word for the flame that belongs to a fire, and it keeps company with the word for fire itself in the standing phrase rendered "flame of fire": the devouring flame of God's coming in Isaiah 29:6 and Isaiah 30:30, and the flames that arrive with his chariots in Isaiah 66:15.Isa 29:6Isa 30:30Isa 66:15
• It can name a flame simply as something people stand and watch move: the flame rising off Manoah's altar, in which the messenger of the LORD goes up while the couple looks on (Judges 13:20), and the flame shooting out of the mouth of the great sea creature (Job 41:21).Jdg 13:20Job 41:21

• Both name the visible burning that eats up whatever it reaches. One roars through dry stubble ahead of an advancing army (Joel 2:5), the other runs through every tree of a forest until nothing green is left (Ezekiel 20:47).Jol 2:5Ezk 20:47
• Both can leave literal burning behind and stand for a force at work inside a person: terror that turns the faces of the doomed into flames (Isaiah 13:8), and love that burns in someone with the strength of death (Song of Songs 8:6).Isa 13:8Sng 8:6

• This is the word chosen for a burning that cannot be put out. Ezekiel 20:47 says of it outright that it will not be quenched as it works through a forest of green and dry wood alike, and Song of Songs 8:6 makes it the picture of a love that no flood of water could drown.Ezk 20:47Sng 8:6
• In Song of Songs 8:6 it carries God's own short name inside the word itself, the only flame word in the Hebrew Bible written that way, which is why translators reach for phrases like "a most vehement flame" or "the very flame of the LORD".Sng 8:6

• Names the flame of a burning fire: the tongue of fire that leaps up from an altar or races through a field. The other word, tied to sudden flashing light, is never used for a steady flame of fire.Jdg 13:20Isa 29:6Isa 66:15Jol 2:5
• Names the physical blade of a bladed weapon, the metal head that sinks into flesh, so that even the handle can close over it. This concrete "blade" sense belongs only to this word.Jdg 3:22

• Both describe the bright, deadly gleam of drawn weapons in battle poetry, where they become interchangeable: Nahum pairs them in one breath, one for the flash of the sword and one for the glitter of the spear.Nam 3:3Ezk 21:10Job 39:23

• Names lightning itself: the bolt that splits the sky in a storm, and the flash that marks God appearing in power. This is its dominant use, and the other word never carries it.Exo 19:16Psa 97:4Psa 144:6Ezk 1:13Zec 9:14
• God launches his lightnings as weapons, scattering enemies the way a storm hurls its bolts. The picture is of light shot across the sky, not of fire burning or a metal edge.2Sa 22:15Psa 18:14Psa 77:18

• Names the visible tongue of flame that rises off something burning, the shape you watch climb: the blaze going up from Manoah's altar toward the sky, the flare that shoots from the mouth of the sea creature.Jdg 13:20Job 41:21
• Also names the flashing metal blade of a weapon, which fire never does: the blade of Ehud's dagger sinks into Eglon and the fat closes over it, the blade of a spear rattles beside the warhorse, and the sword flashes over Nineveh's dead.Jdg 3:22Job 39:23Nam 3:3
• Because it says how a thing looks rather than what is burning, it can be used of something not on fire at all: the terror on Babylon's faces makes them "faces of flame".Isa 13:8
• Normally leans on a second word to say what it is the flame of ("the flame of the altar", "the flash of the sword", "the blade of a spear"), where fire is a thing that can simply be named on its own.Jdg 13:20Nam 3:3Job 39:23

• Both name real blazing fire that eats what it touches, and the prophets stack them into one phrase, "a flame of devouring fire", the one word for what is burning and the other for the blaze it throws up: the LORD comes against Jerusalem's enemies that way, and the locust army sounds like fire tearing through dry stubble.Isa 29:6Jol 2:5
• Both belong to the picture of the LORD arriving in anger: he comes "with fire" and his rebuke comes in "flames of fire", and his thundering voice is heard along with a flame of devouring fire.Isa 66:15Isa 30:30

• Names fire as the thing itself, something a person lights, carries, cooks over, and can be held liable for: Abraham carries the fire up the mountain in his own hand, the Passover lamb is eaten roasted over it, lighting one is forbidden on the sabbath, and whoever lets one spread into a neighbor's field pays for the loss.Gen 22:6Exo 12:8Exo 35:3Exo 22:6
• Is the word for the altar fire as a standing arrangement with rules attached: it is to be kept burning and never allowed to go out, and its live coals are scooped up in a pan for the incense.Lev 6:12Lev 6:13Lev 16:12
• Is the form the LORD himself takes and stays in, a lasting sign a whole people watches: the bush that burns without being used up, the pillar that goes ahead of Israel night after night, the mountain he comes down onto.Exo 3:2Exo 13:21Exo 19:18
• Acts on its own as the agent of judgment, sent down or sent out and named as the thing that does the killing: it rains on Sodom with burning sulfur, it comes with the hail over Egypt, it goes out from the LORD and consumes Aaron's two sons.Gen 19:24Exo 9:23Lev 10:2

• Usually means an actual flame of fire, the tongue of burning that climbs upward or eats what it touches, with no weapon anywhere in the picture.Jdg 13:20Isa 29:6Jol 2:5
• Can describe how something looks rather than what it is, so terrified people can be told their faces are flames.Isa 13:8
• Names the bright metal head of weapons other than a sword, including the point of a spear listed beside the quiver and the javelin.Job 39:23

• Both can describe the same object at once, one word for the cutting part and the other for the weapon it belongs to: the fat closes over the blade that Ehud drove home, and he leaves the sword inside the body.Jdg 3:22
• Both belong to the language of battle terror, and Nahum joins them in one phrase so that the flash and the weapon are named together as a charging army comes into view.Nam 3:3

• Names the whole weapon a person carries, draws, and kills with, not one part of it. It is the thing in the hand.Gen 34:25Num 22:29Jos 5:13
• Stands for war and violent death as a whole, so a whole nation can be threatened by it or fall to it with no single weapon in view.Lev 26:6Num 14:3Deu 32:25
• Also covers a plain cutting tool with no fighting in view, which is why it is rendered "tool" for the iron that shapes altar stones and "knives" for the flint blades used to circumcise Israel.Exo 20:25Jos 5:2