a flame: the leaping, visible tongue of a burning fire
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This is the flame itself, the bright tongue of fire that leaps up and licks at whatever it touches. It is the seen part of a fire, which is why it so often stands next to the word for אֵשׁ, the fire or the burning as a whole: one names the blaze, the other its climbing tongues.
In the prophets and the poems the flame is almost always a picture of something that consumes. Again and again it "devours" or "burns up" what stands in its way:
it eats the stubble and the dry grass (Isaiah 5:24)
it sets whole forests and mountains ablaze (Psalm 83:14;Joel 1:19)
it burns up the wicked in a moment (Psalm 106:18)
So the flame becomes a stock image for judgment and for the unstoppable advance of a conquering army, as when "a flame from the city of Sihon" swallows Moab (Numbers 21:28;Jeremiah 48:45). God himself can be spoken of as this flame (Isaiah 10:17). The same fierce picture cuts the other way, too: the flame of God's presence shelters his people (Isaiah 4:5), and he promises that the flame will not scorch those he protects (Isaiah 43:2). One image, a burning tongue of fire, carries both the threat and the rare comfort.
the blade of a spear: its gleaming, flame-shaped metal head
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Once the word names not a fire but a weapon: the glinting metal head of Goliath's spear (1 Samuel 17:7). The point of a spear was called a "flame" for its shape and its flash of light, the way a polished blade catches the sun. A closely related Hebrew word for a flame carries this same double life, meaning either a tongue of fire or the blade of a sword or spear.
This is a stretch of the one basic picture, not a separate word: the leaping, bright, sharp form of a flame lends its name to the leaping, bright, sharp form of a spearhead.
1Sa 17:7
Related words
The English words used to translate lehavah
“flame”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“flaming fire”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“blade”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How lehavah differs from similar Hebrew words
אֵשׁfire, the burning itself and the element; this word is the leaping tongue of flame that rises from it, which is why the two are so often paired.
Names the flame proper: the bright leaping tongue you can see rising and reaching, the visible blade of the fire. It even names the flashing point of a spear blade, where fire as an element could not be meant.1Sa 17:7Ezk 20:47
Pictures fire in its motion, sweeping forward and devouring what stands before it. The image is the advancing tongue of flame more than the bed of coals.Num 21:28Jol 1:19Oba 1:18
Both
Both stand for God's burning judgment that destroys utterly. Often the two appear side by side, fire breaking out and the flame leaping from it, so that nothing is left.Isa 10:17Jol 2:3
Both describe the burning that does not harm God's own, the believer passing through without being scorched: the fire that does not burn and the flame that does not catch.Isa 43:2
Names fire as the whole element, including its heat and what it does, not only its visible shape. It is the ordinary blaze on a hearth or in a field, the thing that burns and consumes.Exo 22:6Pro 26:20
Is the standard word for the fire of worship: the altar fire, the fire that consumes the offering, the fire a priest carries in a censer. The flame word is never used this way.Lev 1:7Lev 9:24Lev 16:12
Marks the fire of God's own presence: the bush that burned, the pillar by night, the fire on the mountain. It can name the holy element itself, where the flame word names only an outward tongue of it.Exo 3:2Exo 13:21Deu 4:24
לַהַטalso a flame, but leaning toward the searing blaze and the whirling flaming sword that guarded Eden; this word is the ordinary leaping tongue of fire.
Appears only once, naming the flashing, whirling fire of the sword set to guard the way to the tree of life.Gen 3:24
רֶשֶׁףa flash, spark, or bolt (of lightning, fever, or arrows): a sudden burst of fire rather than the steady, climbing tongue of flame this word names.
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
Both
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
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
This is the flame of a conquering army sweeping over a country: fire goes out from Heshbon and a flame from the city of Sihon, eating up Moab, and Joseph's house is the flame that sets Esau's house alight like stubble.Num 21:28Jer 48:45Oba 1:18
It can be a flame that shelters or spares, not only one that destroys: the glow of a burning fire spread over Zion by night, and God's promise to the person walking through fire that the flame will not scorch him.Isa 4:5Isa 43:2
It is the plain, unheightened word, at home as one ordinary item in a list of wartime harms beside sword, captivity and plunder, and it can be counted as several tongues of fire at once.Dan 11:33Psa 29:7Psa 105:32
In one place it leaves fire behind altogether and names the metal head of Goliath's spear, weighed out in iron: a blade called a "flame" for its shape and its flash of light.1Sa 17:7
Both
Both name the visible, leaping flame of a fire, and they are close enough that Ezekiel stacks them in one phrase, so that the line reads roughly "a flame of blazing flame" and the two words together say one thing with doubled force.Ezk 20:47
Both belong above all to the fire of God's judgment: in Ezekiel the pair describes the blaze the LORD himself sets in the forest of the south, which eats green wood and dry wood alike and cannot be put out.Ezk 20:47
It names heat fierce enough to wither rather than simply to burn: in Job it "dries up" the young shoot of the wicked man, finishing him the way a scorching blast finishes a plant.Job 15:30
It is used as the measure of another force. At the close of the Song, love is as strong as death and its flashes are this flame, the fiercest thing the poet can name; the form there even carries an extra ending that many readers take as God's own name.Sng 8:6
It is rare and deliberately elevated, a longer and heavier form built on the same root, and it surfaces only at the high point of a passage rather than serving as anyone's everyday word for a flame.Job 15:30Sng 8:6
lehavah in the other biblical languages
φλόξGreek“flame”the Greek word for a flame or tongue of fire, the natural counterpart, used of the flame in the burning bush and of the fire of judgment.
It stretches to the glittering blade of a weapon, so the head of a giant's spear can be called its flame for the way polished metal flashes like fire.1Sa 17:7
It repeatedly names flame as a consuming force of judgment that sweeps across land and nations, devouring pastures, mountains, and the wicked.Num 21:28Psa 106:18Jol 1:19Oba 1:18
Both
Both name the visible leaping tongue of fire itself, the blaze as distinct from the coals that feed it, and both attach it to the presence of God appearing in fire.Psa 29:7Act 7:30
In the New Testament this word pictures the blazing eyes of the risen Christ, where flame stands for a searching, penetrating holiness that sees through everything.Rev 1:14Rev 2:18Rev 19:12
It names the flame of the afterlife, the torment the rich man begs relief from across the great divide.Luk 16:24
What scholars say about lehavah
לֶהָבָה is a feminine noun denoting the visible tongue or blaze of a fire, standing beside the shorter form לַהַב and the verbal root להט "to blaze, flame." It occurs most often in prophetic and poetic descriptions of consuming judgment, regularly in parallel or construct with אֵשׁ ("fire"), as in Isaiah 5:24 and Psalm 105:32. HALOT and BDB give the core sense as "flame," with BDB noting the transferred sense "flashing point (blade)" of a spear in 1 Samuel 17:7, matching the same range attested for לַהַב. The lexica register no dispute over the word's meaning; its imagery of a fire that devours (chaff, forest, the wicked) is a fixed feature of the judgment oracles.
Sources
HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. לֶהָבָהlexicon
BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. לֶהָבָהlexicon
DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. לֶהָבָהlexicon
Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT), s.v. לַהַב (§1077)dictionary