to mock: to treat someone with open, jeering contempt, usually with derisive laughter
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
This word is the language of the sneer. It names not gentle teasing but open, jeering contempt: laughing at another person and dismissing them as beneath notice. It travels in the company of laughter (שׂחק) and of looking down on someone (בזה), and it most often falls on the vulnerable, the poor, a parent, a suffering man, a hunted prophet, or builders trying to raise a ruined city back up.
The same verb turns the other direction when the one laughing is God, or the person God has vindicated. Then the mockery is no longer cruelty from the strong but the last word over the doomed:
the LORD in heaven laughs at kings who plot against him
a rescued city jeers at the army that had besieged it
wisdom herself derides those who ignored her until disaster struck
The action is the same in both directions, derisive laughter at another's downfall, but whether it is wicked or just depends entirely on who is laughing and why. That is why the word can be a sin in one verse and a picture of divine judgment in the next.
of a foreign tongue: to sound like unintelligible babble to the hearer
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
In a single line describing an invading army, the word shifts from mockery to the sound of a foreign language. The prophet pictures a conquered people forced to listen to soldiers whose speech is so alien it lands on the ear as meaningless noise, "a people of unintelligible tongue, with no understanding." The bridge back to mockery is that a language you cannot follow can sound like gibberish, the way a stream of jeering nonsense might.
Whether this is the ordinary mocking word stretched to describe foreign babble, or a separate look-alike word meaning "to stammer" or "speak unintelligibly," is genuinely debated. A closely related expression, "stammering lips," appears in the same prophet just a few chapters earlier and points the same way.
one Hebrew verb holds the whole idea of scornful laughing at someone, where English needs a three-word phrase2Ki 19:21
Both
both name jeering triumph over someone brought lowJob 22:19
Only laugh to scorn
the English phrase foregrounds the laughing; the Hebrew can be pure contempt with no audible laughter at all
“deride”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“scorn”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“have in derision”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How la'ag differs from similar Hebrew words
לִיץto scoff as a fixed disposition; this is the settled posture of the habitual scorner (the "scoffer" of Proverbs), whereas mocking here is the act of derision in a given moment
Pictures derisive laughter and jeering aimed at someone brought low: enemies or onlookers heaping scorn on the defeated or the afflicted, often in the laments.Psa 22:72Ki 19:21Pro 17:5Pro 30:17
Is used of God himself deriding his enemies, the LORD laughing the raging nations and the wicked to scorn. H3887 is never spoken of God this way.Psa 2:4Psa 59:8
Both
Both mean to treat a person with open contempt, mocking and scorning them rather than taking them seriously.Pro 9:12Psa 119:51Job 21:3Job 11:3
Names a settled disposition, not just a single act: the entrenched scoffer who habitually despises wisdom, correction, and reproof. In the wisdom books this is a fixed character type, the arrogant person who cannot be taught.Psa 1:1Pro 9:8Pro 21:24Pro 22:10
Carries an entirely separate sense that H3932 never has: to interpret, mediate, or speak for another, the go-between or spokesman who carries words across a gap.Gen 42:23Job 33:232Ch 32:31Isa 43:27
קָלַסanother word for mocking and deriding, often paired with this one and largely overlapping, weighted toward insulting taunts
Alone of the two, לָעַג takes God as its subject: the LORD enthroned in heaven laughs the raging nations and the wicked to scorn.Psa 2:4Psa 59:8
It can single out speech itself as foreign and unintelligible, derision heard as stammering, incomprehensible talk from a people one cannot understand.Isa 33:19
It is the word for the taunt of the delivered against a beaten aggressor, as daughter Zion laughs the withdrawing Assyrian king to scorn.2Ki 19:21Isa 37:22
Both
Both are verbs of loud, contemptuous derision, jeering openly at someone held in scorn.Psa 22:72Ki 2:23
Its meaning is narrow and always hostile: to jeer, deride, or hold someone in contempt. There is no neutral or happy side to this word.2Ki 19:21Neh 2:19Psa 22:7
It targets a specific victim who is being scorned, often the poor, the suffering, or a person under attack.Pro 17:5Pro 30:17Job 21:3
Both
Both can express contemptuous laughter aimed at an enemy, and the two words are paired together in exactly these scenes of scorn.Psa 2:4Psa 59:8Psa 37:13Pro 1:26
Its core is joyful laughter and lighthearted merriment, with no scorn in view.Ecc 3:4Job 5:22Pro 31:25
It reaches well beyond laughter into play, sport, dancing, and celebration, things this word can name that the other never can.2Sa 6:5Zec 8:5Jer 30:19Pro 8:30
Names derision that is acted out and voiced: laughing someone to scorn, jeering, taunting them to their face.2Ki 19:21Neh 2:19Job 21:3
It is the weapon of enemies against God's people, and of God against the wicked: open ridicule aimed at the helpless or the doomed.Psa 2:4Psa 22:7Jer 20:7
Both
Both name treating with contempt what deserves honor. In one verse a child mocks a father and despises obeying a mother, the two words side by side for the same scornful heart.Pro 30:17
Names an inner verdict of worthlessness: to write something or someone off as beneath regard, whether or not that scorn is ever spoken aloud.Pro 1:7Pro 13:13Pro 23:9
Its objects are usually things owed honor that get quietly undervalued: an aged parent, a neighbor, even love that money cannot buy.Pro 11:12Pro 23:22Sng 8:7
Derisive laughter: to laugh someone to scorn, treating the person and their hope as ridiculous, as when God laughs at the plotting nations and passersby jeer at the sufferer.Psa 2:4Psa 22:7Psa 59:8
Contemptuous ridicule of a person's words or effort, brushing them aside as foolish, as when Sanballat and Tobiah jeered at the rebuilding of Jerusalem.Neh 2:19Job 11:3Job 21:3
Both
Both name a contemptuous verbal assault that dishonors another person, and Proverbs pairs them directly: to mock the poor is to reproach their Maker.Pro 17:5
A defiant challenge flung at an enemy or at God, meant to provoke and shame and to dare a response, as when Goliath defied the battle lines of Israel and the Assyrian officer reproached the living God.1Sa 17:101Sa 17:262Ki 19:4
To heap disgrace on someone with words, so the insult clings as an ongoing shame; the psalmists complain that enemies do this to them all day long.Psa 42:10Psa 69:9Psa 102:8
always has a victim: it is contempt aimed at another person, the jeer of the comfortable at the poor, of neighbors at builders, of onlookers at a suffering man.Psa 22:7Neh 2:19Pro 17:5
can put the derisive laughter in God's mouth, or in the mouth of those he vindicates, so that mockery becomes the last word over the doomed rather than cruelty from the strong.Psa 2:42Ki 19:21Job 22:19
stretches to cover a language the hearer cannot follow, the speech of an invading army landing on the ear as meaningless noise.Isa 33:19
Both
both can describe speech that has gone wrong rather than speech that communicates: one for words that escape a man unmeasured, the other for a tongue that reaches the hearer as babble.Job 6:3Isa 33:19
can name a plain bodily act with no speech in view at all: the nations are handed the cup of judgment and made to gulp it all the way down.Oba 1:16
where it does concern speech, the words are the speaker's own and nobody is being targeted: Job concedes that his own words got out faster than his judgment could weigh them.Job 6:3
The scorn is voiced in words and laughter, so it can be aimed at what someone says: Job protests that his friends answer his arguments with derision, and asks them to hold their scorn until he has finished speaking.Job 11:3Job 21:3
God himself is the one who scorns, laughing from heaven at kings and nations who plot against him.Psa 2:4Psa 59:8
Scorning a person is treated as a moral offense in its own right: to scorn the poor is to insult their Maker, and the eye that scorns a parent is marked for judgment.Pro 17:5Pro 30:17
Because it is bound to speech, it can also describe language itself as unintelligible, the babble of a foreign tongue a listener cannot follow.Isa 33:19
Both
Both name contempt shown to someone brought low, and both come paired with the same insulting body language, the shaken head of an onlooker.2Ki 19:21Isa 37:22Lam 2:15
Both describe what neighboring peoples do to a nation God has humbled, so that being a spectacle for scorn is itself part of the punishment.Psa 80:62Ch 30:10Jer 19:8Jer 50:13
It names a sound made with the lips rather than anything said, a sharp whistle that goes with clapping hands as a person is driven from his place.Job 27:23
It is the set reaction to a ruined city rather than to a person: passersby who see the wreckage of a temple, a nation, or a trading port whistle in shocked contempt.1Ki 9:8Jer 49:17Ezk 27:36Zep 2:15
It carries a use with no contempt in it at all: a whistle can be a signal that calls something in, as God whistles for distant nations, for the fly and the bee, and for his own scattered people.Isa 5:26Isa 7:18Zec 10:8
la'ag in the other biblical languages
ἐμπαίζωGreek“to mock”the main Greek word for mocking someone to their face, as the soldiers mock Jesus; matches the contemptuous-ridicule sense
Takes God or heaven as the one who mocks, laughing in derision at the wicked and the scheming of nations.Psa 2:4Psa 59:8Pro 1:26
Serves as the political taunt of one nation or party against another, the scorn hurled at a king, a besieged city, or a rebuilding project.2Ki 19:21Neh 2:19Neh 4:1
Can point to speech itself, the stammering, unintelligible tongue of a foreign people that sounds like mockery to the ear.Isa 33:19
Both
Both are the plain verb for contemptuous ridicule directed at a helpless, humiliated victim, and Greek translators reach for the family behind the Greek word to render the Hebrew one.Psa 22:7Mat 27:29
Names mockery staged as a physical act: soldiers dress the victim, bow, strike, and salute in mock-homage, so the scorn is acted out on the body, not only spoken.Mat 27:29Mat 27:31Mrk 15:20
Can shade into being tricked or outwitted rather than jeered at: Herod realizes the wise men have made a fool of him by not returning.Mat 2:16
Concentrates on the passion of Jesus, the word Gospel writers reach for when he foretells and then undergoes the derision of his captors.Mrk 10:34Luk 18:32Luk 22:63
μυκτηρίζωGreek“to mock”to sneer or turn up the nose at; the Greek Old Testament regularly uses its stronger form to render this Hebrew word, as in "God is not mocked"
is derisive laughter, the powerful jeering at the afflicted or the enemy laughing a victim to scorn2Ki 19:21Psa 22:7Neh 2:19
can put God or the righteous in the subject seat, laughing the wicked or the nations to scorn from a position of secure vindicationPsa 2:4Job 22:19Pro 1:26
also names mocking, unintelligible speech, a stammering tongue that sounds to the hearer like gibberishIsa 33:19
Both
both name scornful mockery that treats another with contempt, and the Greek verb is the standard Greek-Old-Testament rendering of the Hebrew one, so they are direct counterparts for "to sneer at, deride"2Ki 19:21Gal 6:7
pictures scorn as physically turning up the nose (built on the word for nostril), the sneer of contempt rather than audible laughterGal 6:7
its one New Testament use is passive with God as the object, warning that treating God with contempt cannot succeed because a person still reaps what he sowsGal 6:7
καταγελάωGreek“to mock”to laugh someone to scorn; closest to the derisive-laughter sense, as when the mourners laugh at Jesus for saying the girl only sleeps
God himself is the one who mocks: he laughs from heaven at the plotting of the wicked and holds the raging nations in derision, a divine scorn the Greek word never carries.Psa 2:4Psa 59:8Pro 1:26
it names the enemy's taunt against God's people and their city, whether the daughter of Zion laughing a besieger to scorn or foreign officials jeering at the Jews rebuilding the wall.2Ki 19:21Neh 2:19Neh 4:1
wisdom literature condemns it as an ethical wrong: to mock the poor is to insult their Maker, and the eye that mocks a father is marked for judgment.Pro 17:5Pro 30:17
Both
both name derisive laughter aimed at a person treated as ridiculous, the standard Old Testament and New Testament word for laughing someone to scorn.Mat 9:242Ki 19:21Psa 22:7
in the New Testament it appears only in one healing scene: the crowd laughs Jesus to scorn for saying the dead girl is merely asleep, and the derision is silenced when she is raised, so the mockers are proven wrong by the event itself.Mat 9:24Mrk 5:40Luk 8:53
What scholars say about la'ag
Standard lexica (BDB; HALOT) treat לָעַג as a verb of derision, "to mock, deride, scoff," attested in the qal and hiphil with no difference in meaning between the two stems, plus a single niphal participle in Isaiah 33:19. The hiphil is generally taken as a byform of the qal rather than a distinct causative sense. The recurrent collocation with שׂחק ("laugh") and בזה ("despise") situates the word within a cluster of scorn vocabulary; it is prominent in the lament psalms, where the sufferer is the object, and in the "divine laughter" motif of Psalm 2:4 and 59:8. The niphal נִלְעַג לָשׁוֹן in Isaiah 33:19 (compare the nominal לַעֲגֵי שָׂפָה, "stammering lips," in Isaiah 28:11) is variously connected to a homonymous root denoting unintelligible or barbarous speech, with proposed Arabic cognates, or explained as the ordinary mock-root applied to foreign speech heard as gibberish.
Where scholars disagree about la'ag
Whether the niphal in Isaiah 33:19 (נִלְעַג לָשׁוֹן) belongs to the ordinary root "to mock" or to a separate homonymous root meaning "to stammer / speak unintelligibly."
contestedOne root: the mock-verb applied to a foreign tongue that sounds like jeering nonsense to the hearer.; BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. לָעַג
contestedA distinct homonymous root denoting unintelligible or barbarous speech (proposed Arabic cognates), giving "a people of an obscure tongue," with the nominal parallel in Isaiah 28:11.; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. לעג