na'ats

This is a strong verb of contempt. It does not describe a passing dislike but a deliberate act of treating something honorable as if it were beneath notice, throwing it away with scorn. Its usual target is God: his own person, his worship, his word, or his name. When the Bible says a people spurned the LORD, it means they looked at the one they owed everything to and treated him as nothing.

Because the offense is aimed upward, at God, the word carries a note of provocation. To spurn God is not only an insult; it stirs his anger and invites judgment. That is why older translations often render it "provoke." The provoking, though, is done by contempt, not by mere nuisance.

The same contempt can be turned in other directions. It is used for spurning correction and instruction, the wisdom teacher's warning that a fool throws away the very reproof that would save him. It is used for dragging God's name into disrepute, so that outsiders sneer at it. And a few times God himself is the one who spurns, casting off in anger the people who first cast off him.

Across all of these the core holds steady: to treat with contempt what ought to be honored.

One verse, Ecclesiastes 12:5, uses a form that looks like this verb but almost certainly belongs to a look-alike word meaning "to blossom," a close relative of another Hebrew word for budding and flowering. In the poem's picture of old age, the almond tree bursting into white bloom stands for the white hair of the aged.

Because the spelling overlaps with the verb "to spurn," a minority of readers keep it under that meaning, taking the line to say the old man loses his taste even for the almond. The blossoming reading is the standard one and fits the surrounding images of decline.