to stream: for a crowd of people to keep pouring steadily toward one place, the way a river runs
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
Hebrew builds this verb on the same root as its ordinary word for a river (נָהָר), and the picture behind it is what a river does: many channels converging and running steadily toward one point. What is striking is that the Bible never uses the verb of actual water. Every time it appears in this sense, the thing that streams is people.
The four places it turns up are variations on a single scene:
crowds from every nation climbing up to the LORD's mountain in the last days (Isaiah 2:2, with the same promise again in Micah 4:1)
people brought home from exile and streaming to the good things the LORD gives (Jeremiah 31:12)
the nations no longer streaming to Babylon's god once he has been broken (Jeremiah 51:44)
So the verb says something that a plain "come" would not. It is not a trickle of individuals but a mass in steady motion, arriving because that is now the direction everything runs. Jeremiah 51:44 shows the force of it in reverse: Babylon's god had been a destination for the nations, and the promise is that the traffic simply stops.
Isa 2:2Jer 31:12Jer 51:44Mic 4:1
2
to beam: for a person's face to brighten and light up at what it sees
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
The other use of these same three letters has nothing to do with water. It describes light showing on a person: a face that brightens, a look that lifts. This shining sense is thoroughly at home in Aramaic, where words built on this root are the plain everyday way to say "light." In Hebrew it is rare, surfacing in one psalm, in one line of Isaiah, and in the unusual word for daylight that Job reaches for (נְהָרָה).
Both places pair the brightening with seeing. In Psalm 34:5 people look to the LORD and their faces light up instead of being covered with shame. In Isaiah 60:5 Zion looks up, sees her children coming home, and beams while her heart swells. The light here is not a lamp or a sunrise; it is relief and gladness becoming visible on a face.
This is also why the two uses of the word are hard to keep apart at Isaiah 60:5. The written form could be read either way, and the verse even has crowds arriving in it. Older English Bibles took it as flowing together; most modern ones read radiance, and the swelling heart in the same line supports them.
Psa 34:5(6)Isa 60:5*
Isa 60:5
Whether the verb in Isaiah 60:5 means "be radiant" or "stream together."
majorityIt means to be radiant: Zion's face lights up at the sight of her returning children and the wealth of the nations.; BDB, s.v. II. נָהַר
minorityThe verb is genuinely ambiguous here and can carry the sense of overflowing or streaming together, the reading behind older English versions.; J. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, at Isaiah 60:5
marks the moment a face changes, brightening right after someone looks and is answeredPsa 34:5
Both
both put the light on a person rather than in a lamp or the skyIsa 60:5
Only be radiant
"radiant" in English often suggests a settled glow or beauty, rather than the sudden lift the Hebrew describes
“be lightened”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How nahar differs from similar Hebrew words
נָהָרthe common noun for a river or stream, the body of water itself; this verb describes the motion, and in the Bible only ever the motion of people rather than water.
It names the movement itself rather than a waterway, so what it needs is a destination and not a channel: people keep arriving because that has become the direction everything runs.Isa 2:2Jer 31:12
The thing that streams is always people, never actual water, and the same verb can describe that traffic stopping once a destination loses its pull.Mic 4:1Jer 51:44
These same three letters carry a second use with no water in it at all, describing a face that brightens at what it sees.Psa 34:5Isa 60:5
Both
Both belong to the same word family and turn on one picture: steady movement all in a single direction, neither a burst nor a trickle. One is water doing it in a channel that never stops; the other lends that motion to a crowd.Gen 2:10Mic 4:1
Both can be turned around into a picture of loss: a river that wastes away, and arrivals that simply stop coming.Job 14:11Jer 51:44
It is a fixed feature you could point to on a map, often a named one, and standing alone "the River" usually means the Euphrates, which is why it can mark where a land begins and ends.Gen 15:18Jos 1:4Gen 2:14
Because it is a thing rather than a motion, it can be acted on and lived beside: turned to blood, dried up, camped alongside.Exo 7:19Job 14:11Ezr 8:21
It carries the idea of permanent, year-round water, so it becomes a standing picture of supply that does not run out.Psa 46:4Num 24:6
נְהָרָהa rare noun for daylight, used once in Job; it names the light, while this verb names a person brightening.
This is the verb, and what it describes is light showing on a person: a face that brightens and lifts at what it suddenly sees. In Psalm 34:5 the people who look to the LORD are the ones who light up, and in Isaiah 60:5 Zion beams at the sight of her children coming home. The light is never a thing standing on its own here; it is something happening to somebody.Psa 34:5Isa 60:5
The same three letters also carry a second sense with no light in it at all: crowds pouring steadily toward one place the way a river runs. Nations climb to the LORD's mountain (Isaiah 2:2, repeated at Micah 4:1), exiles stream home to the good things God gives (Jeremiah 31:12), and the traffic to Babylon's god finally stops (Jeremiah 51:44). The noun for daylight has nothing like this.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1Jer 31:12Jer 51:44
Because those two senses look identical on the page, a single verse can be genuinely open to both. Older English Bibles read Isaiah 60:5 as "flow together" and most modern ones as "be radiant," and a translator has to pick one. The rare noun for daylight carries no such double life.Isa 60:5
Both
Both belong to the same picture of light breaking out at a moment, not a lamp burning steadily or a glow coming off a surface. One is a face that lights up (Psalm 34:5), the other is morning light coming up over a day (Job 3:4).Psa 34:5Job 3:4
In both, the brightness stands for how life is going. Rescued people shine instead of being covered with shame (Psalm 34:5), and Job wants the daylight of his own birthday blotted out because he wishes the day had never gone well enough to happen (Job 3:4).Psa 34:5Job 3:4
This word names the light itself, daylight beaming out over a whole day, as a thing that can be granted or withheld rather than a look on someone's face. In Job 3:4 the request is that no daylight ever break over the day of Job's birth again.Job 3:4
Its one appearance is measured directly against darkness: Job hands the day over to the dark and asks that God overhead not even look for it, so the word marks exactly what darkness would swallow. The verb's brightening, by contrast, is set against shame rather than against night.Job 3:4
נָזַלthe verb for water actually running, trickling, or pouring down from a height; this verb is used of crowds converging, never of water.
What streams here is always people, never water: nations and crowds converging on one place, so English Bibles read "flow to" of a moving throng.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1Jer 31:12
The movement is toward a destination rather than downhill, and it can even run upward: the nations go up to the mountain of the LORD. When the streaming stops, it means a city has lost its pull.Isa 2:2Jer 51:44
It carries a second, unrelated sense about light: the faces of people who look to God are lit up, translated "radiant" or "shine".Psa 34:5Isa 60:5
Both
Both name continuous one-way movement, a steady stream rather than a single burst, which is why English Bibles render each of them "flow".Isa 2:2Psa 78:16
Both belong to prophetic promises of restoration, where the streaming pictures God's generosity arriving in abundance on a people who had nothing.Jer 31:12Isa 44:3
This is liquid actually in motion: water running out of a struck rock, rain dripping from the clouds, tears running down a face.Psa 78:16Isa 48:21Jer 9:18
The motion usually goes downward, with gravity, which is why it is translated "drip", "distil", or "pour down" as often as "flow".Job 36:28Deu 32:2Isa 45:8
It also names the running water itself, so English Bibles read "streams" or "flowing waters" where the word stands for the thing rather than the action.Pro 5:15Sng 4:15Exo 15:8
The picture stretches past water to anything that can pour: scent streaming off a garden on the wind, mountains running like liquid in God's presence.Sng 4:16Jdg 5:5
אוֹרthe everyday verb for something giving light or growing light, including daybreak and lamps; this verb is limited to a face lighting up.
Most of its uses have nothing to do with light at all: crowds move toward a place the way water runs, with peoples streaming up to the LORD's mountain and exiles streaming toward his good gifts.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1Jer 31:12Jer 51:44
Where it does mean brightening, the one who brightens is always a person or a city that has looked and seen something. It is never said of a lamp, a star, or a fire putting out light.Psa 34:5Isa 60:5
Both
Both belong to the language of a bright face. One is used of the shine that comes over a person's face and of the favor God turns toward someone; the other of people who looked to God and came away radiant.Ecc 8:1Num 6:25Psa 34:5
Both stand in the same promise to Jerusalem in Isaiah 60. The city is told to shine because her light has come, and told that when she sees the nations arriving she will brighten.Isa 60:1Isa 60:19Isa 60:5
It is the ordinary word for daylight arriving: morning coming on, the sky growing bright enough to travel, a night march ending as day breaks.Gen 44:31Sa 29:102Sa 2:32
It is what a light source does. Lamps on the lampstand, the lights God set in the sky, and a lamp God keeps burning for someone all "give light" with this word.Gen 1:15Exo 25:37Num 8:2Psa 18:28
It names light supplied so that people can see where they are going, as with the fire that lit Israel's road at night.Exo 13:21Neh 9:12Psa 105:39
It can be sudden and world sized: lightning lighting up the whole earth, or the land flooded with the brightness of God's glory.Psa 77:18Psa 97:4Ezk 43:2
It is used of eyes brightening when strength or life comes back to someone worn down by hunger, exile, or grief.1Sa 14:27Ezr 9:8Psa 13:3
נָגַהּto shine out or cast a glow, said of a light source breaking into the dark; this verb describes light appearing on a person's face instead.
Its main use has nothing to do with light at all: it describes crowds in steady motion, pouring toward one place the way a river runs, or the traffic stopping when the destination is broken.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1Jer 31:12Jer 51:44
Where it does mean brightness, the brightness is on a face: a person looks at something and lights up, so gladness or relief becomes visible on them.Psa 34:5Isa 60:5
Both
Both are rendered "shine" or "be radiant" in English Bibles, and in both the brightness is new: it appears where a moment before there was none.Isa 9:2Psa 34:5
Both are rare poetic words that Isaiah uses for a reversal God brings on his people, so the change they describe is something done to those people rather than something they manage themselves.Isa 9:2Isa 2:2Isa 60:5
What shines is a light, never a person: the subject is a lamp, a flame, the moon and the stars, or light itself.Job 18:5Isa 13:102Sa 22:29
The shining is always measured against darkness: it either breaks the dark or fails to, which is why the word can describe light being withheld as easily as light arriving.Psa 18:28Isa 9:2Isa 13:10
The light can fall on something outside a person, lighting up the road ahead so a plan can be carried out.Job 22:28
nahar in the other biblical languages
נְהִירוּAramaic“illumination”the Aramaic noun for illumination or insight, built on this same root; in Aramaic the shining sense is the ordinary one, while in Hebrew it is rare.
It carries a whole second sense with no light in it at all: crowds pouring steadily toward one place, the way many channels run together into a river.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1Jer 31:12
That streaming sense can be promised in reverse, so that traffic toward a place simply stops.Jer 51:44
Where it does mean brightness, it is a face lifting and lighting up in the moment it sees something, tied each time to looking rather than to any quality the person holds.Psa 34:5Isa 60:5
Both
Both put light on a person rather than in a lamp or in the sky: light is found in a man in Daniel, and faces light up in the Psalm.Dan 5:14Psa 34:5
In both, the brightness does not come from the person alone: Daniel's light is reported alongside the spirit that is in him, and the shining faces follow a look toward the LORD.Dan 5:11Psa 34:5
Its light is insight: a mind lit up so that hidden things can be read, which is why it is listed in the same breath as understanding and wisdom among the gifts found in one man.Dan 5:11Dan 5:14
It also names light in the plain sense, the light that stands opposite the dark, said of what dwells with the God who sees into darkness.Dan 2:22
It names something a person is credited with having, a settled capacity that officials can report was in him years before, rather than a change happening at a moment.Dan 5:11
φωτίζωGreek“to illuminate”the Greek verb for shedding light on something or someone, the closest counterpart to the shining sense, though it usually names light being given rather than a face brightening.
Most of the time it has nothing to do with light at all: it pictures a crowd pouring steadily toward one place, the way a river keeps running in one direction, and it can be turned around for nations that stop coming.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1Jer 31:12Jer 51:44
Where it does mean brightness, the brightness is the person's own: a face lights up at what it sees, and no outside lamp or glory is said to be shining on them.Psa 34:5Isa 60:5
Both
Both can put brightness on a person rather than on a lamp or the sky, which is why English Bibles use words like "radiant" and "lit up" for either one: the Hebrew for faces that brighten when they look to God, the Greek for a body lit by the lamp in front of it.Psa 34:5Luk 11:36
The light arrives from somewhere else and falls on the thing that is lit: a lamp lights up the person in front of it, and God's own brightness lights up a city that needs no sun.Luk 11:36Rev 18:1Rev 21:23Rev 22:5
It can mean dragging what was hidden out where everyone can see it, so the word does the work of exposure and public disclosure rather than describing any glow.1Co 4:5Eph 3:92Ti 1:10
It is used for a person being given understanding, with the light landing on the mind: the eyes of the heart are opened, and someone who has once received that light is spoken of as permanently changed by it.Eph 1:18Jhn 1:9Heb 6:4Heb 10:32
συνέρχομαιGreek“to assemble”the Greek verb for people coming together in a crowd, the nearest match to the streaming sense, without the picture of water running to one point.
It is built on the ordinary Hebrew word for a river, so the crowd is pictured as moving water: a mass in steady one directional motion, not simply people who have shown up.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1
Its scenes are nation sized and set in God's promised future: whole peoples going up to the LORD's mountain in the last days, exiles brought home to the good things God gives. It never describes a local crowd on a particular day.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1Jer 31:12
It can be turned around into a picture of traffic that stops. Once Babylon's god is broken, the nations simply do not pour toward him anymore, and the drying up of the stream is the judgment.Jer 51:44
The same three letters carry a second use with no movement in it at all, describing a face that brightens at what it sees, which English Bibles render "radiant".Psa 34:5Isa 60:5
Both
Both describe scattered people converging until they stand massed in one place, which is why English Bibles read "flow to" for the Hebrew verb and "come together" for the Greek one. The Greek verb is the natural New Testament wording for the scene the Hebrew verb paints, minus the water.Isa 2:2Mic 4:1Mrk 6:33Act 2:6
In both, the crowd moves because of what waits at the far end, so the gathering itself measures the pull of a place or a person: the good things God gives in one case, a healer worth walking to in the other.Jer 31:12Luk 5:15Act 5:16
It can name a meeting as a recognized event, a body that convenes and then has its own conduct and problems. Paul's repeated phrase for the Corinthians assembling treats the gathering itself as the occasion under discussion.1Co 11:171Co 11:201Co 14:23
The togetherness can attach to a person instead of a place, so the word describes travelling alongside someone rather than massing anywhere: the brothers who go with Peter, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee.Act 10:23Act 1:21Luk 23:55
The gathering can be hostile or plainly disorderly: a council convening to condemn a man, or a mob so confused that most of them do not know why they came.Mrk 14:53Act 19:32Act 22:30
Two people are enough for it. In Matthew's opening it is a discreet way of saying that a couple had not yet begun married life.Mat 1:18
What scholars say about nahar
The standard lexica lemmatize two homonymous roots. נהר I "to flow, stream" appears only figuratively of peoples streaming (Isaiah 2:2 = Micah 4:1;Jeremiah 31:12;Jeremiah 51:44) and is cognate with the noun נָהָר "river", Akkadian nāru(m) and Arabic nahr. נהר II "to shine, beam" covers Isaiah 60:5 and Psalm 34:5 (34:6 in the Hebrew numbering); BDB tags this root explicitly as Aramaic and cites Assyrian nūru "light", Aramaic נְהַר "shine" and נְהוֹרָא "light", and Palmyrene נהירא "illustrious". HALOT follows the same two-root structure and files the Joban hapax נְהָרָה (Job 3:4) under the "shine" root, though its exact wording, along with the DCH and TDOT entries, was not verified from a primary copy. Clines likewise derives that noun from the verb "to gleam" and compares Isaiah 60:5. The competing single-root intuition, that both senses arise from the sheen of running water, is preserved in Gesenius (who derived the נור "lamp/light" family from נהר II) and in Strong's compressed derivation, and the co-presence of Ugaritic nhr (the divine name Naharu, "River") beside nyr "luminary" keeps the question open. Distributionally the verbal "shine" sense is confined to two exilic or dialectally marked texts plus the Joban noun, while נהר I and נָהָר are common, which underwrites the standard judgment that the shining sense is Aramaic influenced. Isaiah 60:5 is the classic crux: Calvin already noted that the verb signifies both to shine and to overflow, and the KJV's "flow together" preserves the alternative that most modern versions abandon in favor of "be radiant". BDB also records a proposed re-reading at Psalm 34:5 (34:6 in the Hebrew numbering), but the radiance sense there is close to unanimous.
Where scholars disagree about nahar
Whether the verb behind the streaming sense and the verb behind the shining sense are one word with a wide range or two unrelated words that happen to be spelled alike.
majorityTwo separate roots: one meaning to stream, tied to the noun for a river, and a second, at home in Aramaic, meaning to shine.; BDB, s.v. I. נָהַר and II. נָהַר; HALOT, s.v. נהר
minorityOne underlying image, the gleam of moving water, from which both the shining and the streaming senses developed.; W. Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. נהר
Sources
BDB, s.v. I. נָהַר and II. נָהַרlexicon
HALOT, s.v. נהרlexicon
TWOT, s.v. נהרtheological-dictionary
W. Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. נהרlexicon
J. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, at Isaiah 60:5commentary
D. J. A. Clines, Job 1–20 (WBC 17; Dallas: Word, 1989), 69, 80–81commentary