StrongerBible

naḥalah

נַחֲלָה

HebrewH5159“inheritance, heritage, ...”

Appears 222 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 31:14Gen 48:6Exo 15:17Num 16:14Num 18:20Num 18:21Num 18:23Num 18:24 (2×)Num 18:26Num 26:53Num 26:54 (3×)Num 26:56Num 26:62Num 27:7 (2×)Num 27:8Num 27:9Num 27:10Num 27:11Num 32:18Num 32:19Num 32:32Num 33:54 (2×)Num 34:2Num 34:14Num 34:15Num 35:2Num 35:8Num 36:2 (2×)Num 36:3 (4×)Num 36:4 (4×)Num 36:7 (2×)Num 36:8 (2×)Num 36:12Deu 9:26Deu 9:29Deu 12:9Deu 19:14Jos 13:8Jos 13:23Jos 13:28Jos 13:33Jos 14:2Jos 14:3Jos 15:20Jos 16:5Jos 16:8Jos 18:2Jos 18:4Jos 18:7Jos 19:1
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradena-kha-LAHnoun

What naḥalah means

an allotted, inalienable share: the permanent portion (most often a piece of land) that is assigned to someone and stays bound to them and their family line

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

At its core this word names a portion that is given, kept, and passed on. A nachalah is not just property a person happens to own: it is a share that has been assigned, most often a tract of land, and that is meant to stay with the family or tribe it belongs to. That joining of two ideas, a portion handed out and a portion that cannot simply be sold off, is what holds all the uses together. A man is buried on his nachalah (Joshua 24:30); a woman's right to receive one is worth a ruling from God himself (Numbers 27:7); and Naboth refuses to give his up even to a king, because it is his fathers' nachalah and he is bound to it.

This sense of an assigned, identity-forming holding makes the word natural for the bond between God and his people, and the Bible runs it in both directions at once. Israel is God's nachalah, the people he marked out as his own portion (Deuteronomy 4:20, Psalm 33:12). At the same time the land Israel receives is the nachalah God grants them (Deuteronomy 4:21). And the priestly tribe, who get no land at all, are told that the LORD himself is their nachalah (Numbers 18:20, Deuteronomy 18:2). The same word stretches across all of these because the underlying picture is one: a portion assigned and held within a lasting relationship.

From there the word reaches into other settings. A father's estate handed to his children is a nachalah (Proverbs 19:14); so, surprisingly, are children themselves, named as a portion that comes from God rather than something a person achieves (Psalm 127:3). In the book of Job the friends even use it for the grim portion of ruin that they say is allotted to the wicked. Most poignantly, the prophets use it to name what is at stake when the bond breaks: Jeremiah mourns that God's own nachalah, his people, has turned against him (Jeremiah 12:7-9), and Lamentations cries that Israel's nachalah has been handed to strangers (Lamentations 5:2). The loss is never merely material; it is the unraveling of a relationship.

Nuances

1athe portion of land given to a tribe, clan, or individual as their permanent allotment in Canaan, the share assigned when the land was divided up
Num 26:53Num 26:54 (3×)Num 33:54 (2×)Num 34:2Jos 11:23Jos 13:7Jos 14:2Jos 14:3Jos 15:20Jos 16:8Jos 17:4Jos 19:1
1ba family's ancestral property, a specific holding that belongs to them by lineage and must not be permanently sold away
Num 27:7 (2×)Num 27:8Num 27:9Num 27:10Num 27:11Num 36:7 (2×)Num 36:8 (2×)Num 36:9Rut 4:5Rut 4:6Rut 4:101Ki 21:3
1cthe mutual covenant portion: Israel as the LORD's own chosen possession, the LORD himself as his people's possession, and the covenant land as the share God gave and guards
Exo 15:17Num 18:20Deu 4:20Deu 4:21Deu 9:26Deu 9:29Deu 10:9Deu 18:1Deu 18:2Deu 32:9Jos 13:14Jos 13:33
1da portion in a wider sense: the share of life that falls to a person, whether the gift of children, or, in Job, the doom that the wicked are said to have coming to them
2Sa 20:11Ki 12:162Ch 10:16Job 20:29Job 27:13Job 31:2Psa 2:8Psa 37:18Psa 127:3

What scholars say about naḥalah

The standard lexica and dictionaries treat nachalah as the central Hebrew term for an allotted, inalienable share, most often land. There are four broad positions on its core sense. Gerhard von Rad and, more recently, Christopher Wright take the patrimonial family-and-tribal landholding (the Naboth-type "land of my fathers") as primary, with the tribal, theological, and metaphorical uses developing from it. Moshe Weinfeld argued instead that the term denotes a sovereign's grant to a loyal client, on the model of Hittite, Assyrian, and Ugaritic royal land-grants, and built his influential "covenant of grant" thesis on this. E. Lipinski (TDOT) takes the verb's root sense to be 'to apportion or receive as one's share,' from which both "to inherit" and "to bestow" develop, and on comparative grounds (Arabic nahala "to give," Sabaic and Qatabanic "royal grant," Ugaritic nhl, Mari nihlatum) judges the "inheritance" sense secondary. Norman Habel resists any single core, identifying several competing land ideologies and even rejecting "inheritance" as the right gloss; Wright answers that the kinship matrix is intrinsic and "inheritance" is correct. On the lexical neighborhood, the Horst, Milgrom, and Levine line holds that the priestly and Holiness texts deliberately reserve achuzzah for the Israelite's land (held under God's ultimate ownership, Leviticus 25:23) and nachalah for the older popular sense of inalienable family patrimony, though Joosten notes the contrast is softer than Horst proposed, since the two can be layered (Numbers 27:7). Across the canon the term traces an arc from concrete family land (Naboth, 1 Kings 21) through tribal allotment (Joshua 13 to 19) and Deuteronomy's national gift to an interiorized and future-oriented share after the loss of the land in 587 BCE (Psalms 16 and 73, Lamentations 3:24, Trito-Isaiah), a trajectory that shapes the Septuagint's standard rendering with kleronomia and the New Testament's language of inheritance.

Where scholars disagree about naḥalah

Whether the core sense of the word is a family patrimony handed down father to son, or a portion granted by a sovereign to a loyal client (with the family sense secondary). The comparative evidence from related Semitic languages pulls toward the "grant" reading, while the prominence of the Naboth-type ancestral holding supports the patrimonial reading.

  • contestedThe primary sense is the inalienable family or tribal land passed down a household line; the tribal, theological, and figurative uses develop from it.; Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology vol. I; Christopher J. H. Wright, God's People in God's Land (Eerdmans 1990)
  • contestedThe root sense is to apportion or receive as one's share, from which both "to inherit" and "to grant" develop; on comparative grounds the "inheritance" sense is secondary.; E. Lipiński, TDOT IX (Eerdmans 1998), pp. 319-335

Whether the word and its near-synonym achuzzah are sharply distinguished in the priestly and Holiness laws, with achuzzah reserved for land held under God's ownership and nachalah for the older inalienable family patrimony.

  • majorityThe distinction is real and deliberate: the Holiness Code in Leviticus 25 systematically prefers achuzzah to encode God's ultimate ownership, reserving the family-patrimony sense for nachalah.; F. Horst, "Zwei Begriffe für Eigentum" (FS W. Rudolph, 1961); Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27, AB 3B (Doubleday 2001); Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 21-36, AB 4A (Doubleday 2000)
  • minorityThe contrast is softer than proposed: both terms are used flexibly and are sometimes layered together (as in Numbers 27:7).; John Joosten, People and Land in the Holiness Code, VTSup 67 (Brill 1996)

Whether the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants belong to a distinct, unconditional "covenant of grant" genre modeled on ancient Near Eastern royal land-grants, a thesis built largely on the meaning of this word as a perpetual sovereign grant.

  • minorityThey are covenants of grant: unconditional, perpetual land-portions bestowed on a loyal servant, on the model of Hittite and Assyrian royal grants.; Moshe Weinfeld, "The Covenant of Grant," JAOS 90 (1970): 184-203
  • majorityThe thesis is overstated: the royal-grant genre is itself unstable, most surviving grants carry explicit conditions, and the linguistic parallels do not establish a distinct unconditional genre.; Gary N. Knoppers, "Ancient Near Eastern Royal Grants and the Davidic Covenant," JAOS 116 (1996): 670-697; Jon Levenson, "The Davidic Covenant and Its Modern Interpreters," CBQ 41 (1979): 205-219
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. נַחֲלָהlexicon
  • BDB, pp. 635-636, s.v. נַחֲלָהlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. נחלהlexicon
  • E. Lipiński, "נחל / נַחֲלָה," TDOT IX (Eerdmans 1998), pp. 319-335theological-dictionary
  • Gerhard von Rad, "The Promised Land and Yahweh's Land in the Hexateuch," in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (1966), pp. 79-93monograph
  • Moshe Weinfeld, "The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East," JAOS 90 (1970): 184-203journal-article
  • Gary N. Knoppers, "Ancient Near Eastern Royal Grants and the Davidic Covenant: A Parallel?" JAOS 116 (1996): 670-697journal-article
  • F. Horst, "Zwei Begriffe für Eigentum: naḥalā und ʾaḥuzzā," in Verbannung und Heimkehr (FS W. Rudolph, 1961), pp. 135-156monograph
  • Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27, AB 3B (Doubleday 2001), pp. 2185-2192commentary
  • Christopher J. H. Wright, God's People in God's Land: Family, Land, and Property in the Old Testament (Eerdmans 1990), pp. 3-43, 58-69monograph
  • Norman C. Habel, The Land Is Mine: Six Biblical Land Ideologies (Fortress 1995)monograph
  • Walter Brueggemann, The Land, 2nd ed. (Fortress 2002), pp. 49-65, 167-196monograph

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of נַחֲלָה

f s absolute

נַחֲלָה, נַּחֲלָה

Gen 31:14, Num 18:21, Num 18:23, Num 18:24, Num 18:24, Num 26:53, Num 26:62, Num 27:7

f s construct

נַחֲלַת, נַּחֲלַת, נַחְלַת, נַחֲלָת

Num 16:14, Num 27:7, Num 36:2, Num 36:3, Num 36:4, Num 36:7, Num 36:8, Jos 13:23

f s construct

נַחֲלָתוֹ, נַּחֲלָתוֹ

Num 26:54, Num 26:54, Num 26:54, Num 26:56, Num 27:8, Num 27:9, Num 27:10, Num 27:11

f s construct

נַחֲלָתָם, נַּחֲלָתָם

Gen 48:6, Num 34:14, Num 34:15, Jos 13:8, Jos 13:33, Jos 14:2, Jos 16:5, Jos 18:2

f s construct

נַחֲלָתְךָ, נַחֲלָתֶךָ, נַּחֲלָתְךָ

Exo 15:17, Num 18:20, Deu 9:26, Deu 19:14, 1Ki 8:51, Psa 68:9, Psa 94:5, Jol 2:17

f s construct

נַחֲלָתִי

Rut 4:6, 2Ki 21:14, Isa 19:25, Isa 47:6, Jer 2:7, Jer 12:7, Jer 12:8, Jer 12:9

f s construct

נַחֲלָתֵנוּ

Num 32:19, Num 32:32, Num 36:3, Psa 47:4, Lam 5:2

f s construct

נַחֲלָתָן

Num 36:3, Num 36:4, Num 36:4, Num 36:12

f s construct

נַחֲלַתְכֶם

Num 18:26, 1Ch 16:18, Psa 105:11

f p absolute

נְחָלוֹת, נְּחָלֹת

Isa 49:8, Jos 19:51