StrongerBible

naḥash

נָחָשׁ

HebrewH5175“serpent, snake”

Appears 31 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 3:1Gen 3:2Gen 3:4Gen 3:13Gen 3:14Gen 49:17Exo 4:3Exo 7:15Num 21:6Num 21:7Num 21:9 (3×)Deu 8:152Ki 18:4Job 26:13Psa 58:4(5)Psa 140:3(4)Pro 23:32Pro 30:19Ecc 10:8Ecc 10:11Isa 14:29Isa 27:1Jer 8:17Jer 46:22Amo 5:19Amo 9:3Mic 7:17
Names & words formed with this
Word studyResearch-gradenaw-KHAWSHnoun

What naḥash means

serpent: a snake, the limbless reptile, used both for the literal creature and as a vivid image of danger, cunning, and cosmic evil

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This is one word for one creature, the snake, and every place it appears it names a serpent. What changes is not the meaning but the role the snake plays in the scene. Most often it is simply the animal:

  • the thing that bites in the wilderness
  • that hides in a wall
  • that strikes when wine is drunk
  • that an outlaw tribe is compared to

The Bible knows the snake first as a real and dangerous creature.

From that hard fact the writers draw their pictures. Because a snake is quiet, quick, and deadly, it becomes the natural image for a hidden threat, for poison in the mouth, and for a cunning that can ruin a person before they see it coming. The serpent of the garden in Genesis 3 is the most famous case: a beast of the field marked out only by its shrewdness, who talks its way into the first human sin.

Two special uses stretch the same word further. In the wilderness Moses lifts up a bronze snake on a pole so that the bitten may look and live, an object Israel later turns into an idol and Hezekiah destroys. And in the poetry of Isaiah, Job, and Amos the serpent swells into a cosmic monster, the twisting sea-dragon Leviathan that God alone can master. The word never stops meaning snake. The danger it names simply grows from a bite in the dust to an enemy at the bottom of the sea.

Nuances

1athe literal snake, the venomous creature itself, whether crawling in the wild or as the standard image of a sudden hidden danger
Gen 49:17Exo 4:3Exo 7:15Num 21:6Num 21:7Deu 8:15Psa 58:4(5)Psa 140:3(4)Pro 23:32Pro 30:19Ecc 10:8Ecc 10:11
1bthe serpent of Eden, the shrewd beast of Genesis 3 that tempts the first humans
Gen 3:1Gen 3:2Gen 3:4Gen 3:13Gen 3:14
1cthe bronze serpent on a pole that Moses made for healing, later worshipped as an idol named Nehushtan
Num 21:9 (3×)2Ki 18:4
1dthe cosmic chaos-serpent, the twisting sea-dragon Leviathan that God masters
Job 26:13Isa 27:1Amo 9:3

What scholars say about naḥash

Every major reference work since BDB treats the three-consonant cluster nun-chet-shin as a set of homographs rather than one root: the snake (this word), the verb to divine, and the metal bronze are distinct lexemes that biblical authors knowingly play against one another for effect (BDB; HALOT; Gesenius18; DCH; TDOT, Fabry on the noun). The serpent noun has a clean cognate in Ugaritic nhs, seen in the snakebite incantations, and the same word renders the Ugaritic dragon-epithet in Isaiah 27:1. Within the one meaning, scholarship distinguishes the literal and proverbial snake, the Eden serpent (read by Westermann, von Rad, Walton, and Hendel as a created and shrewd beast rather than Satan), the bronze cult-serpent or Nehushtan (Joines locating it in Egyptian-style apotropaic practice; Cogan and Tadmor reading the name as the object's cult-title), and the cosmic chaos-serpent Leviathan inherited from West-Semitic myth (Day). The identification of the serpent with Satan is a Second Temple and early Christian development, completed only at Revelation 12:9.

Where scholars disagree about naḥash

Whether the Eden serpent of Genesis 3 is Satan. The Hebrew text calls the serpent a beast of the field that God made, distinguished only by shrewdness, and names no devil. Most critical and many evangelical scholars hold that the identification with Satan is absent from the Hebrew and arises only in the Second Temple period and the New Testament; some conservative scholars accept the textual silence but argue for the equation on the basis of later canonical passages.

  • majorityThe Eden serpent is a created beast, not Satan, in the Hebrew text itself; the demonic identification is a later development.; Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11 (Continental Commentary, 1984), 237-239; Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (OTL, 1972), 87-88; John Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve (IVP, 2015)
  • minorityThe Hebrew text is silent, but later canonical witness warrants identifying the serpent with Satan.; Bruce Waltke, Genesis (Zondervan, 2001), 90-94

What the bronze serpent named Nehushtan was. Second Kings 18:4 reports that Hezekiah destroyed a bronze serpent that Israel had been burning incense to, called Nehushtan. Scholars dispute whether this was a genuine Mosaic relic from Numbers 21 that was later corrupted into an idol, or always a non-Yahwistic cult-object, possibly an inherited Jebusite or popular snakebite-healing image, that the reformers purged. The Mosaic attribution is widely judged to be an explanatory tradition.

  • majorityIt was a pre-Israelite or popular cult-object later purged, the Mosaic origin being an explanatory tradition.; H. H. Rowley, Zadok and Nehushtan, JBL 58 (1939): 113-141; Karen Randolph Joines, The Bronze Serpent in the Israelite Cult, JBL 87 (1968): 245-256
  • minorityIt was a genuine Mosaic relic that was only later misused.; Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (JPS Torah Commentary, 1990), Excursus 56
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

  • BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 638-639lexicon
  • Koehler, Baumgartner, Stamm, HALOT, s.v. נָחָשׁlexicon
  • Clines, DCH, vol. 5, s.v. נָחָשׁlexicon
  • Fabry, נָחָשׁ, TDOT IX, 356-369theological-dictionary
  • Karen Randolph Joines, The Bronze Serpent in the Israelite Cult, JBL 87 (1968): 245-256article
  • Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11 (Continental Commentary, 1984), 237-239commentary
  • John Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve (IVP, 2015)monograph
  • John Day, God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea (Cambridge, 1985), 141-145monograph
  • Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings (Anchor Bible 11, 1988), 216-217commentary
  • James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961)monograph

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

All attested forms of נָחָשׁ

m s absolute

נָחָשׁ, נָּחָשׁ

Gen 49:17, Exo 4:3, Exo 7:15, Deu 8:15, Job 26:13, Psa 58:4, Psa 140:3, Pro 23:32

m s construct

נְחַשׁ

Num 21:9, Num 21:9, 2Ki 18:4

m p absolute

נְחָשִׁים, נְּחָשִׁים

Jer 8:17, Num 21:6