to fight: to be locked against another party in an open struggle, most often two people coming to blows
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
Almost every time this word appears, two people are gripping each other in a physical fight and the story is about what happens next. It is not the word for pressing a case in a dispute (רִיב), and it is not the word for an army waging a campaign (לָחַם). It is the word for the moment two parties come to blows.
The fights it names have a striking habit of turning into legal problems:
In Exodus 21:22 two men fighting strike a pregnant woman, and the law fixes the penalty.
In Leviticus 24:10 a fight in the camp ends with one man cursing God and facing trial.
In Deuteronomy 25:11 a wife who grabs at her husband's opponent draws a penalty of her own.
In 2 Samuel 14:6 two brothers fighting in a field end with one dead and the family pleading before the king.
From that center the word stretches in two directions. It can describe picking a fight with someone in authority, as when Dathan and Abiram set themselves against Moses and Aaron and through them against the LORD. And in the heading of Psalm 60 it describes David making war on Aram, where the two sides locked against each other are whole nations rather than two men in a field.
Nuances
1atwo people grappling in a physical fight, the kind that leaves someone hurt
TranslatabilityDirect
Exo 2:13Exo 21:22Lev 24:10Deu 25:112Sa 14:6
1bto set yourself against someone in authority, taking up an open fight with them
Num 26:9 (2×)
1cto make war on a people, with a king or an army as the side picking the fight
Psa 60:0(2)
2
to be left in ruins: of a city or a countryside, knocked into heaps of rubble and emptied of people
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
This is a second word that happens to be spelled the same as the word for fighting. It has nothing to do with quarrels. It describes a place that has been knocked flat and left with nobody in it.
All three of its occurrences sit inside a message of judgment. Twice, in one oracle preserved in both 2 Kings 19:25 and Isaiah 37:26, God says that he planned long ago that the Assyrian king would turn fortified cities into heaps of ruin. In Jeremiah 4:7 a lion comes up from his thicket and the warning is that your cities will be ruins with no one living in them.
The picture is not damage alone. It is rubble plus emptiness: walls thrown down into piles, and the people who lived behind them gone. Other words look at land left desolate and appalling to the eye (שָׁמֵם), or at a place dried up and abandoned (חָרֵב). This one keeps the eye on the heap of stones.
2Ki 19:25Isa 37:26Jer 4:7*
Disputed
Whether several Niphal forms spelled נִצְּתָה / נִצְּתוּ (Jeremiah 2:15; 9:12; 46:19; Nehemiah 2:17) belong to this verb "be laid waste" or to יָצַת "to kindle, burn" with an assimilated yod.
majorityThey are Niphal forms of יָצַת "to kindle, burn", so the cities in view are burned rather than merely reduced to rubble; this is why those verses are tagged under a different number in the data behind this word.; HALOT, s.v. יצת
minorityThey belong to נצה "fall in ruins, be laid waste", which is where BDB files them.; BDB, s.v. נצה
The fight is bodily. This word names two people gripping and striking each other, so what the passage reports next is the damage that contact does, not what the argument was about.Exo 21:22Deu 25:112Sa 14:6
It describes the fight from the outside, as something bystanders walk in on and try to break up, and the text usually never says what started it.Exo 2:13Lev 24:10
It stretches all the way to armed conflict, where the two sides locked against each other are whole nations rather than two men.Psa 60:0
Both
Both name an open clash between two parties that the community cannot ignore, and the same body of injury law uses them a few verses apart for men who come to blows.Exo 21:22Exo 21:18
Either one can be aimed at God himself, describing people who set themselves against their Maker.Num 26:9Isa 45:9
This is the word for pressing a case and asking for a verdict, and it covers both sides of the hearing: the one bringing the charge and the one answering it.Isa 50:8Job 9:3Pro 25:9
It can be done on someone else's behalf, taking up the cause of a person too weak to press it for themselves.Isa 1:17Pro 23:11Psa 43:1
God is regularly the one doing it, either bringing charges against his own people or pressing their case against those who wrong them.Jer 2:9Isa 49:25Psa 35:1
It covers a purely verbal falling-out that never becomes blows: herdsmen shouting over a well, a thirsty crowd rounding on its leader, an official taking the rich to task in public.Gen 26:20Exo 17:2Neh 5:7
לָחַםthe ordinary word for waging war, armies against armies; this word usually pictures two individuals scuffling.
In its fighting sense the quarrel is almost always a sudden scuffle between two named men who come to blows on the spot, with no army and no campaign in view.Exo 2:13Lev 24:102Sa 14:6
Because the fighting is private, it turns up inside case law, where the brawl is described only so a ruling can be given about the injury it caused.Exo 21:22Deu 25:11
It also covers a challenge thrown at Israel's own leadership from inside the community, the kind of defiance that splits a people rather than two armies.Num 26:9
Both
Both describe real physical fighting, bodies in conflict, not a disagreement carried on in words alone.Jdg 9:39Exo 2:13
Both can put Israelites on opposite sides, so neither word by itself tells you whether the enemy is a foreigner or a neighbor.Jdg 12:4Lev 24:10
Both can rise to conflict on a national scale, so the difference in scope is a matter of normal usage rather than a hard limit.2Sa 10:17Psa 60:0
This is the standard word for organized warfare: armies on campaign, cities besieged, one nation taking the field against another.Jos 10:292Sa 12:262Ki 16:5
God himself is regularly the one doing the fighting, going into battle on Israel's behalf while the people stand still.Exo 14:14Deu 1:30Zec 14:3
It stretches to hostility that never draws a sword: enemies who attack a person with accusations and lies are said to be waging war on him.Psa 35:1Psa 109:3Psa 56:2
It is the vocabulary of a reign's military record, the summary line for how long a king kept up hostilities with a neighbor.1Ki 14:192Ki 13:121Ki 22:45
מַצָּהthe noun built on this same root: the quarrel named as a thing, rather than as something two people are doing.
Names the quarrel itself as a thing a person produces or loves, so wisdom teaching can trace a fight back to the attitude behind it rather than to any one incident.Pro 13:10Pro 17:19
Can label religious practice that has curdled, so that a fast is described as an occasion for quarreling instead of a day of humbling.Isa 58:4
שָׁמֵםland left desolate and appalling to look at; the ruin sense of this word keeps the eye on the rubble itself.
Pictures the physical wreckage itself: walled cities knocked down into heaps of rubble, so the eye lands on the broken stone rather than on the emptiness around it.Isa 37:26
Most often this word is not about ruined places at all but about people going at each other: two men brawling in a field, a scuffle a bystander tries to break up, rebels squaring off against Moses and Aaron. Nothing in the other word carries this fighting sense.Exo 2:13Deu 25:112Sa 14:6Num 26:9
In its ruin sense it is a rare word, used only of towns and strongholds being flattened, and never of the feelings the wreckage stirs up in anyone who sees it.Jer 4:72Ki 19:25
Both
Both describe inhabited towns reduced to ruins and emptied of the people who lived in them.Jer 4:7Jer 33:10Lev 26:31
Both appear where the ruin is announced as God's own doing, something he planned long before and then brought about.2Ki 19:25Jer 19:8Lev 26:32
Covers the reaction as well as the wreckage: whoever passes by is left appalled, shaking the head or hissing at the sight, and even the heavens are told to be shocked.Jer 18:16Jer 49:17Job 17:8Jer 2:12
A person can be described this way, not only a place: Ezra sits stunned after tearing his clothes, Ezekiel sits among the exiles seven days in a daze, and a heart inside a living man is called desolate.Ezr 9:3Ezk 3:15Psa 143:4Job 21:5
Names a long-running condition, land left unworked for years on end, so that the emptiness can be counted in sabbaths and generations and later reversed when the old ruins are rebuilt.Lev 26:342Ch 36:21Isa 61:4
חָרֵבa place dried up and abandoned; this word pictures a city knocked into heaps of stone.
In its ruin sense the word is rare and keeps to one picture: strong walled cities knocked down into heaps of rubble.2Ki 19:25Isa 37:26
The same word is used far more often for people coming to blows: two men brawling, a scuffle that injures a pregnant woman, brothers who quarrel in a field.Exo 2:13Exo 21:222Sa 14:6
Both
Both announce cities left in ruins as an act of judgment.Ezk 6:62Ki 19:25
Both picture a settled place emptied of the people who lived in it, wrecked and left with no inhabitant.Ezk 12:20Jer 4:7
Both turn up in the same account of Assyria's campaign, one for the lands the invader wasted and one for the fortified cities reduced to rubble.Isa 37:18Isa 37:26
The fight regularly turns into a legal case, with the law fixing who pays for the harm done while the two were grappling.Exo 21:22Deu 25:112Sa 14:6
Stretches all the way up to armies: a king making war on a neighboring people, with whole nations locked against each other rather than two men in a field.Psa 60:0
Describes setting yourself openly against a leader God has appointed, as when Dathan and Abiram took up a fight with Moses and Aaron.Num 26:9
Both
Both name two men actually coming to blows, and the Greek word is the one used to retell the very scene the Hebrew word describes, the day Moses found two Hebrews fighting.Exo 2:13Act 7:26
Both describe conflict breaking out inside one's own community, among people who belong together, rather than against an outside enemy.Lev 24:10Jas 4:2
Covers a quarrel carried on entirely in words, where nobody lays a hand on anyone: the crowd falls to arguing with one another over how this man could give them his flesh to eat.Jhn 6:52
Names a trait of character to be renounced rather than an event that happened: a servant of the Lord must not be the kind of person who picks fights, but gentle toward everyone.2Ti 2:24
Gets traced back to its cause inside the person: the fighting breaks out because people crave what they do not have and cannot get it.Jas 4:2
ἐρημόωGreek“to lay waste”the Greek word for laying a place waste, matching the ruined city sense rather than the fighting sense.
In its ruin sense it fixes on the rubble left behind, fortified cities reduced to heaps of stone that anyone can still see.2Ki 19:25Isa 37:26
The same written Hebrew word carries a completely separate life meaning people struggling or brawling with one another, a sense the Greek word never has.Exo 2:13Deu 25:11
Both
Both describe an inhabited place reduced to ruin and emptied of the people who lived in it.Jer 4:7Rev 18:19
In both, the devastation is inflicted by a hostile power carrying out an announced judgment, not slow decay over time.2Ki 19:25Rev 17:16
It also describes a household or a kingdom coming apart from the inside, so what is wrecked is a community and its unity rather than a physical site.Mat 12:25Luk 11:17
It can take wealth itself as the thing wiped out, so the picture is a fortune stripped away in a single hour rather than buildings knocked down.Rev 18:17
What scholars say about natsah
The standard lexicons split this spelling into more than one verbal root. BDB distinguishes נצה I "fly" (present in the Hebrew Bible only in derivatives such as נֵץ), נצה II "struggle, strive" (Niphal reciprocal, Hiphil transitive), and נצה III "fall in ruins, be laid waste"; HALOT and DCH work with a comparable division, and the first of those roots is not represented among the verbal taggings behind this number. What is tagged here falls in two groups: the Niphal participle and imperfect of the fighting verb (Exodus 2:13; 21:22; Leviticus 24:10;Deuteronomy 25:11;2 Samuel 14:6) together with its Hiphil in Numbers 26:9 and in the superscription of Psalm 60, and the ruin verb in the Qal of Jeremiah 4:7 and in the Niphal participle נִצִּים of 2 Kings 19:25 // Isaiah 37:26. The Hiphil of the fighting verb is best taken as describing a party that takes up a fight rather than one that makes others fight, which suits both Numbers 26:9 (Dathan and Abiram against Moses, Aaron, and the LORD) and the military sense in the heading of Psalm 60. The boundary of the ruin root is the live lexicographic question: the Niphal perfects נִצְּתָה / נִצְּתוּ in Jeremiah 2:15; 9:12; 46:19 and Nehemiah 2:17 are filed by BDB under נצה, while HALOT and most recent commentators parse them as Niphal of יָצַת "to kindle, burn" with assimilated yod, and the corpus behind this entry follows the latter analysis by tagging those verses elsewhere.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. נצה I, IIlexicon
HALOT, s.v. יצתlexicon
BDB, s.v. נצהlexicon
DCH, s.v. נצהlexicon
William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1-18, Anchor Bible 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1999), on Exodus 2:13commentary
Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20, Anchor Bible 21A (New York: Doubleday, 1999), on Jeremiah 4:7commentary