StrongerBible

natash

נָתַשׁ

HebrewH5428“pluck up, uproot, ...”

Appears 21 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Deu 29:28(27)1Ki 14:152Ch 7:20Psa 9:6(7)Jer 1:10Jer 12:14 (2×)Jer 12:15Jer 12:17 (2×)Jer 18:7Jer 18:14Jer 24:6Jer 31:28Jer 31:40Jer 42:10Jer 45:4Ezk 19:12Dan 11:4Amo 9:15Mic 5:14(13)
Word studyResearch-gradenah-TAHSHverb

What natash means

to pull up by the roots: to uproot a plant, and so to tear a people, a shrine, a city, or a ruling house out of the place where it stood settled

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

The starting picture is a farmer's: a plant yanked out of the ground, roots and all. From that one concrete act the word reaches out to almost everything that can be torn from where it has taken hold, whether the poles of a pagan shrine, a city, a whole nation settled on its land, or even a royal house pictured as a vine. In the Hebrew Bible the one doing the pulling is nearly always God.

The word rarely travels alone. Its constant companion and opposite is the verb for planting (נָטַע): to be planted is to be settled and secure, to be uprooted is to be driven out. Jeremiah builds much of his message around that pair and packs it into his famous commission in Jeremiah 1:10, where God appoints the prophet "to uproot and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant." The near-identical sound of uprooting and the next verb, tearing down (נָתַץ), gives the line its hammering ring.

Because the thing uprooted is usually a people, the word became a compact way of naming exile: the undoing of the land God had given. To be uprooted from the land is the covenant threat; to be planted again is the promise of return. Late in the Hebrew Bible the same image stretches to cover a royal line torn up like a vine and even a foreign kingdom broken apart.

Nuances

1aof a people: to tear a nation off the land where God had settled it, the Bible's standard picture of exile
Deu 29:28(27)1Ki 14:152Ch 7:20Jer 1:10Jer 12:14 (2×)Jer 12:15Jer 12:17 (2×)Jer 18:7Jer 24:6Jer 31:28Jer 42:10Jer 45:4
1bof a shrine: to tear the poles and objects of pagan worship out of the ground where they were planted
Mic 5:14(13)
1cof a city: to tear a city out of its place and leave it in ruins (and, as a promise, the assurance that a restored city will never be torn up again)
Psa 9:6(7)Jer 31:40
1dof a ruling house: to pull a dynasty or kingdom out of power, pictured as tearing up a vine
Ezk 19:12Dan 11:4
1eof flowing water: drawn or torn away from its source, in a line whose exact wording scholars question
CertaintyContested
Jer 18:14
Jer 18:14

Whether the verb in Jeremiah 18:14 is נתשׁ "be torn or plucked away" or a transposed form of נשׁת "to dry up" (compare Isaiah 19:5); if the latter, the verse drops out as an occurrence of נתשׁ.

  • minorityThe received consonantal text reads a passive of this root, "be torn away," of the cold flowing waters being drawn off.; Masoretic Text, retained by some commentators
  • majorityThe form should be read as a transposed נשׁת, "to dry up," making the line about waters failing rather than being uprooted.; BDB, s.v. נתשׁ; HALOT, s.v. נתשׁ; Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, s.v. נתשׁ

What scholars say about natash

Every major lexicon glosses the root as "pluck up, root out, tear away," with the picture of a plant torn from the soil as the base image (BDB 684; HALOT, s.v.; Gesenius, s.v.). BDB sorts the uses into uprooting cult objects, uprooting cities, and, dominantly, tearing a nation off its land, where the verb stands in fixed antithesis to נָטַע "to plant" and takes the phrase מֵעַל הָאֲדָמָה "from upon the land." DCH catalogues all twenty-one biblical tokens plus Ben Sira 3:9 and lists the recurring partners נָטַע, נָתַץ, הָרַס, and אבד. The verb clusters heavily in Jeremiah, anchoring the six-verb commission of Jeremiah 1:10, and Weinfeld catalogues "to pluck up from the land" among the diagnostic idioms of Deuteronomistic covenant-curse language, functionally echoing the Neo-Assyrian treaty threat of nasahu-uprooting (Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 1972). The apparent Akkadian cognate nasahu is a false lead on phonological grounds: the true Hebrew reflex is the separate root נָסַח (H5255), and Arabic natasa is itself a loan from Aramaic (Fraenkel, Die aramaeischen Fremdwoerter im Arabischen, 1886; Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew, 2009). Whether the Jeremianic plucking-up-and-planting formula is the prophet's own or a later Deuteronomistic frame is debated, with Holladay, Lundbom, and Bright defending substantial authenticity and Thiel, McKane, Carroll, and Schmid reading it as redactional shaping; that debate concerns the composition of the book, not the meaning of the verb, on which the lexica agree.

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

  • Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, p. 684, s.v. נתשׁlexicon
  • Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), s.v. נתשׁlexicon
  • Gesenius, A Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, s.v. נתשׁlexicon
  • Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH), s.v. נתשׁlexicon
  • Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), Appendix Amonograph
  • Holladay, Jeremiah 1 (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986)commentary
  • Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20 (Anchor Bible 21A; New York: Doubleday, 1999)commentary
  • Thiel, Die deuteronomistische Redaktion von Jeremia (WMANT 41, 52; Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1973, 1981)monograph
  • McKane, Jeremiah (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986)commentary
  • Carroll, Jeremiah: A Commentary (OTL; London: SCM, 1986)commentary
  • Brueggemann, To Pluck Up, To Tear Down: Jeremiah 1-25 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988)commentary
  • Fraenkel, Die aramaeischen Fremdwoerter im Arabischen (Leiden: Brill, 1886), p. 137monograph
  • Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew (Jersey City: Ktav, 2009), p. 241lexicon

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

All attested forms of נָתַשׁ

qal infinitive-construct construct

נְתוֹשׁ, נָתְשִׁ

Jer 1:10, Jer 18:7, Jer 31:28, Jer 12:15

qal consecutive-perfect 1cs

וְנָתַשְׁתִּי, וּנְתַשְׁתִּי

Jer 12:17, Mic 5:14, 2Ch 7:20

qal imperfect 1cs

אֶתּוֹשׁ

Jer 12:14, Jer 24:6, Jer 42:10

niphal imperfect 3mp

יִנָּתְשׁוּ

Jer 18:14, Amo 9:15

hophal consecutive-imperfect 3fs

וַתֻּתַּשׁ

Ezk 19:12

niphal imperfect 3fs

תִנָּתֵשׁ

Dan 11:4

niphal imperfect 3ms

יִנָּתֵשׁ

Jer 31:40

qal consecutive-imperfect 3ms

וַיִּתְּשֵׁ

Deu 29:28

qal consecutive-perfect 3ms

וְנָתַשׁ

1Ki 14:15

qal infinitive-absolute absolute

נָתוֹשׁ

Jer 12:17

qal participle m s absolute

נֹתֵשׁ

Jer 45:4

qal participle m s construct

נֹתְשָׁ

Jer 12:14

qal perfect 2ms

נָתַשְׁתָּ

Psa 9:6