a violent windstorm: a fierce, driving gale that sweeps everything before it
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This word pictures a sudden, violent windstorm: a gale strong enough to pick up and carry off whatever is loose, like chaff or stubble. It is a poet's word, at home in Job, the Prophets, and the Psalms rather than in plain narrative.
Two uses dominate. It stands for ruin that arrives without warning and sweeps a person away, so the storm becomes an image of the sudden calamity that overtakes the wicked (Proverbs 1:27; 10:25). And it describes God's own approach in judgment: the LORD comes with fire, and his chariots advance like a storm-wind (Isaiah 66:15;Jeremiah 4:13).
It is often paired with a second storm-word, סַעַר, the two together heightening the sense of overwhelming force (Isaiah 29:6;Nahum 1:3;Psalm 83:15).
Suphah: a place named in a fragment of an old war-song, its location now unknown
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyObscure
In a single verse the same spelling appears not as the storm-word but inside a snippet quoted from a lost book, the Book of the Wars of the LORD. There it reads like a place name, Suphah, listed beside a place called Waheb.
The line is broken and hard to make out, and translators have never agreed on it. Some keep it as the place Suphah, some connect the word to the Reed Sea, and older English Bibles even rendered it "the Red Sea." Because the quotation survives only as a fragment, its meaning stays genuinely uncertain.
Num 21:14*
Num 21:14
What the word rendered "Suphah" denotes in this fragment quoted from the Book of the Wars of the LORD.
majorityIt is a place name, Suphah, cited in the war-song beside a place called Waheb; the site is now unidentified.; HALOT, s.v. סוּפָה; Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 21-36 (Anchor Yale Bible)
minorityThe identification is too uncertain to treat as a fixed place name; the fragment may be corrupt, and the form has also been connected to the Reed Sea.; BDB, s.v. סוּפָה
The Hebrew names any violent, driving windstorm that sweeps loose things away, not only a spinning column of air.Job 21:18
Both
Both name a fast, powerful wind that arrives suddenly and overpowers whatever it meets.Nam 1:3
Only whirlwind
In English "whirlwind" suggests a tight, spinning funnel like a tornado, a narrower picture than the broad, sweeping gale the Hebrew has in view.
“storm”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“tempest”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How suphah differs from similar Hebrew words
סַעַרthe other main storm-word, often standing right beside this one (Isaiah 29:6;Nahum 1:3). It leans toward the raging, tossing violence of the storm, where this word leans toward the sweeping, driving wind that carries things off.
This is the storm of the proverb and the wisdom saying, the stock picture of how swiftly ruin overtakes the wicked and then is gone.Pro 10:25Job 21:18Hos 8:7Pro 1:27
It snatches its victim away suddenly, stealing him off in the night with nothing left behind.Job 27:20
Both
Both name the storm-wind of God's judgment against his enemies, and are set side by side in the same oracle as matched words for it.Psa 83:15Amo 1:14
This is the storm out of which God himself speaks and appears: the LORD answers Job from the tempest, and the same storm-wind carries the prophet's vision.Job 38:1Job 40:6Ezk 1:4
It is the tempest that carries a person up to heaven, as it took Elijah.2Ki 2:12Ki 2:11
It names the raging storm at sea, which God alone raises up and then hushes into a calm.Jon 1:4Psa 107:25Psa 107:29
רוּחַthe broad word for wind (and for breath or spirit). It covers any moving air, gentle or fierce, while this word is always a violent storm-wind.
Always a violent storm, never a gentle or ordinary breeze: it is the tempest that sweeps in suddenly and sweeps everything away.Pro 1:27Pro 10:25Job 37:9
Serves as a stock picture of divine wrath, the whirlwind in which God comes to judge and repay.Nam 1:3Isa 66:15Amo 1:14
Both
Both name a wind strong enough to scatter chaff and stubble, and the poets set the two side by side for exactly that picture.Job 21:18Isa 17:13
Both can carry the threat of coming judgment, as when a people sows the one and reaps the other.Hos 8:7
Reaches across a vast range the storm-word never touches: breath, the life-force in living things, a person's inner mood or will, and the Spirit of God.Gen 1:2Gen 6:17Num 27:16
Even when it does mean literal wind, it covers ordinary moving air of any strength or direction, not only a gale.Exo 10:13Exo 10:19Gen 8:1
It names the moving air itself, real weather that comes out from its quarter of the sky and sweeps through a region.Job 37:9Isa 21:1
It is what carries the wicked off, stealing them away in the night and leaving nothing standing once it has passed.Job 21:18Job 27:20Pro 10:25
It belongs to the way God himself arrives: his path runs through the storm, and his chariots come like one.Nam 1:3Isa 66:15Isa 29:6
It is a stock picture of ruin that overtakes a person all at once, the harvest of a foolish life and the terror that answers no cry for help.Hos 8:7Pro 1:27Amo 1:14
Both
Both belong to the vocabulary of violent whirling, close enough that one line of Hebrew poetry sets them side by side: the wheels of an invading army roll on like the storm wind.Isa 5:28
Both are used for how helplessly a people are driven off before a stronger power, the one as the thing spun along the ground and the other as the wind that drives it.Isa 17:13Psa 83:13Psa 83:15
Both carry the terror of an enemy arriving at impossible speed, whether the sound of the wheels or the chariots that come on like weather.Jer 47:3Ezk 26:10Jer 4:13
It names a solid made object, a wheel that turns on an axle: the wheel of a war chariot and the wheel that lifts water at a well.Ecc 12:6Jer 47:3Ezk 23:24
In Ezekiel's vision of the throne it is the whirling wheelwork beneath the winged creatures, a fixed part of a structure that a man is told to walk in among and take burning coals from.Ezk 10:2Ezk 10:6Ezk 10:13
Where it does describe a storm, it still names the whirling or the thing whirled, dry brush spun along the ground or the rolling of thunder, never the wind that does the spinning.Psa 83:13Psa 77:18
It is actual weather, a gale the sky produces: the storm-wind comes out of its chamber alongside the cold, and gusts sweep up out of the desert country.Job 37:9Isa 21:1
Because it is wind, the verses describe what it physically does to loose things: it lifts chaff and stubble off the threshing floor and carries them away, and a people who sow wind reap this gale.Job 21:18Isa 17:13Hos 8:7
It is the wind God travels in and the standard measure of rushing speed: his way is in the storm, his chariots advance like it, and enemy chariot wheels are said to spin like it.Nam 1:3Isa 66:15Isa 5:28
It pairs with the other Hebrew storm-word in matched poetic lines, the two heaped together for the sheer force of the weather.Isa 29:6Psa 83:15
Both
One wisdom warning sets them in matched lines as two ways of saying the same thing: dread arriving like the one, calamity arriving like the other, so in that verse the two are interchangeable poetry.Pro 1:27
Both stand for trouble that arrives with no warning and carries its victim off past any resistance, which is why each is used of the wicked being swept away.Pro 10:25Job 27:20Psa 35:8Pro 3:25
Both supply the comparison for an invading force bearing down on a land, so English Bibles reach for storm language in either case.Jer 4:13Amo 1:14Ezk 38:9
It can name emptied ground itself, a place rather than a passing event: the parched waste where the destitute scratch for food, and the empty land rain still falls on.Job 30:3Job 38:27
It is the ruin that lands on a particular person or city as what they suffer: something a man falls into himself, what the psalmist asks to overtake those hunting his life, and what Babylon is told she cannot ward off.Psa 35:8Psa 35:17Isa 47:11
It is the disaster a day of reckoning consists of: the prophets name that day as one of ruin and emptiness, and say the ruin travels in from far away when God settles accounts.Zep 1:15Isa 10:3
suphah in the other biblical languages
λαῖλαψGreek“storm”the Greek word for a sudden, violent squall or whirlwind, the storm that swamps the boat on the lake (Mark 4:37); the closest New Testament match for this driving storm-wind.
Serves overwhelmingly as a poetic picture of sudden judgment and the sweeping-away of the wicked, who vanish like chaff the wind carries off.Job 21:18Pro 10:25
Supplies a stock comparison for the speed and violence of war chariots rushing into battle, their wheels spinning like the storm-wind.Isa 5:28Jer 4:13
Both
Both name a violent, whirling windstorm powerful enough to overwhelm and carry off whatever it strikes.Nam 1:3Mrk 4:37
Names a concrete squall as an actual event: the sudden downburst of wind that swamps a boat on the lake, told in narrative rather than as a figure of speech.Mrk 4:37Luk 8:23
θύελλαGreek“storm”the Greek word for a raging tempest, used of the terrifying storm at Sinai (Hebrews 12:18); like this word, a storm tied to God's fearsome approach.
pictures a wind that sweeps and carries things off, so it becomes the standard image for how suddenly and completely the wicked are swept away, like stubble or chaff snatched up and gone.Job 21:18Pro 10:25Hos 8:7
serves as the vehicle of God's advancing judgment, the storm he rides in or comes with when he arrives to punish, so it carries an active sense of God on the move.Isa 66:15Nam 1:3Amo 1:14
stands for calamity that strikes without warning, the whirlwind that overtakes a person the moment their dread and ruin arrive.Pro 1:27Job 27:20
Both
both name a violent tempest bound up with God's fearful self-revelation: the Greek word marks the storm at the mountain where God appeared to Israel, and the Hebrew word is the storm God himself comes in when he manifests in power.Heb 12:18Isa 66:15
names the storm as a mass of darkness and gloom, listed alongside blackness and deep dark as one of the terrors that made Mount Sinai untouchable, so the emphasis falls on murk and obscuring cloud rather than on whirling wind.Heb 12:18
What scholars say about suphah
סוּפָה denotes a violent windstorm or gale and is confined to poetic texts, where it is frequently paired with סְעָרָה (Isa 29:6;Nah 1:3;Ps 83:15). It functions both for sudden calamity overtaking the wicked (Prov 1:27; 10:25) and for theophanic judgment, the divine chariots advancing like a storm-wind (Isa 66:15;Jer 4:13). HALOT and BDB place it in the semantic field of סוף, though the link to a verb meaning "come to an end / sweep away" is disputed. The one anomalous occurrence, Numbers 21:14 (בְּסוּפָה), stands in a fragment cited from the Book of the Wars of the LORD; it is widely taken as the toponym Suphah (paired with Waheb), while BDB flags the meaning and site as dubious and an older tradition connected the form to yam sûp, the Reed Sea.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. סוּפָהlexicon
BDB, s.v. סוּפָהlexicon
TWOT, s.v. סוףdictionary
Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 21-36 (Anchor Yale Bible)commentary