to fly: to move through the air, as a bird, insect, arrow, or winged being does.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is the ordinary Hebrew verb for flying. Its home is the physical picture of anything that travels through the air: a bird on the wing, a swarm of locusts, an arrow loosed by day, the winged creatures around God's throne, even God himself pictured riding swiftly on the wind. From that plain sense the word reaches out in two natural directions.
One direction is the idea of something that is here and then swiftly gone. A dream, a fortune, a human lifetime, a nation's glory: all of them are said to fly away, and the point is not motion but disappearance. Riches sprout wings and are gone; our years are cut off and we fly away. The word carries a note of how quickly good things can vanish.
The other direction is causing something to fly. A warrior makes his sword flash and sweep; a person is warned against letting the eyes go darting after wealth. Here the flying is done to something else, and English usually reaches for words like brandish or dart rather than the plain fly.
Nuances
1ato fly or soar through the air: of birds, insects, arrows, winged beings, and swift swooping.
1bto fly away, to vanish: of things that pass swiftly and are gone.
Job 20:8Psa 90:10Pro 23:5 (2×)*Hos 9:11
1cto make something fly: to brandish a weapon or to dart the eyes.
Pro 23:5 (2×)*Ezk 32:10
2
darkness, gloom: the deep dark that a rare word in Job may name.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyObscure
In one difficult line in the book of Job, a form of this word appears to mean not flying but darkness. Zophar promises Job that his life will rise brighter than noon, and that even the gloom will become like morning. Read this way, the word is a noun for thick darkness, and it stands opposite the daylight it is being compared to.
Many scholars treat this as a completely separate word that only looks like the verb for flying, tracing it to an old root meaning to be dark. Others keep it tied to flying and read the line as light soaring up like the dawn. Because the word occurs here only, the question cannot be settled from usage alone, and careful translations differ.
This is the word for going somewhere through the air. It has a starting point and a destination, so it can bring something or someone from one place to another.Isa 6:6Isa 60:8Psa 55:6
It is not limited to living creatures. Sparks off a fire, an arrow loosed at night, and even a scroll are all said to fly.Job 5:7Psa 91:5Zec 5:1
It carries a whole picture of things that vanish before you can hold them: money grows wings and is gone, a life passes, a nation's glory disappears like a dream.Pro 23:5Psa 90:10Job 20:8Hos 9:11
It can describe an attack: a bird of prey dropping fast on what it has spotted, and by extension an army sweeping down on its target.Hab 1:8Isa 11:14
It can also be used of making something else fly, as when God speaks of swinging his sword through the air before a watching nation.Ezk 32:10
Both
Both belong to the world of wings. Each is used of creatures held up in the air above the ground rather than walking on it.Gen 1:20Deu 32:11
Both supply the image of a bird over its brood for God's care of his people: birds on the wing above Jerusalem, and an eagle above its young in the wilderness.Isa 31:5Deu 32:11
This word keeps the wings over one spot rather than moving them anywhere. Nothing travels: the Spirit of God stays above the waters, and the eagle stays above its young.Gen 1:2Deu 32:11
Because it holds a position rather than covering a distance, it suggests watchful nearness. The eagle in the Song of Moses stays over the nestlings it is stirring out of the nest, close enough to catch them.Deu 32:11
The same spelling also describes a body shaking with dread, where no flying is in view at all: a prophet says his bones shook at what he had heard.Jer 23:9
It is rare, appearing only three times, and both of its bird pictures sit in weighty passages (the opening of Genesis and the Song of Moses), so it reads as a chosen word rather than the ordinary one for flight.Gen 1:2Deu 32:11
uph in the other biblical languages
πέτομαιGreek“to fly”the plain Greek verb for a creature flying through the air, without the Hebrew word's extended reach into things that vanish or into brandishing a weapon.
What scholars say about uph
The standard lexica treat עוּף I as the common verb "to fly," attested in the qal (of birds, insects, arrows, seraphim, and God riding the wind), the piel/polel for flying about, the hithpael in Hosea 9:11 for glory flying away, and a causative hiphil for making something fly, i.e. brandishing a sword (Ezekiel 32:10) or darting the eyes (Proverbs 23:5, where a Ketiv/Qere variant also bears on the reading). The figurative use for transience (Job 20:8;Psalm 90:10;Proverbs 23:5) is well recognized. Job 11:17 תְּעֻפָה is the crux: HALOT and BDB assign it to a separate root עוּף II "to be dark," yielding the noun "darkness, gloom" in parallel with noonday and morning; a minority keeps it with עוּף I and reads "soaring" or "brightness." Because the form is effectively a hapax, the question turns on the parallelism and cannot be resolved from distribution.
Where scholars disagree about uph
Whether the apparent "darkness" meaning in Job 11:17 belongs to a separate root that only looks like the verb "to fly," or is a form of "to fly" itself.
majorityIt is a distinct word from an old root meaning "to be dark," so the form in Job 11:17 is a noun for gloom or darkness set against noonday and morning.; Koehler and Baumgartner, HALOT, s.v. עוּף II; Brown, Driver, and Briggs, BDB, s.v. עוּף (II)
minorityIt is the same verb "to fly," and the line should be read as the picture of light soaring up like the dawn rather than of darkness.; David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary (1989)
Sources
Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB), s.v. עוּףlexicon
Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), s.v. עוּף I and IIlexicon
David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH), s.v. עוּףlexicon
R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, and Bruce K. Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT), no. 1582dictionary
David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary (1989)commentary