a people: a body of persons bound together as one community by shared descent, land, and loyalty
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
At its root this word names a group of people who belong together. It can be as wide as a whole nation and as narrow as the assembled crowd of one town, but the thread running through all of it is shared identity: these are persons who count one another as their own.
Because that bond is the core, the word slides easily along a scale. It can name a foreign nation, the populace of a city or the body of an army, or the ordinary people as opposed to their rulers. Most often in the Old Testament it names Israel as the LORD's own people, the community he claimed at the exodus and bound to himself by covenant, which is why the phrase my people carries such weight.
It is worth keeping this word distinct from its close partner that means nation, which views a group as an organized political body with territory and a name among the peoples. This word looks instead at the human ties inside the group, which is why Israel is overwhelmingly called by this word and only secondarily called a nation.
Nuances
1aa people or nation, an ethnic group considered as a whole, including foreign peoples
kinsman, blood relative: the members of one's own family or clan
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyContested
This is the word at its most concrete and probably its most ancient: the persons related to you by blood. It survives most clearly in two fixed expressions and in old personal names.
When a patriarch dies he is said to be gathered to his peoples, and when a serious offender is removed from the community he is cut off from his peoples. In both, the plural points to one's kindred, the relatives living or dead to whom one belongs. The same sense lies behind names built on this element, such as the name meaning my kinsman is noble.
Whether this counts as a genuinely separate word from the common term for a people, or simply the same word narrowed to family, is debated in the lexicons. The two are kept apart here so the family sense is visible, though the boundary is thin and the senses clearly overlap.
Nuances
2aone's kindred, named in the phrase that a person is gathered to his kin at death
Gen 25:8Gen 25:17Gen 35:29Gen 49:33Num 20:24Num 27:13Num 31:2Deu 32:50*
2bone's kindred, named in the formula that a serious offender is cut off from his kin
even where it is rendered nation, the word keeps its stress on a people bound by kinship and shared loyalty rather than on political organizationGen 27:29
Both
both can name a large ethnic group counted among the peoples of the earthExo 15:14
Only nation
nation in English suggests a state with borders, government, and sovereignty, which is the emphasis of the separate Hebrew word for nation, not of this one
Stresses the bond of kinship and shared loyalty, the people seen from inside as a group that belongs together by blood, covenant, and common lifeRut 1:16Gen 49:29
Is the standard word for Israel as the LORD's own possession, the people he chose and bound to himself by covenantExo 6:7Deu 7:6Lev 26:12
Can shrink to the body of fighting men or the populace a leader commands, the people gathered under one headJos 8:1Jdg 7:1
Both
Both can name Israel itself, and a few verses set the two words side by side as near-equivalents for the same nation, which is why English renders both as people or nationExo 33:13Deu 4:6
Both are used of foreign or hostile populations, so the choice of word does not by itself mark insider versus outsiderExo 9:27Isa 2:4
Names the people as an actual gathering convened for a purpose, the crowd assembled to hear, worship, decide, or wage warDeu 9:101Ki 8:14Ezr 10:1
Can be a hostile or military muster, a massed throng called together to attack, with no covenant overtone at allEzk 17:17Ezk 38:4
עֵדָהthe congregation as a formally constituted body, especially Israel as a worshipping and governed community; this word is the wider human group it is drawn from
Is the wide word for a people as such, bound by blood and covenant, used of Israel and of foreign nations alike across the whole BibleExo 6:7Gen 23:7
Ranges far beyond the wilderness period and beyond any formal organization, naming kin, populace, troops, and the LORD's own peopleRut 1:16Jos 8:1
Both
Both denote the community of Israel and stand in apposition in the same passages, so a single group is called both the people and the congregationNum 16:41
Names a formally constituted body with a legal and decision-making role, the assembly that acts together, judges, and is held accountable as oneNum 35:24Num 27:2
Clusters overwhelmingly in the wilderness narratives as the technical term for the organized community of Israel under Moses, and is rare afterwardExo 16:1Num 14:1
This is the word God uses when he claims a nation as his own. He calls Israel "my people" whose suffering he has seen (Exodus 3:7), and the demand to Pharaoh is "let my people go" (Exodus 5:1). The partner word is never joined to God, or to any owner, like this.Exo 3:7Exo 5:1
It can mean the ordinary population as a body set over against whoever gives it orders: the Egyptians who will take direction from Joseph (Genesis 41:40), the Israelites who hear the message and believe it (Exodus 4:31), the workforce that Pharaoh's foremen are set over (Exodus 5:6). The partner word never stands for a governed populace like this.Gen 41:40Exo 4:31Exo 5:6
It also means one person's own relatives, and only ever in set phrases tied to that person: a man dies and is gathered to his kin (Genesis 25:8,Genesis 35:29), and an offender is cut off from his kin (Genesis 17:14). The kin group here is always somebody's, never a unit you could number or appoint a chief over.Gen 25:8Gen 35:29Gen 17:14
It is the plain everyday word, at home in ordinary business rather than only in song. Abraham bows to the local residents while buying a burial plot from them, and they are simply "the people of the land" (Genesis 23:7,Genesis 23:12,Genesis 23:13).Gen 23:7Gen 23:12Gen 23:13
Both
Both mean the populations of the world when they are plural, and they are close enough that one psalm line uses one of them and the next half of the same line uses the other: thanks given "among the peoples" and praise sung "among the nations" (Psalm 57:9, repeated at Psalm 108:3). Neither word is doing anything the other could not do there.Psa 57:9Psa 108:3
Both can treat shared ancestry, rather than land or government, as the thing that makes a group one group, and both can shrink well below the size of a nation: the branches of Ishmael's family (Genesis 25:16) and the relatives Abraham joins at death (Genesis 25:8).Gen 25:16Gen 25:8
This word names a countable social unit with a leader over it. Ishmael's descendants are counted as twelve such groups, one for each chief (Genesis 25:16), and a Midianite is identified as the head of such groups inside his father's household (Numbers 25:15). The partner word never gets counted or headed this way when it means someone's relatives.Gen 25:16Num 25:15
Apart from those two notices it belongs to poetry only, and there it is always an unnamed crowd of outsiders: the foreigners who laugh at Israel's downfall (Psalm 44:14), the world's populations summoned to praise (Psalm 117:1), the populations under judgment (Psalm 149:7). It is never used of Israel and never says whose people it is.Psa 44:14Psa 117:1Psa 149:7
denotes an entire people or nation as one collective body, vastly larger than any single familyGen 11:6Exo 1:9Exo 3:7
names a whole populace set over against its ruler or before God, the mass whose release or fate is at stakeExo 5:1Exo 5:4Gen 17:14
Both
both name a community a person belongs to by origin, and Scripture pairs them as a set phrase for one's whole background: one's people and the kindred one was born amongEst 2:10Jer 46:16Rut 2:11
names the narrow circle a person is born into: their blood relatives and clan, the family from which a wife or a return is soughtGen 12:1Gen 24:4Ezk 16:3
can mean the land or place of one's birth, the native country left behind or longed forGen 24:7Gen 31:13Jer 22:10
can denote the children born to a person, one's own offspringGen 48:6
am in the other biblical languages
λαόςGreek“a people”the Greek word that regularly renders this one, especially for God's own people Israel
Is the broad Hebrew word for a people of any kind, used freely of Israel, of foreign nations, of kin, populace, and troopsExo 9:27Jos 8:1
Both
λαός is the standard Greek rendering of this Hebrew word, especially for Israel as the LORD's own people, the covenant relationship the church then reads as fulfilled in itselfLev 26:122Co 6:16
Both name the people the LORD redeems and binds to himself, the heart of the covenant formula I will be their God and they shall be my peopleExo 6:7Heb 8:10
In the New Testament narrows to the people as a religious entity, very often Israel as a single body distinct from its rulers, and is later claimed for the church as God's peopleLuk 1:681Pe 2:9Tit 2:14
In the Gospels regularly names the crowd of ordinary Israelites set over against the chief priests and scribes who fear themLuk 20:19Mat 26:5
ἔθνοςGreek“Gentiles”the Greek word for nation or Gentile, the usual counterpart of the partner Hebrew word for nation rather than of this one
Is the kinship-and-covenant word, the standard term for Israel as the LORD's own people, the insider group bound to himExo 6:7Deu 7:6
Both
Both can name Israel as a whole people, and 1 Peter applies ἔθνος to the church in the same breath as it calls it God's people, so the boundary the two usually mark can be deliberately crossedDeu 7:61Pe 2:9
In the New Testament is overwhelmingly the word for the Gentiles, the nations outside Israel, the very group this Hebrew word usually marks Israel off fromMat 10:5Act 15:14Rom 11:13
Views a group as an organized nation with land and government, and can name even Israel that way when seen from outside as one nation among othersJhn 11:50Luk 7:5
The Hebrew word is the standard term for Israel as the LORD's own covenant people, the group he calls "my people", a bond the Aramaic counterpart never carries.Exo 3:7Exo 3:10
The Hebrew word names one's own kin or ancestral family, as in the burial idiom of being "gathered to his people", meaning joined in death to one's forebears.Gen 25:8Gen 35:29
Both
Both words name a people or nation as one collective body, a single group set apart from others.Gen 11:6Dan 7:27
The Aramaic word belongs to the imperial court register of Daniel and Ezra, recurring in the set phrase "peoples, nations, and languages" for the many subject populations of a world empire.Dan 3:4Dan 6:25Dan 7:14
What scholars say about am
The standard lexica treat this as the common Hebrew word for a people or community, with a well-attested concrete sense of kinsman or relative preserved in the death and cut-off formulas and in personal names. HALOT, BDB, and DCH lay out the range from nation to populace to the people opposite their rulers to one's own kin. TDOT (Lipinski) surveys the kinship root and its theological development into Israel as the LORD's covenant people. Whether the kinsman sense is a separate homonym (often labeled a second entry) or one pole of a single word is discussed in HALOT and BDB and remains unsettled; the two are kept distinct here.
Where scholars disagree about am
Whether the kinsman or relative sense (in the formulas gathered to his kin and cut off from his kin, and in personal names) is a separate homonym from the common word for a people, or one concrete pole of a single polysemous word.
contestedTwo related but distinguishable entries: a primary word for people/nation and a secondary word for kinsman, listed separately though clearly cognate.; BDB, s.v. עַם; HALOT, s.v. עַם
contestedA single word whose oldest concrete sense is kinship, from which the broader senses (clan, people, nation) developed; the family sense is one end of the same range, not a separate word.; E. Lipinski, "עַם ʿam," in TDOT, vol. 11
Sources
HALOT, s.v. עַםlexicon
BDB, s.v. עַםlexicon
DCH, s.v. עַםlexicon
E. Lipinski, "עַם ʿam," in TDOT, vol. 11theological-dictionary
R. E. Clements and others, "עַם," in TWOTtheological-dictionary