to stir water up: to set the sea heaving so that its waves roar
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyContested
Whenever this verb takes the sea as its object, God is the one acting. Two prophets use it in a standing description of who God is, the one who stirs the sea so that its waves roar. It is not a comment on the weather. It is a claim about ownership: the water that terrified ancient sailors moves when its maker says so.
Job uses the same verb for the older story behind that claim, God's mastery of the sea and of the monster Rahab at the beginning of things. There it stands beside a verb for shattering, so the sea is not merely rippled but subdued.
The difficulty is direction. Because a look-alike verb means to bring something to a stop, a translator has to decide in each verse whether God is whipping the water up or hushing it. The roaring waves in Isaiah and Jeremiah settle the question there. In Job it is genuinely open, and English Bibles divide.
Job 26:12*Isa 51:15Jer 31:35
2
to bring to a settled stop: to grant rest and relief, or to come to rest oneself
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This is the most common use, and it is always about motion stopping. Something has been driven, harried, or swung, and now it halts:
a hunted people at last settling down
a wild creature finding a den in the ruins
a sword told to go back into its sheath
Hebrew turns the word both ways. God can give rest to someone else, and a person or an animal can come to rest. Deuteronomy uses it for the reverse: among the nations of exile there will be no coming to rest and no place to set your foot, and that restlessness is itself the punishment. This is not the everyday Hebrew verb for resting (נוּחַ); it is a rarer word, and it usually points to relief handed to people who had none.
Jeremiah 50:34 shows how sharply it cuts. God gives rest to the land and agitation to the people of Babylon, and the Hebrew sets two nearly identical verbs side by side to make the point, the second being the word for shaking with fear (רָגַז). The rest promised there is not calm in general. It is the specific relief of no longer being hunted.
Nuances
2ato give rest to someone, granting relief from what has been driving them
Jer 31:2*Jer 50:34
2bto come to rest, to find a settled place to stay
Deu 28:65Isa 34:14
2cto fall still, to stop moving after being in action
Jer 47:6
2dto set something firmly in place so that it stays there
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
Isa 51:4*
3
in an instant: to happen in a flash, or to last no longer than a moment
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyContested
Hebrew has a common noun for a moment, the blink of time in which something is over (רֶגַע). In three places a verb built on that noun does the work an English adverb would do. It says either that an act happens in a flash, or that the thing described lasts no longer than a flicker.
Proverbs uses it for how long something lasts. Truthful lips stand firm forever; a lying tongue is there and gone. Jeremiah uses it for speed, in a threat delivered twice, once against Edom and once against Babylon: like a lion coming up out of the thickets, God will drive the shepherd off the pasture in an instant.
Because Hebrew folds the speed into the verb itself, English has to unfold it into a phrase, which is why translations here read like measurements of time rather than actions.
Nuances
3afor only a moment, with no staying power
Pro 12:19*
3bin an instant, all at once, of an act carried out with no delay
Jer 49:19Jer 50:44
4
of diseased skin: to close over and harden into a crust
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyObscure
Job, covered in sores, describes his skin doing two things in a row: first whatever this verb names, then breaking down again. The picture almost everyone reconstructs is a scab, skin drawing together and hardening over a wound, only to split open once more. The verb is used this way nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, so its sense has to be read off the surrounding lines about worms and crusted dust rather than from other examples.
Because the whole meaning rests on a single verse, English versions differ sharply: skin that hardens, skin that is broken, skin that festers. What is not in doubt is the misery. Whatever the skin is doing, it is not healing.
the Hebrew points to the moment motion stops, which is why the same verb can tell a sword to stop swinging and can promise a war-torn land reliefJer 47:6Jer 50:34
Both
both name the relief of no longer being harried, exactly what exile takes away and what return restoresDeu 28:65Jer 31:2
Only rest
English "rest" suggests a settled ongoing state, a day off or a good night's sleep, and it carries none of the sense of finally halting after being driven
"rest" also pulls a reader toward sabbath rest, which is a different Hebrew word and a different idea
in Hebrew the object is the sea and the actor is always God, so the verb makes a claim about who controls the deep rather than describing rough waterIsa 51:15Job 26:12
Both
both describe setting a body of water violently into motionJer 31:35
Only stir up
English "stir up" can sound small, like stirring a pot or stirring up trouble, and it loses the scale of the ancient sea being mastered
Hebrew says this with a verb, so the speed is folded into the act itself: the driving out and its suddenness arrive as one wordJer 49:19Jer 50:44
Both
both mark something as happening, or lasting, no longer than an instantPro 12:19
Only in a moment
the English phrase is a neutral measurement of time and carries none of the sense of a blink or a flash that the Hebrew word family suggests
“settle”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“be quiet”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“harden”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“give rest”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How raga differs from similar Hebrew words
נוּחַthe ordinary Hebrew verb for resting and settling down, used constantly of the land, the ark, and God's own rest; this rarer word points less to a settled state than to the moment motion stops, the relief handed to people who have been driven
It points to the moment motion stops rather than to a settled condition, so the rest it names can be a snatched instant of relief for people who have been hunted, found in the wilderness rather than in a secured homeland.Jer 31:2Jer 50:34
The same spelling also carries meanings nowhere near rest: God setting the sea heaving so its waves roar, an act done in a flash, and diseased skin closing over into a crust. So a reader cannot assume rest wherever these letters appear, while the letters of the commoner verb never behave this way.Isa 51:15Jer 49:19Job 7:5
It is rare and belongs to poetry and prophecy, never to ordinary narrative, and its most memorable use is a curse: among the nations of exile there will be no coming to rest at all, and that restlessness is itself the punishment.Deu 28:65
It can be used of a weapon told to stop striking and lie still, an order to break off action already under way.Jer 47:6
Both
Both can be turned around so that God is the one handing rest to worn out people, granting relief from whatever has been driving them.Deu 3:20Exo 33:14Jer 31:2
Both can describe a creature or a people finding a place to stay and stopping there, whether birds and insects alighting on the land or a wild animal making its home in the ruins of a fallen nation.Exo 10:14Isa 34:14
Both are used of a land or a country being brought to quiet once the wars against it have ended.Jos 21:44Jer 50:34
This is the ordinary word for a moving thing halting and staying put, used in plain narrative of objects and creatures: the ark grounds on the mountains after the flood, and a swarm of locusts drops onto the whole country and settles there.Gen 8:4Exo 10:14
It carries the settled national rest God grants his people in the land, a lasting security after the fighting is over, and it is the standing term for that promise from Moses through Joshua.Deu 12:10Jos 21:44Jos 23:1
It names God's own rest at the end of making the world, which is the reason given for the Sabbath command; no other word does that work.Exo 20:11Exo 23:12Deu 5:14
It reaches beyond rest to plain placement: setting a thing down where it belongs, and from there leaving it there. A man is put in the garden, and a jar of manna is set before the LORD to keep.Gen 2:15Exo 16:33
It describes something invisible taking up a settled place on a person and abiding there, which is how the spirit given to Moses is said to come upon the elders.Num 11:25Num 11:26
שָׁקַטquiet in the sense of an undisturbed calm, especially a country at peace after war; this word is about coming to a halt from movement, which is why Jeremiah 47:6 first asks the sword how long until it grows quiet and only then tells it to come to rest
Runs in the opposite direction in one of its main uses. With God acting and the sea as what he acts on, this verb whips the water up so the waves roar, and Job 26:12 uses it of God's mastery of the sea at the beginning of things, though translators divide there over whether the water is churned or calmed. שָׁקַט, "be quiet", is never turned into a word for stirring anything up.Isa 51:15Jer 31:35Job 26:12
In its rest sense it marks motion coming to a halt rather than the calm that follows, and it is used of people and creatures that have been driven. Israel scattered among the nations will find no coming to rest and no place to set the sole of a foot, while a wild creature settles in the ruins of Edom and finds a resting place there.Deu 28:65Isa 34:14
The same spelling also carries speed and brevity, saying that something happens in a flash or lasts no longer than a flicker: God drives the shepherd off the pasture in an instant, and a lying tongue is there and gone. That is a separate use of the word, not a shade of its rest sense, so the promise of rest elsewhere should not be read as a fleeting reprieve.Jer 49:19Jer 50:44Pro 12:19
Both
Both can demand that violence stop. Jeremiah 47:6 uses them in one breath: the sword of the LORD is asked how long until it grows quiet, and then told to go back into its sheath and come to rest.Jer 47:6
Both can name the relief a hounded land or people is given when what was driving them stops, and in both God is the one who hands it out. He gives rest to the land while unsettling the people of Babylon, and Israel worn down in the wilderness is met with rest; when he grants quiet no one can overturn it, and Jehoshaphat's kingdom is left undisturbed on every side.Jer 50:34Jer 31:2Job 34:292Ch 20:30
Names a settled quiet that lasts and can be counted in years. After the fighting stops the land has quiet for forty or eighty years at a stretch, and Joshua's campaigns end with the land at rest from war.Jdg 3:11Jdg 5:31Jos 11:23
Describes an undisturbed way of living rather than a moment of stopping: villages that keep no walls because nothing threatens them, a town so confident it posts no guard, Moab left alone so long that it has settled like wine on its dregs.Ezk 38:11Jdg 18:7Jer 48:11
Can be a chosen posture, the stillness of trust. Isaiah tells a panicking nation that its strength lies in quietness and confidence, and calls quietness the lasting result of doing what is right.Isa 30:15Isa 32:17
Also used of a stirred-up feeling dying down, which רָגַע never covers: God's fury spends itself and he grows quiet, and a patient person quiets a quarrel that a hot temper would keep burning.Ezk 16:42Pro 15:18
דָּמַםfalling silent or standing motionless, often out of shock or grief; this word is about settling into stillness rather than the silence itself, and Jeremiah 47:6 uses the two together, telling the sword to come to rest and then be silent
Runs in the opposite direction as well, with God stirring the sea so that its waves roar, a standing description of who he is.Isa 51:15Jer 31:35
Grants rest as relief to the hunted and a settled place to stay, so the stop includes somewhere to stay put rather than only the halt itself.Jer 31:2Jer 50:34Deu 28:65Isa 34:14
Measures time rather than motion, saying that something happens in a flash or lasts no longer than a moment, which English has to unfold into a phrase.Pro 12:19Jer 49:19Jer 50:44
Reaches into physical description, used once of diseased skin closing over and hardening into a crust before it breaks open again.Job 7:5
Both
Both can order something already in violent motion to stop, and one verse lays them side by side: the sword of the LORD is told to go back into its sheath, to rest and to be still.Jer 47:6
Each has a rival reading that pulls the opposite way, so a translator has to settle the direction verse by verse: the cry to Tyre's coast is read either "be silent" or "wail", and God's act on the sea in Job is read either as stirring it up or as stilling it.Isa 23:2Job 26:12
Covers the stopping of a voice: a man holds his peace out of prudence or fear, listeners hush for his counsel, and a singer refuses to go quiet before God.Job 29:21Job 31:34Amo 5:13Psa 30:12
Names an inward posture of trust: the person who stops striving, keeps still before God, and waits for him like a weaned child at rest.Psa 37:7Psa 62:5Psa 4:4Psa 131:2
Turns into a threat of ruin in the prophets, where being silenced is being cut off and destroyed rather than merely quieted.Jer 8:14Jer 25:37Jer 51:61Sa 2:9
Describes people struck dumb by disaster: elders sitting on the ground in stunned grief, a mourner told to sit alone, a prophet forbidden to weep aloud for his wife.Lam 2:10Lam 3:28Ezk 24:17
רָגַזshaking with fear, anger, or unrest; the two verbs look and sound almost identical, and Jeremiah 50:34 plays them against each other, rest for the land and agitation for the people of Babylon
Names motion coming to a settled stop, and the relief that goes with it: a hunted people finally allowed to stay put, a wild creature finding a den among the ruins, a sword ordered back into its sheath.Jer 31:2Isa 34:14Jer 47:6
Does the work of an English phrase about time, saying how long something lasts or how fast it happens: a lying tongue is there and gone, and God drives a shepherd off the pasture with no delay at all.Pro 12:19Jer 49:19Jer 50:44
Used once of diseased skin drawing together and hardening over a sore before it splits open again, a picture of the body's own surface rather than of anything shaking.Job 7:5
Both
Both are used of the sea and the great deep churning under God's hand: the waters see him and the depths shudder, and he is the one who stirs the sea so that its waves roar. Neither word treats the water as merely rough weather; the movement is God's doing.Psa 77:16Isa 51:15Jer 31:35
Both belong to the language of whether a people gets to stay put in its land, from opposite sides. Israel is promised a place where it will never be shaken loose again, while exile is described as a life with no coming to rest and no place to set the foot, and the return is God giving his people rest.2Sa 7:101Ch 17:9Deu 28:65Jer 31:2
One verse sets the two side by side on purpose, using their near-identical sound to split a verdict in two: God gives the land its rest and hands Babylon's people their shaking. The pairing works only because the words are heard as a matched set with opposite outcomes.Jer 50:34
Names shaking that is felt in a body: a father's whole frame convulsing as he weeps for his dead son, a prophet whose insides shake and whose lips quiver while he waits for the invader. This is fear and grief taking hold of a person, never a state of quiet.2Sa 18:33Hab 3:16
Used of the solid world heaving when God draws near: the earth quakes, the mountains rock, the ground under a whole land shakes and rises like the Nile. The shaking is what the created order does in God's presence.2Sa 22:8Isa 5:25Jol 2:10Amo 8:8
Describes the terror that runs through a crowd: nations hearing what God has done and shuddering, peoples told to tremble at his coming judgment, the confident women of Jerusalem summoned to shake instead.Exo 15:14Deu 2:25Isa 32:11Mic 7:17
Carries a late edge where agitation becomes open anger or a quarrel: a fool who rages when a wise person takes him to task, and Joseph's parting warning to his brothers, read by many as a caution not to fall out on the road.Pro 29:9Gen 45:24
רָעַשׁthe quaking of earth, mountains, and everything standing on them; this word, in its stirring sense, is aimed specifically at water heaved up into roaring waves
When this word means violent motion, the thing set moving is water and nothing else: God stirs the sea up, and the roar of its waves is the effect the text names.Isa 51:15Jer 31:35Job 26:12
It also runs the opposite way, toward motion stopping: God gives a hunted people rest, a wild creature finds a settled place, a sword is told to fall still, and exile is described as having no place to come to rest.Jer 31:2Jer 50:34Deu 28:65Isa 34:14Jer 47:6
It can measure time rather than movement, saying that an act happens in a flash or that something lasts no longer than a moment.Pro 12:19Jer 49:19Jer 50:44
Once it describes a sick body rather than the world outside it, Job's ruined skin drawing together and hardening over before it breaks down again.Job 7:5
Both
Both name part of the created world thrown into violent motion by God's own hand, so English versions reach for the same family of verbs, one for the sea heaved up and one for the land made to quake.Isa 51:15Psa 60:2
In both, the churning and the noise belong together: the stirred sea is known by the roar of its waves, and the shaken land is known by the sound that makes it tremble.Jer 31:35Jer 8:16
This is the earthquake word: solid ground, mountains, and the sky itself heave and shudder, above all when God draws near.Jdg 5:4Psa 68:8Nam 1:5Isa 13:13
Noise sets it off, so walls, land, and coastlines shake at the din of cavalry on the march or the crash of a city going down.Ezk 26:10Jer 8:16Ezk 27:28
It reaches past terrain to peoples and governments, with God announcing that he will shake all the nations and overturn the strength of kingdoms.Hag 2:7Hag 2:21Isa 14:16
It also works dialed right down, with no dread in it at all: the eager quivering leap of a warhorse, and grain rippling on the hills like a forest in the wind.Job 39:20Psa 72:16
הָמָהthe roaring, growling noise made by crowds, waves, and animals; this word names the churning that produces the noise, which is why Isaiah 51:15 has God stir the sea and the waves then roar
most often means motion coming to a halt rather than any sound: rest granted to a hunted people, a wild creature settling in the ruins, a sword told to go back into its sheath, and, as a curse, no resting place at all among the nationsJer 31:2Jer 50:34Isa 34:14Jer 47:6Deu 28:65
can measure time instead of describing an event, saying that something happens in a flash or lasts no longer than a flickerPro 12:19Jer 49:19Jer 50:44
where the sea is in view, names God's act upon the water rather than the water's noise, standing beside the shattering of the sea monster Rahab as a claim about who masters the deepJob 26:12
is used once of a body's surface, for skin drawing together and hardening over a sore before breaking open again, a picture with nothing to do with noiseJob 7:5
Both
both belong to one standing description of God and the sea, used twice in nearly identical words: he is the one who stirs the sea up so that its waves roar. The two words split the picture between them, one for the act that sets the water heaving and one for the sound it makes.Isa 51:15Jer 31:35
names the noise itself, so the sea is the one doing the roaring rather than something being acted upon: the waves crash, the deep churns, and the word reports what is heardPsa 46:3Jer 5:22Jer 6:23Jer 51:55
reaches far beyond water to any loud, restless commotion: a city in an uproar at the sound of a trumpet, dogs growling through the streets at night, a crowd of nations in turmoil, a man made rowdy by wine1Ki 1:41Isa 22:2Psa 59:6Pro 20:1
turns inward for strong feeling, describing the heart, the insides, or the spirit churning with grief, longing, or dread, so a person can ask his own soul why it is in such an uproarPsa 42:5Psa 77:3Isa 16:11Jer 4:19
רֶגַעthe noun for a moment or an instant, the blink of time that this verb's time-related sense is built on; the noun names the span itself, while the verb says an act happens or a thing lasts within it
Most of the time this word has nothing to do with time at all. Its best known use is God setting the sea heaving so that its waves roar, a standing description of who God is in two prophets and, in Job, of his mastery of the sea at the beginning of things.Isa 51:15Jer 31:35Job 26:12
It also carries a whole family of uses about motion coming to a stop: a hunted people who find no place to settle among the nations, a wild creature that finds a den in the ruins, a sword told to lie still, and relief handed to a land that had been harried. None of these measures a span of time; they name the halt itself.Deu 28:65Isa 34:14Jer 47:6Jer 50:34
Where it does speak of speed, the speed is folded into the action itself, so one Hebrew word says both what was done and that it was done in a flash: God drives the shepherd off the pasture in an instant. The other word can never do this; it needs a phrase built around it.Jer 49:19Jer 50:44
In one verse it describes a sick man's skin, drawing together and hardening over his sores before breaking open again. That is a use no word for time could carry, and it shows how far this spelling ranges beyond the idea of an instant.Job 7:5
Both
Both can say that something happens, or is over, in no more time than an instant. The verb does it in a single word, whether of a lying tongue that lasts only a moment or of a flock driven off in a flash; the noun does the same work as a phrase, of the proud destroyed in a moment or a people that could be consumed in an instant.Pro 12:19Jer 49:19Psa 73:19Num 16:21
Jeremiah reaches for both when he says how fast a nation can be undone: with the verb, God comes up like a lion and clears Babylon's pasture in an instant; with the noun, at any instant God may speak against a nation to pull it down or to build it up.Jer 50:44Jer 18:7Jer 18:9
Because it names the span of time itself, it can be counted and repeated: God tests a person at every moment, waters his vineyard moment by moment, and terrified survivors tremble at every moment. One instant becomes one instant after another, with no let up. The verb has nothing like this.Job 7:18Isa 27:3Ezk 26:16Ezk 32:10
It is the word that weighs a short span against a long one, and that is where its comfort lies: God's anger lasts a moment and his favor a lifetime, he abandoned his people for a brief instant only, and even a moment of mercy is enough to revive them.Psa 30:5Isa 54:7Isa 54:8Ezr 9:8
This, and not the verb, is the ordinary Hebrew way of saying "in a moment". It runs through the law, the Psalms, Job and the prophets in more than twenty places, most often as a threat that God could consume a people in one instant, while the verb's time use is confined to a handful of verses.Exo 33:5Num 16:21Psa 73:19Isa 47:9
raga in the other biblical languages
ἀναπαύωGreek“to give rest”the Greek verb for giving rest and refreshing the weary, as Jesus offers rest to those who are worn out; it names the relief itself, where the Hebrew word focuses on the moment things come to a halt
The same Hebrew spelling also carries meanings that have nothing to do with rest, so a reader has to decide which word a verse uses. In two prophetic lines God stirs the sea until its waves roar, in Job that stirring is paired with the shattering of a sea monster, and in one verse it describes diseased skin drawing together and hardening over a sore. Nothing in the Greek verb pulls in these directions.Isa 51:15Jer 31:35Job 26:12Job 7:5
Doubles as a way of measuring time, saying that something happens in a flash or lasts no longer than a flicker. A lying tongue is there and gone, and God twice threatens to drive a shepherd off the pasture in an instant. The Greek verb says nothing about how long anything takes.Pro 12:19Jer 49:19Jer 50:44
Points to finding, or failing to find, a physical place to settle. Among the nations of exile there is no place to come to rest and nowhere to set your foot, and a night creature finds a lair for itself among the ruins. The Greek word is about relief from toil, not about a spot to settle in.Deu 28:65Isa 34:14
Is used of setting something down so that it stays put, which is why one prophetic line can be read as God fixing his justice in place as a light for the peoples. The Greek verb never means to plant or install something.Isa 51:4
Both
Both name rest handed to people who have been driven hard, and in each case the giver is God. The Hebrew word promises rest to a people hunted through the wilderness; the Greek word is Jesus telling everyone worn out and loaded down that he will give them rest.Jer 31:2Mat 11:28
Both describe the relief that comes once an ordeal is over. The Hebrew word has God giving rest to a plundered land after settling accounts with its oppressor; the Greek word has the faithful dead resting now that their labors are behind them.Jer 50:34Rev 14:13
Both can mean simply stopping, motion breaking off rather than a gift being made. The Hebrew word tells a sword to fall still and go back into its sheath; the Greek word has Jesus pulling worn-out disciples away from the crowds to stop for a while.Jer 47:6Mrk 6:31
Reaches inside a person: it is used for reviving someone's spirit or heart, the lift one believer gives another who is worn down. Paul says visitors "refreshed my spirit", reports that Titus's spirit was set at ease, tells Philemon that the hearts of God's people have been revived through him, and then asks Philemon to do the same for him. The Hebrew verb never describes cheering a person up.1Co 16:182Co 7:13Phm 1:7Phm 1:20
Covers the ordinary human break: a nap, a pause, putting your feet up. Jesus tells the apostles to come away and rest a while, twice tells the sleeping disciples in the garden to take their rest, and a rich man tells himself to take his ease on the strength of his full barns. The Hebrew word is never used for a normal rest from a day's work.Mrk 6:31Mat 26:45Mrk 14:41Luk 12:19
Names the rest that lies beyond death, the settled repose of people whose work is finished. The martyrs are told to rest a little longer, and those who die in the Lord rest from their labors. The Hebrew verb keeps to relief inside this life.Rev 6:11Rev 14:13
Can mean to settle upon someone and stay there, said of God's Spirit coming to rest on a believer under insult. The Hebrew word never has something come down and remain on a person.1Pe 4:14
ταράσσωGreek“to trouble”to stir up and agitate, used of both troubled water and troubled hearts; it matches the stirring sense of this word, though the Hebrew verb aims almost only at the sea and has God as its subject
Most often it runs the opposite direction, bringing motion to a stop rather than starting it. A hunted people finally settle, a sword is told to go back into its sheath, and God hands relief to a land that had none. Being denied even that halt is itself the misery of exile.Jer 31:2Jer 47:6Deu 28:65
When it does stir water, the water is always the sea and the one stirring it is always God. Two prophets use it in a standing description of who God is, the one who churns the deep so its waves roar, so the line makes a claim about who controls the sea rather than reporting rough weather.Isa 51:15Jer 31:35
It carries a sense of time that the Greek verb has nothing to do with, saying that an act happens in a flash or that a thing lasts no longer than a flicker: a lying tongue is there and gone, and God drives a shepherd off the pasture in an instant.Pro 12:19Jer 49:19Jer 50:44
Once it describes diseased skin drawing together and hardening over a wound, a bodily picture with no counterpart in the Greek word.Job 7:5
Both
Both are the word their language reaches for when still water is churned into motion, and English renders each of them "stir up". In Greek it is a healing pool whose surface is stirred; in Hebrew it is God heaving the sea until its waves roar.Jhn 5:7Jer 31:35
In each language this names the churning itself and not the noise that follows. Isaiah has God stir the sea and only then do the waves roar, and when Paul's opponents stir up Thessalonica a separate Greek word carries the shouting, so both words point to what sets things in motion rather than to the din.Isa 51:15Act 17:8
Its main use is inward. A person's heart is thrown off balance by fear, grief, or alarming news: Herod at the report of a rival king, Zechariah at the sight of an angel, Jesus himself at the grave of a friend. The Hebrew verb never does this to a person.Mat 2:3Luk 1:12Jhn 11:33
It also works on groups of people. Agitators unsettle a whole city or congregation with alarming or false words, so a settled community is thrown into confusion by what is said to it.Act 17:8Act 15:24Gal 1:7
Ordinary people are both the ones who do it and the ones who can refuse it. Jesus and Peter each tell people not to let their hearts be thrown into this turmoil, which assumes it is a state a person can resist.Jhn 14:1Jhn 14:271Pe 3:14
στιγμήGreek“instant”the Greek noun for an instant, as in a moment of time; it lines up with this word's way of saying that something happens in a flash, but Greek uses a noun for time where Hebrew uses a verb
This is an action word, so the speed rides inside the verb and English has to unfold it into a phrase that the Hebrew never spells out. God drives the shepherd off the pasture in an instant, and the line contains no separate word for time at all.Jer 49:19Jer 50:44
It can measure how long something lasts, not only how fast it happens. A lying tongue is there and gone, and the brevity is the whole point of the line, set against truthful lips that stand firm forever.Pro 12:19
The same Hebrew spelling carries meanings that have nothing to do with time at all, so a reader has to decide from the verse which word is in play: God setting the sea heaving until its waves roar, or a hunted people finding nowhere to come to rest. The Greek word has no such double life.Isa 51:15Deu 28:65
Both
Both mark the shortest span of time there is, the flash in which a complete event is over and done. Luke has every kingdom of the world displayed "in a moment of time", and Jeremiah has a whole flock driven off its pasture in that same flicker. The Greek says it with a naming word and the Hebrew with an action word, but the span measured is the same.Luk 4:5Jer 49:19
This is a naming word for the span of time itself, so it has to be wrapped in a phrase to do its work: Luke says the devil showed Jesus every kingdom of the world "in a moment of time", with both a preposition and a separate word for time around it. The Hebrew verb needs no such phrase, because there the speed is folded inside the action being described.Luk 4:5
Its one appearance measures how fast something is taken in rather than how fast something is carried out. Nothing moves in the verse; the whole array of the world's kingdoms simply registers at once, in the time it takes to blink.Luk 4:5
What scholars say about raga
Standard lexica do not treat these thirteen occurrences as a single verb. BDB and HALOT both distribute them across separate homonymous roots. One root means to stir up or agitate (the sea), carrying the participle at Isaiah 51:15 and Jeremiah 31:35 and the perfect at Job 26:12. A second means to be at rest or to grant rest, carrying the Hiphil at Deuteronomy 28:65,Isaiah 34:14,Jeremiah 31:2 and Jeremiah 50:34, together with the Niphal imperative at Jeremiah 47:6, where it stands in a chain with שקט and דמם. A third, attested only at Job 7:5, describes diseased skin forming a crust; Clines notes the difficulty of the clause and the range of proposals for עורי רגע וימאס. A fourth grouping, the first-person Hiphil forms at Proverbs 12:19,Jeremiah 49:19 and Jeremiah 50:44, is standardly explained as a verbal use built on the noun רגע, a moment (H7281), and is rendered adverbially by most modern versions; Waltke takes Proverbs 12:19 this way against the antithesis with שפת אמת תכון לעד. Two verses remain unsettled. At Job 26:12 the choice between stirring up and stilling the sea turns on which root is assumed, and the major English versions divide; the parallel with the smiting of Rahab is compatible with either reading. At Isaiah 51:4 BDB reads the Hiphil as establishing or causing to rest, giving the sense that God will set his justice as a light to the peoples, while others take it as the adverbial moment idiom; Goldingay and Payne discuss both. The apparent contradiction between agitation and repose is therefore lexical homonymy rather than a semantic development inside one root, though the etymology of each root remains debated.
Sources
BDB, s.v. רגעlexicon
HALOT, s.v. רגע I, II, IIIlexicon
DCH, s.v. רגעlexicon
David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary 17 (Dallas: Word Books, 1989)commentary
David J. A. Clines, Job 21-37, Word Biblical Commentary 18A (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006)commentary
John Goldingay and David Payne, Isaiah 40-55, International Critical Commentary (London: T&T Clark, 2006)commentary
William McKane, Jeremiah, International Critical Commentary, 2 vols (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986, 1996)commentary
Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1-15, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004)commentary