StrongerBible

reḥem

רֶחֶם

HebrewH7358“womb, matrix”

Appears 26 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 20:18Gen 29:31Gen 30:22Exo 13:2Exo 13:12Exo 13:15Exo 34:19Num 3:12Num 8:16Num 12:12Num 18:151Sa 1:51Sa 1:6Job 3:11Job 10:18Job 24:20Job 31:15Psa 22:10(11)Psa 58:3(4)Psa 110:3Jer 20:17 (2×)
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeREH-khemnoun

What reḥem means

the womb: the organ in a woman's body where a child is conceived and carried until birth

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Wherever this word appears in the Hebrew Bible it means the physical womb, and its most striking feature is who acts on it. Again and again God is the one who opens it, closes it, forms a child inside it, or calls a person out of it. No other body part in the Hebrew Scriptures is so consistently the place where God works directly on a human life.

The same organ shows up in several settings. It is the seat of fertility, which God alone gives or withholds. It is the reference point of the law of the firstborn, described as the child who first opens the womb. It is the place where a person's life begins and is shaped, named in the recurring phrase "from the womb." And in poetry it can even become an image for the origin of the world, as when the sea is pictured bursting out of a womb.

One further connection gives this word much of its weight. Hebrew's main word for compassion or mercy comes from the same root as "womb." The link is real, and a few poems play on it deliberately, but the two are separate words, and the mercy word had come to mean compassion in general rather than womb-feeling in particular. So the womb stands quietly behind the language of mercy without every use of mercy meaning "womb."

Nuances

1athe womb as the seat of fertility, which God alone opens to give children or closes to withhold them
Gen 20:18Gen 29:31Gen 30:221Sa 1:51Sa 1:6Hos 9:14
1bthe womb in the law of the firstborn: the child who first opens it belongs to God
Exo 13:2Exo 13:12Exo 13:15Exo 34:19Num 3:12Num 8:16Num 18:15
1cthe womb as the source of a person's life: where one is formed and from which one is born, and by extension the mother who bore them
Num 12:12Job 3:11Job 10:18Job 24:20Job 31:15Psa 22:10(11)Psa 58:3(4)Jer 1:5Jer 20:17 (2×)Jer 20:18
1dthe womb as a poetic image for the origin of the sea and the dawn
Job 38:8Psa 110:3
Psa 110:3

The Hebrew of this verse is textually uncertain, and how (or whether) "womb" figures in it is disputed.

  • contestedKeep the traditional Hebrew text, reading a poetic "womb of the dawn" from which the king or his people come.; Masoretic Text (BHS)
  • contestedEmend toward the ancient Greek, giving "from the womb, before the dawn I have begotten you," a royal birth image.; Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 3, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2011), 138-150; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60-150, Continental Commentary (Fortress, 1993), 345-351

What scholars say about reḥem

The standard Hebrew lexica (HALOT, BDB, DCH) and the theological dictionaries agree that the noun denotes the female womb and that it belongs to the same root as the verb "to have compassion" and the noun "compassion, mercy." HALOT and Schmuttermayr's 1970 lexical study treat the concrete noun "womb" as primary and the verb as derived from it. Simian-Yofre and Kronholm (TDOT XIII) survey the comparative Semitic evidence and caution that the noun-verb link is uncertain: Akkadian keeps "womb, compassion" (remu) separate from "to love" (ra'amu), and Syriac uses the cognate mainly for "to love," so the Hebrew merger of womb and compassion may itself be secondary. Phyllis Trible (God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, 1978) built a maternal theology of God on the womb-mercy link, arguing that divine compassion is figured as womb-love; James Barr's critique of the root fallacy (The Semantics of Biblical Language, 1961) and Katharine Doob Sakenfeld's study of mercy vocabulary warn against hearing "womb" in every occurrence of the compassion words, and Psalm 103:13 compares God's compassion to a father's. A mediating position now prevails: specific poems (Jeremiah 31:20; Isaiah 49:15; Hosea 2:23) deliberately activate the pun, while the compassion words had broadened into general mercy. On the noun itself there is no dispute that it names the womb, and across the corpus it is overwhelmingly the site of divine action, whether God opens it (Genesis 29:31; 30:22), closes it (Genesis 20:18; 1 Samuel 1:5-6), forms and calls a person from it (Jeremiah 1:5; Psalm 22:10), claims its firstborn (Exodus 13:2), or is imagined birthing the sea from it (Job 38:8). Textual and interpretive cruxes attach to Psalm 110:3 and Job 24:20.

Where scholars disagree about reḥem

Whether the historical link between the womb and the related mercy words (the verb "to have compassion" and the noun "compassion, mercy") was still felt by biblical writers, so that God's mercy is pictured as maternal, womb-like tenderness. The debate concerns the mercy vocabulary and the word's derivation, not the meaning of "womb" itself, which is undisputed.

  • majorityA mediating view: the womb and the mercy words share one root, and certain poems (Jeremiah 31:20; Isaiah 49:15) deliberately play on the connection, but by the biblical period the mercy words functioned as general compassion and were not heard as "womb" in every use.; H. Simian-Yofre, TDOT XIII:437-452; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), s.v. רֶחֶם
  • minorityA strong maternal reading: the mercy words carry womb imagery throughout, so God's compassion is essentially motherly womb-love.; Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Fortress, 1978), 31-59; Mayer I. Gruber, "The Motherhood of God in Second Isaiah," Revue Biblique 90 (1983): 351-359
  • minorityA skeptical reading: the shared root does not carry a live "womb" sense in the mercy words, and Psalm 103:13 compares God's compassion to a father's, so importing "womb" into the mercy vocabulary is an etymological mistake.; James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961), 100-106; Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible (Scholars Press, 1978)
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

  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), s.v. רֶחֶםlexicon
  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. רחםlexicon
  • DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. רֶחֶםlexicon
  • H. Simian-Yofre and T. Kronholm, "רחם / רֶחֶם," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) XIII:437-459dictionary
  • H. J. Stoebe, "רחם," in Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (TLOT) 3:1225-1230dictionary
  • Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Fortress, 1978), 31-59monograph
  • James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961), 100-106monograph
  • Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible (Scholars Press, 1978)monograph
  • Georg Schmuttermayr, "Rhm: Eine lexikalische Studie," Biblica 51 (1970): 499-532article
  • William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1-18, Anchor Bible 2 (Doubleday, 1999), 421-427commentary
  • Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20, Anchor Bible 21A (Doubleday, 1999)commentary
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary 17 (Word, 1989)commentary
  • Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 3, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2011), 138-150commentary

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

All attested forms of רֶחֶם

m s absolute

רֶחֶם, רָחֶם

Gen 20:18, Exo 13:2, Exo 13:12, Exo 13:15, Exo 34:19, Num 3:12, Num 8:16, Num 18:15

m s construct

רַחְמָהּ, רַחְמָהֿ

Gen 29:31, Gen 30:22, 1Sa 1:5, 1Sa 1:6, Jer 20:17

m s construct

רֶחֶם

Num 12:12, Psa 110:3