to move with a low, light, gliding motion: to creep, crawl, glide, or steal along
This verb names a manner of motion rather than a kind of animal. At its heart it pictures low, light, gliding movement close to a surface. Because that motion is most obvious in small ground creatures, most translations settle on "creep" or "crawl," but the very same word describes creatures gliding through the sea and even predators moving through a dark forest.
In the opening chapters of the Bible it does careful sorting work. It is the standard term for the small, low creatures of the land (רֶמֶשׂ) that live alongside livestock and wild beasts, and it pairs naturally with a companion verb for swarming or teeming (שָׁרַץ). Genesis then stretches it: in the Flood account "everything that creeps on the earth" grows into a summary for all animal life, and afterward "every moving thing that lives" becomes food.
Poets and prophets stretch it further still. The Psalms use it for everything that moves in the seas, and in one striking line for wild animals that prowl the forest at night. The single thread through all of these is not biology but movement: whatever glides, creeps, teems, or steals along low to its surroundings.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the verb's primary sense is the narrow one of small creatures crawling on the ground, from which the wider uses are derived, or a general sense of low gliding motion that Priestly texts later narrowed into a category of small crawlers.
- majorityA general sense of low, gliding motion is primary, and the use for small ground creatures is a later Priestly specialization.; B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPS Torah Commentary, 1989); H.-J. Fabry, "רמשׂ," in TDOT vol. 13 (Eerdmans, 2004); R. Wakely, "רמשׂ," in NIDOTTE vol. 3 (Zondervan, 1997); F.-L. Hossfeld and E. Zenger, Psalms 3 (Hermeneia, 2011)
- minorityThe narrow sense of small creatures crawling on the ground is primary, and the broader uses are secondary extensions.; BDB, s.v. רָמַשׂ; J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16 (Anchor Bible 3, 1991)