The word simply names the body's hunger, the pang of needing food and not having it. It ranges from the passing hunger of a thief who steals to fill his stomach (Proverbs 6:30) to the deep hunger of a famine-struck land (Genesis 41:55), but it always points to the same thing: an empty stomach and the weakness that comes with it, as when a worker "is hungry, and his strength fails" (Isaiah 44:12).
In two places the word describes not feeling hunger but inflicting or permitting it, when someone lets or makes another go hungry. God let Israel hunger in the wilderness to teach them to depend on him (Deuteronomy 8:3), and he promises never to let a good person starve (Proverbs 10:3). The hunger itself is the same; what changes is that someone else allows it or holds it back.
Scripture often pairs hunger with thirst (צָמֵא) to picture total bodily need, as in the promise that the redeemed "shall not hunger nor thirst" (Isaiah 49:10). It draws on the same root for the noun that names a famine (רָעָב), and the Greek word that carries the idea into the New Testament (πεινάω) can also mean to hunger for something good.
Nuances
1ato be hungry: to go without food and feel the lack of it
Names the craving for food specifically; the lack is bread, and the relief is something to eat.Gen 41:55Deu 8:3Jer 42:14
Both
Both name a basic bodily want, and the prophets set them side by side as a matched pair for total deprivation: the salvation God gives takes both away, and the judgment he sends imposes both together.Isa 49:10Isa 65:13
Describes hunger God deliberately sends as a test, meant to teach that a person does not live on bread alone but depends on God, rather than a need he simply meets or promises to remove.Deu 8:3
Appears in wisdom sayings where hunger is the deserved outcome of laziness or wrongdoing, set against the safety of those who fear the Lord or work honestly.Psa 34:10Pro 19:15Pro 6:30
Marks hunger brought on by famine, siege, or exile that God sends as judgment on Israel or the nations.Isa 8:21Jer 42:14
Both
Both name plain physical hunger from lack of food in everyday narrative.Gen 41:55Mat 4:2
Both are used to promise a future in which hunger is finally and permanently ended by God.Isa 49:10Rev 7:16
Used for a spiritual craving that God himself satisfies as a blessing, most clearly in the beatitude language of hungering for righteousness and in the promise that the one who comes to Jesus will never hunger again.Mat 5:6Jhn 6:35Luk 6:21
Names hunger Paul lists as a hardship he personally endured for the sake of preaching the gospel, part of an autobiographical catalogue of suffering.1Co 4:11Php 4:12
What scholars say about ra'ev
The root r-ʿ-b denotes the physical experience of hunger. The qal is intransitive, "be hungry, suffer want," attested across wisdom, prophetic, and narrative texts (Gen 41:55;Ps 50:12;Isa 44:12). The hiphil is causative, "let or cause to hunger," used of God permitting Israel's wilderness hunger (Deut 8:3) and refusing to let the righteous starve (Prov 10:3). The same triliteral root yields the frequent noun רָעָב, "famine, hunger," and the adjective רָעֵב, "hungry." Cognates for hunger appear broadly across the Semitic languages. There is no live disagreement in the lexica about the sense.