StrongerBible

resheph

רֶשֶׁף

HebrewH7565“flame, spark, ...”

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Deu 32:24Job 5:7Psa 76:3(4)Psa 78:48Sng 8:6 (2×)Hab 3:5
Word studyResearch-gradeREH-shefnoun

What resheph means

1

a burning flash: a flame, spark, or fiery bolt that flares up or flies through the air

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This word never names a steady, household fire. It names fire in motion: the flare, the flying spark, the bolt that leaves one place and strikes another. Hebrew already has an ordinary word for fire (אֵשׁ) and one for a flame (לֶהָבָה); this one adds speed and impact, and it belongs only to poetry.

That is why one Hebrew word can cover pictures English keeps apart:

  • the sparks that shoot upward off a burning heap
  • the flashing bolts of arrows loosed from a bow
  • the fire that falls out of a hailstorm onto livestock
  • the blaze of a love that cannot be put out

Each of those is fire that travels and hits something, so a single word fits them all while English needs four.

The word is also very old, and its history explains its second meaning. Long before Israel existed, this exact form was the name of a Canaanite god of war, arrows, and plague, worshipped from Syria to Egypt to Cyprus. In the Bible that god is gone. What survives is his weaponry, turned into poetic vocabulary for a streak of fire, with the deadly-sickness meaning below as the other half of the inheritance.

Nuances

1aa blazing flame: fire at full heat, the kind that consumes whatever it touches
Sng 8:6 (2×)
Sng 8:6

Whether the plural in Song of Songs 8:6 invokes the god Resheph as a third member of a death-triad with Death and Sheol, or is simply the ordinary word for flashes of fire.

  • majorityOrdinary poetic vocabulary for flashes or sparks of fire; the faded god lends the line color but is not being called upon.; J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs, OTL (2005); Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs, Continental Commentary (1994), 271-279; Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (1985), 169-171; Aren M. Wilson-Wright, "Love Conquers All: Song of Songs 8:6b-7a as a Reflex of the Northwest Semitic Combat Myth," JBL 134 (2015), 333-345
  • minorityA live mythological figure, so that love is set against Death, Sheol, and Resheph together as a triad of hostile powers.; Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible 7C (1977), 210-229, 668-678; W. F. Albright, "Archaic Survivals in the Text of Canticles," in Hebrew and Semitic Studies Presented to Godfrey Rolles Driver (1963)
1ba spark: the bit of fire thrown up off a burning fire
Job 5:7
Job 5:7

What the "sons of resheph" in Job 5:7 are: sparks, plague-agents, or birds of prey.

  • majoritySparks that fly upward off a fire, the reading behind most modern translations, with the old plague-god acknowledged only as background.; Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job, OTL (1985); John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT (1988); BDB, s.v. רֶשֶׁף (958); HALOT 3:1297-98, s.v. רֶשֶׁף
  • minorityPlague-agents, the "sons of Pestilence", that rise up from the underworld against people.; David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, WBC 17 (1989), 107; Marvin H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15, 3rd ed. (1973), 42-43
  • minorityBirds of prey that fly high, the reading of the ancient Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions, supported by an inscriptional epithet naming the god as lord of birds or stags.; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. רשף
1ca flashing arrow: the shaft of a bow seen as a streak of fire in flight
Psa 76:3(4)
1da fiery bolt from the sky: the fire that comes down in a storm
Psa 78:48
2

burning plague: a lethal, fever-like scourge that consumes a person, sent as God's judgment

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested

In two very old poems the word is not fire in the sky but fire in the body. People are wasted by hunger and eaten up by this, and the word stands next to other names for deadly affliction: bitter destruction (קֶטֶב) in one poem, pestilence (דֶּבֶר) in the other. English versions reach for "plague", "pestilence", "burning fever", or "burning heat", and every one of those is trying to hold together two ideas the Hebrew keeps in a single word: something that burns, and something that kills by sickness.

What sets these two passages apart is that the scourge behaves like somebody. In Habakkuk it walks: pestilence goes out ahead of God and this comes out at his feet, like two officers in a marching column. Most scholars hear in that the memory of the old Canaanite plague-god, now demoted to a servant in God's train, or in the Song of Moses reforged into one of God's own arrows.

How much of that old figure a reader should hear is genuinely argued, and the ancient translators already felt the problem. The Greek version simply left the word out of Habakkuk, and Jerome's Latin turned it into "the devil". Others keep the translation flat, at "plague", and see only vivid poetry.

Nuances

2aa burning, wasting sickness sent against people as a judgment
Deu 32:24
2ba destroying power that marches with God when he comes in judgment
Hab 3:5

Disputed

Whether the word in Deuteronomy 32:24 and Habakkuk 3:5 still names a personal destroying figure in God's retinue, or simply means a burning plague.

  • majorityA Canaanite plague-god reduced in these poems to a personified attendant or a weapon in God's hand, no longer a rival power.; M. J. Mulder, "רֶשֶׁף," TDOT 14:10-16; Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, JPS Torah Commentary (1996), 309, 510-513; Theodore Hiebert, God of My Victory: The Ancient Hymn in Habakkuk 3, HSM 38 (1986), 93-95; Francis I. Andersen, Habakkuk, Anchor Bible 25 (2001), 300-307
  • minorityThe word here means only a burning fever or pestilence; any personification belongs to the poetry rather than to a surviving figure.; O. Palmer Robertson, The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, NICOT (1990); Judit M. Blair, De-Demonising the Old Testament (Mohr Siebeck, 2009); Paul Sanders, The Provenance of Deuteronomy 32 (Brill, 1996)
  • minorityA live destroying spirit, one of a class of harmful powers rather than a faded god.; André Caquot, "Sur quelques démons de l'Ancien Testament," Semitica 6 (1956)

What scholars say about resheph

The lexica agree on the semantic range but weight it differently. BDB (958) splits the entry into "flame, fire-bolt" (Job 5:7; Ps 78:48; Ps 76:4 MT; Song 8:6) and "fire-bolt of YHWH bringing pestilence and death" (Deut 32:24, parallel to קֶטֶב; Hab 3:5, parallel to דֶּבֶר), deriving the noun from a root meaning to burn. HALOT (3:1297-98) inverts the priority: the biblical noun is a demythologized reflex of the Northwest Semitic god Rašap/Rešep, attested from third-millennium Ebla through Ugarit, New Kingdom Egypt, Phoenician and Aramaic inscriptions, and the Cypriot bilinguals that equate ršp mkl with Apollo Amyklos; it partitions the senses as flame/spark/lightning, burning fever and pestilence (Deut 32:24), and demythologized plague-figure (Hab 3:5). Gesenius18 (Meyer/Donner 2013) consolidates under "Flamme, Feuer, Blitz" and "Fieberglut, Seuche, Pest"; DCH adds Qumran and Ben Sira attestations and flags the "birds of prey" gloss for בני רשף on the strength of the Karatepe epithet ršp ṣprm. The two standard theological treatments, Mulder (TDOT 14:10-16) and Xella (DDD2 700-703), argue that the theonym is etymologically primary and the sense "flame" secondary; Mulder reads Deut 32:24 as the point where Resheph becomes an arrow in YHWH's hand, and Song 8:6 as mythological metonymy. Münnich (2013, 8-9) rejects the fire-etymology because the relevant verb surfaces only in Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic sources from the sixth century BCE, roughly two millennia after Ebla; Kahn's review (BiOr 75, 2018, 101-104) rejects the competing derivation from Akkadian rašābu on phonological grounds; Xella concedes that all the proposed etymologies may rest on circular reasoning. For Hab 3:5, Hiebert (HSM 38) defends an archaic date with Deber and Resheph as attendant deities in the divine-warrior train (compare Šullaṭ and Ḫaniš flanking Adad in Gilgamesh XI), Andersen (AB 25) proposes a symmetrical four-attendant escort, Roberts (OTL) and Floyd (FOTL) read literary personification only, and Robertson (NICOT) keeps the sense at "pestilence"; the LXX omits רשף altogether and Jerome renders it diabolus. On Deut 32:24, Tigay (JPS), Christensen (WBC 6B) and Nelson (OTL) read demoted plague-deities serving as YHWH's arrows (compare v. 23), citing b. Berakhot 5a for the rabbinic reading; Sanders (1996) resists a strong demonological reading, and Blair (2009) denies live demonology across the whole corpus. The Psalms commentators (Kraus, Hossfeld-Zenger, Tate, Goldingay) are unanimous that Ps 76:4 MT רשפי־קשת is fixed martial diction for flashing arrows, matching the Ugaritic epithet bʿl ḥẓ and the Kition inscription ršp ḥṣ, and that Ps 78:48 means fiery bolts in parallel with hail. Job 5:7 remains a crux: Pope (AB) translates "Resheph's sons wing high", Clines (WBC 17, 107) "sons of Pestilence", while Habel (OTL), Hartley (NICOT), Dhorme and Gordis prefer "sparks" while acknowledging the mythological background, and the LXX, Peshitta and Vulgate all read birds. At Song 8:6 the maximalist mythological reading of Albright and Pope is now a minority: Exum (OTL), Fox, Keel, Longman, Murphy and others treat רשפיה as a demythologized common noun for flashes, and Wilson-Wright (JBL 134, 2015, 333-345) grants that כי־עזה כמות אהבה reflects an inherited Northwest Semitic combat-myth formula while denying a live theonym, on the ground that the vocalization is rišp- rather than rašp-.

Where scholars disagree about resheph

Where the word came from: a verb meaning to burn, from which the Canaanite god was then named, or the god's name, from which the ordinary senses later grew.

  • contestedThe noun goes back to a Semitic root meaning to blaze or burn, and the deity was named from it.; BDB, s.v. רֶשֶׁף (958); Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18th ed. (2013), s.v. רשף; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. רשף
  • contestedThe god's name came first, and the ordinary senses of flame and plague developed later inside Hebrew and Aramaic as the god faded from belief.; HALOT 3:1297-98, s.v. רֶשֶׁף; M. J. Mulder, "רֶשֶׁף," TDOT 14:10-16; Paolo Xella, "Resheph," in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed. (1999), 700-703
  • minorityNeither derivation is secure: the verb meaning to burn appears only in Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic sources from the sixth century BCE, some two thousand years after the god's earliest attestation, and the proposed etymologies may all rest on circular reasoning.; Maciej M. Münnich, The God Resheph in the Ancient Near East (Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 8-9; Paolo Xella, "Resheph," in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed. (1999), 700
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

  • BDB, s.v. רֶשֶׁף (958)lexicon
  • HALOT 3:1297-98, s.v. רֶשֶׁףlexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18th ed., ed. Meyer and Donner (2013), s.v. רשףlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. רשףlexicon
  • M. J. Mulder, "רֶשֶׁף," TDOT 14:10-16theological dictionary
  • Paolo Xella, "Resheph," in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed. (1999), 700-703reference work
  • Maciej M. Münnich, The God Resheph in the Ancient Near East (Mohr Siebeck, 2013)monograph
  • Daniel Kahn, review of Münnich, The God Resheph in the Ancient Near East, Bibliotheca Orientalis 75 (2018), 101-104journal article
  • Izak Cornelius, The Iconography of the Canaanite Gods Reshef and Baʿal, OBO 140 (1994)monograph
  • Edouard Lipiński, Resheph: A Syro-Canaanite Deity, OLA 181 (2009)monograph
  • John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (2000), 197-208monograph
  • Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, JPS Torah Commentary (1996), 309, 510-513commentary
  • Duane L. Christensen, Deuteronomy 21:10-34:12, WBC 6B (2002)commentary
  • Richard D. Nelson, Deuteronomy, OTL (2002)commentary
  • Paul Sanders, The Provenance of Deuteronomy 32 (Brill, 1996)monograph
  • Judit M. Blair, De-Demonising the Old Testament (Mohr Siebeck, 2009)monograph
  • André Caquot, "Sur quelques démons de l'Ancien Testament," Semitica 6 (1956)journal article
  • Theodore Hiebert, God of My Victory: The Ancient Hymn in Habakkuk 3, HSM 38 (1986), 93-95monograph
  • Francis I. Andersen, Habakkuk, Anchor Bible 25 (2001), 300-307commentary
  • J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, OTL (1991)commentary
  • O. Palmer Robertson, The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, NICOT (1990)commentary
  • Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 51-100, WBC 20 (1990)commentary
  • Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2, Hermeneia (2005)commentary
  • John Goldingay, Psalms 42-89, BCOTWP (2007)commentary
  • Marvin H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15, 3rd ed. (1973), 42-43commentary
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, WBC 17 (1989), 107commentary
  • Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job, OTL (1985)commentary
  • John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT (1988)commentary
  • Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible 7C (1977), 210-229, 668-678commentary
  • W. F. Albright, "Archaic Survivals in the Text of Canticles," in Hebrew and Semitic Studies Presented to Godfrey Rolles Driver (1963)essay
  • J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs, OTL (2005)commentary
  • Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs, Continental Commentary (1994), 271-279commentary
  • Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (1985), 169-171monograph
  • Aren M. Wilson-Wright, "Love Conquers All: Song of Songs 8:6b-7a as a Reflex of the Northwest Semitic Combat Myth," JBL 134 (2015), 333-345journal article

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

All attested forms of רֶשֶׁף

m s absolute

רֶשֶׁף

Deu 32:24, Job 5:7, Hab 3:5

m p construct

רִשְׁפֵי, רִשְׁפֵּי

Psa 76:3, Sng 8:6

m p absolute

רְשָׁפִים

Psa 78:48

m p construct

רְשָׁפֶיהָ

Sng 8:6