shavar

• The ordinary word for snapping or shattering a solid object into pieces: stone tablets, idols, gates, weapons, and vessels are all broken with this verb.Exo 32:19Exo 34:13Psa 46:9
• Used precisely of breaking bones, where the point is the clean fracture of something rigid, even stated as a rule that a bone must not be broken.Exo 12:46Num 9:12Psa 34:20

• Both describe a reed giving way, the image of fragile, failing support: leaning on Egypt is like leaning on a stalk that crushes (H7533) or breaks (H7665) under the hand.Isa 42:3
• Both can name the final undoing of a person or thing, set side by side as the moment something is shattered beyond repair.Ecc 12:6Isa 42:4

• Pictures crushing by pressing or grinding down, as a heavy weight bears on something soft until it gives way; Abimelech's millstone crushed his skull rather than cleanly snapping it.Jdg 9:53
• By far its commonest use is figurative: to oppress and grind down the weak, the poor, and the needy, squeezing the life out of people who cannot resist.Amo 4:1Deu 28:331Sa 12:3

• Shatters hard, brittle objects into pieces: tablets of stone, vessels of clay, idols, and bars or gates.Exo 32:19Lev 6:28Deu 7:5Psa 107:16
• Snaps bones in two, the picture of a clean physical fracture.Exo 12:46Num 9:12Job 31:22
• Used widely across ordinary life: ships wrecked, a yoke or staff broken, trees splintered, the routine breaking of things.Psa 48:7Lev 26:13Psa 29:5

• Both name the violent destruction of a person or people, picturing the afflicted broken under oppression.Psa 94:5Psa 34:18
• Both can describe being broken in heart or spirit, the inner self crushed low by suffering.Isa 57:15Psa 34:18

• Targets the lowly and afflicted, grinding them down rather than smashing an object: its victims are the poor, the needy, and the humble.Psa 72:4Psa 94:5Pro 22:22Isa 3:15
• Reaches inward to a crushed spirit or contrite heart, naming an inner condition of being beaten low, not merely a physical break.Psa 143:3Isa 57:15
• Can carry the sense of being pulverized to dust or worn away, the fate of something fragile and short-lived.Job 4:19Job 22:9

• Used for the literal snapping or shattering of physical objects: tablets, vessels, weapons, bars, and the like.Exo 32:19Lev 6:28Deu 9:17Psa 46:9
• Used for breaking parts of the body and other solid living things, down to bones and trees.Num 9:12Job 31:22Psa 29:5

• Both can describe God shattering a hostile force, where annulling and physically crushing it converge in one poetic act.Psa 74:13

• Used for annulling a covenant or agreement: voiding the bond itself rather than damaging any physical thing.Gen 17:14Lev 26:15Deu 31:16Jer 11:10Zec 11:10
• Used for frustrating a plan, counsel, or purpose so that it comes to nothing.Job 5:12Isa 8:10Isa 14:27Pro 15:22

• A clean snap or fracture, a solid thing broken apart in pieces rather than pounded to bits, as a bone breaks.Exo 12:46Psa 34:20Job 31:22
• Smashing crafted objects so they shatter: stone tablets, pottery, altars, sacred pillars.Exo 34:1Lev 11:33Exo 23:24
• Used widely as a figure for breaking power, strength, or spirit, from snapped weapons and yokes to a crushed heart.Psa 37:17Lev 26:13Psa 51:17

• Both describe the destruction of forbidden cult objects, the violent breaking of idols and ritual gear into useless pieces.2Ki 18:4
• Both can name a vessel coming apart, though they picture it differently: pottery shattering into shards.Isa 30:14

• Beating something down by repeated blows until it is reduced to fragments or powder, the hammering kind of breaking rather than a single snap.Deu 9:21Mic 1:7
• Hammering metal from one shape into another, the image behind turning swords into plowshares (and, reversed, plowshares into swords).Isa 2:4Mic 4:3Jol 3:10
• Beating down an army or a people, crushing them in battle so they are driven back and scattered.Num 14:45Deu 1:44Psa 89:23

• The ordinary all-purpose word for breaking any object, from snapping a bone to smashing the stone tablets to toppling idols and altars.Exo 32:192Ki 18:4
• Carries a deep figurative range this pair's partner never reaches: a broken heart, a crushed spirit, a broken arm standing for shattered power, and a broken yoke standing for liberation.Psa 34:18Psa 51:17Ezk 30:21Lev 26:13

• Both smash a clay vessel to pieces as an image of sudden, irreparable ruin.Jer 22:28Jer 48:12Jer 19:11
• Both depict God shattering hostile nations and their power to pieces.Jer 51:20Dan 12:7Dan 8:22Jer 50:23

• Pictures hurling something down so it smashes apart on impact, the violent act of dashing a thing against the ground or a rock.Psa 2:9Psa 137:9
• Widens from smashing an object to scattering a whole population, driving people apart and spreading them far and wide.Gen 9:191Sa 13:11Isa 33:3

• Describes literal, physical breaking of solid objects: smashing stone tablets, idols, and altars to pieces.Exo 32:19Exo 23:242Ki 18:4
• Used for snapping bones and bars, breaking a yoke off the neck, and wrecking ships, the concrete fracturing of a hard thing.Exo 12:46Lev 26:13Psa 48:7

• Both turn on the image of being broken, and in a single prayer for judgment they stand side by side: the enemy is to be shattered in spirit and broken in fact.Jer 17:18

• Names an inner collapse of nerve, the breaking of a person's courage or morale before an enemy or before God: to be dismayed, terrified, unmanned.Jos 1:91Sa 17:11Jer 1:17
• Pairs almost as a fixed formula with the command not to fear, where it is the loss of resolve God tells his people to refuse.Deu 1:21Deu 31:8Jos 8:1

• It is the everyday word for smashing solid things: stone tablets thrown down at the mountain, a clay pot that has to be broken because it is unclean, cedars snapped by God's voice, ships wrecked at sea.Exo 32:19Lev 11:33Psa 29:5Psa 48:7
• It is the word used of bones and limbs: the Passover lamb whose bones must not be broken, the protected sufferer who keeps every bone whole, the ruler's arm snapped so he cannot hold a sword.Exo 12:46Psa 34:20Ezk 30:21
• It stretches into figures of speech that have nothing to do with fear: a yoke snapped off the neck of slaves, the food supply cut off so bread runs short, and the crushed inner life that God binds up.Lev 26:13Lev 26:26Psa 147:3

• Both describe a warrior's weapon put out of action, snapped so it cannot be used again: the bows of the strong are shattered in Hannah's song, and God is the one who breaks the bow on the battlefield.1Sa 2:4Psa 46:9Psa 37:15
• Both are used of a whole army or nation giving way under attack, so that either word can be rendered "broken" of people rather than of things: Egypt's troops turn back in Jeremiah's oracle, and Moab is broken in the next one.Jer 46:5Jer 48:4

• It names dread itself, the fear a creature carries or conspicuously lacks: the terror of humans that God lays on every animal after the flood, and the sea beast made with no fear in it at all. This is a state of alarm rather than anything coming apart.Gen 9:2Job 41:33
• It describes the fighters themselves as broken in nerve, so that the picture is soldiers losing heart and falling back in retreat rather than any object being smashed.Jer 46:5

• This is the everyday, ordinary Hebrew word for breaking, used freely of common physical objects in plain prose: smashing tablets, idols, gates, bars, bones, jars, and yokes.Exo 32:19Jer 19:11
• It readily extends to crushing or shattering a person, a nation, or a power, and is the standard verb for breaking a yoke off the neck or snapping a bow, so it carries the normal weight of force and defeat.Lev 26:13Psa 46:9

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• Its breaking sense is rare and poetic: only in elevated, often violent or judgment poetry does the word mean smash or shatter, and even then it pictures dashing something to pieces rather than the plain snapping of an object.Psa 2:9Isa 24:19
• Most of the time it does not mean break at all but be bad, go wrong, or do harm. Its center of gravity is moral and emotional, not physical, which is the opposite of an ordinary word for breaking.Gen 38:10Exo 5:22

• It is the ordinary word for smashing a solid object so that it is ruined and useless: stone tablets flung down at the foot of the mountain, sacred pillars pulled apart, a clay pot that has to be destroyed.Exo 32:19Deu 7:5Lev 11:33
• It carries over to people, where what gets broken is strength, pride, or the will to keep going: a broken heart, the arm of a violent man, the stubborn pride of a nation.Psa 34:18Psa 10:15Lev 26:19
• It is also the word for snapping the equipment of power so that it can no longer be used, which is how a rescue gets described: the bars of a slave yoke, the war bow of the nations.Lev 26:13Psa 46:9
• It is an everyday word that turns up all across the Hebrew Bible, in story, in law, and in poetry alike, where its counterpart is confined to a handful of poetic lines about joy.Gen 19:9Lev 6:28Job 24:20

• Both can name the violent breaking of bones in a body. Micah pictures rulers breaking the bones of their own people, and the commoner word covers a bone left unbroken and an arm snapped at the socket.Mic 3:3Psa 34:20Job 31:22
• English Bibles reach for the same verb for both, so each is regularly rendered "break". That shared rendering hides the difference: one breaks a thing apart, the other breaks into sound.Isa 55:12Exo 32:19

• In seven of its eight appearances the breaking is a breaking out of sound rather than damage: joy bursting into a shout or a song. Nothing is harmed, and what comes out is noise, not pieces.Psa 98:4Isa 52:9Isa 54:1
• Its subjects are usually things that could never literally break apart, and they are summoned to burst out anyway: the whole earth, the mountains and hills, the trees of the forest.Isa 14:7Isa 44:23Isa 55:12
• Almost every time, it stands next to a word for a ringing cry, so the object of the breaking is the cry itself. It is a poet's word for the moment relief becomes audible, not a general word for breaking something.Isa 49:13Isa 54:1Psa 98:4