to stop: to leave off an activity, or to come to an end
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
At its core this word means to stop. Something that was happening, working, or simply existing now does so no longer. The same verb covers both deliberate stopping and stopping that is forced or final, and it leans on context to tell you which.
The gentlest use is leaving off work to rest. This is the verb behind the Sabbath: God finished making the world and then stopped, and Israel is told to stop its labor on the seventh day. Stopping here is not exhaustion but a clean break from work, and it became the root idea behind the noun for the day of rest itself.
The sharper use is stopping that means an end. Joy stops, a city falls silent, the proud cease to exist. Often the verb describes something good or noisy or boastful simply running out, so the line between resting and vanishing is drawn entirely by what is doing the stopping and why.
to put a stop to: to remove, abolish, or do away with something
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
When the action is aimed at someone or something else, the verb turns active and forceful: one party makes another stop. The subject does not simply leave off; it shuts the other thing down, takes it away, or wipes it out.
This is overwhelmingly the language of judgment. God says he will put an end to wild beasts, to the noise of celebration, to false worship, to a kingdom. A person can also do it on a smaller scale, removing leaven from a house, ending a quarrel, taking away strife. The common thread is an agent deliberately bringing some activity or thing to a halt, whether in mercy, in housekeeping, or in wrath.
Bringing an activity to a full stop or putting an end to it: the deliberate cessation of work, not a settling into rest.Gen 2:2Gen 2:3Exo 34:21
Wiping out or banishing something so it no longer exists: removing idolatrous priests, ending wars, making a people disappear.2Ki 23:5Psa 46:9Deu 32:26
The fading away of joy, sound, or ongoing life: a happy noise or steady rhythm that falls silent.Isa 24:8Jer 7:34Gen 8:22
Land lying fallow and keeping its sabbath: the ground ceasing from being worked, a use tied to the cessation idea rather than to repose.Lev 25:2Lev 26:34Lev 26:35
Both
Both words meet at the seventh-day rest: work ceases so that people and animals may rest and be refreshed. One word names the stopping of labor, the other the relief and quiet that follows.Exo 23:12
Settling into a place and coming to rest there, often a positive repose or security rather than the simple stopping of an activity.Gen 8:4Job 3:13Isa 57:2
Being given rest and relief from enemies or hardship: the peace and quiet that follows a struggle.Jos 21:442Sa 7:1Est 9:17
A spirit or presence settling down upon a person, where the word means to alight and remain, not to stop.Num 11:25Num 11:26Isa 11:2
Setting something down or leaving it in a place: a hands-on, transitive act of depositing an object, which has no parallel for the other word.Exo 16:33Num 17:4Lev 16:23
חָדַלleaving off, refraining, or giving up on something, often with a note of failing or holding back, where this word is a plainer stopping
This is the Sabbath word. God stops on the seventh day once his work is done, and Israel is told to stop its own work even in plowing and harvest season.Gen 2:2Exo 31:17Exo 34:21Lev 23:32
The land itself can be the one that stops, lying unworked and taking its own rest while the people are away.Lev 25:2Lev 26:342Ch 36:21
Covers everyday stopping with nothing dreadful about it: building work halted, leaven cleared out of the house, salt never left out of an offering, a quarrel settled by drawing lots.Neh 6:3Exo 12:15Lev 2:13Pro 18:18
Can describe God stopping something as a kindness rather than a punishment: dangerous animals cleared from the land, wars broken off, a taunting enemy hushed.Lev 26:6Ezk 34:25Psa 46:9Psa 8:2
Both
Both announce the end of a city or a kingdom in the prophets, so an English Bible can render either one "cease" or "brought to an end" in the same kind of oracle.Isa 15:1Hos 10:7Isa 17:3Hos 1:4
Both can turn outward, with God as the one who puts an end to a people or to a king's rule rather than the one who simply stops.Hos 4:5Deu 32:26Psa 89:44
Both leave a hush behind them: the noise of a place goes quiet along with the place, which is why translators reach for "brought to silence" for either word.Zep 1:11Ezk 26:13Lam 5:15
Both appear with "not" to insist that something will keep going and never let up, whether it is weeping through the night or the turn of the seasons.Jer 14:17Lam 3:49Gen 8:22
What it names is ruin, not merely stopping: a Moabite town laid waste in a single night, Ashkelon left in silence, a people destroyed for want of knowledge.Isa 15:1Jer 47:5Hos 4:6
Can carry the plain fact of death, saying that people are finished off the way the animals are.Psa 49:12Psa 49:20
Can be a person's cry about himself, and about his whole standing rather than about any task he was doing: Isaiah, seeing the King, says he is finished.Isa 6:5
Lives only in poetry and prophecy, in psalms and oracles and laments, and never turns up in law or in plain narrative.Psa 49:12Hos 10:15Oba 1:5
The plain action of stopping something that was going on, with no holy day in view at all. Things simply come to an end, are made to quit, or are wiped out.Gen 8:22Jos 5:12Job 32:1
Used as a threat of removal, where God or an enemy puts an end to something: destroying it, cutting it off, or making it cease to exist.Isa 13:11Ezk 30:10Hos 1:4
The silencing of glad, ordinary human sounds (the noise of joy, song, music, the millstones grinding) when a land is brought to ruin.Jer 7:34Isa 24:8Ezk 26:13
Both
Both turn on the same idea of stopping work: the verb names the act of resting, and the noun names the day on which that resting happens, so the two appear together when the text defines what the Sabbath is.Lev 23:32
They join in the law of the land's rest, where the ground is to cease from being worked and so keep its own sabbath: the verb supplies the action and the noun supplies the name of that rest.Lev 25:2
In the warning and its fulfillment, the desolate land finally rests because the people did not let it rest in their day: the verb describes the ceasing while the noun names the sabbaths it now enjoys or makes up.Lev 26:342Ch 36:21
The name of the day itself: the seventh day set apart, to be remembered, kept, and hallowed as a fixed institution.Exo 20:8Exo 31:14Deu 5:12
A recurring calendar marker, listed alongside new moons and feasts as one of the regular appointed times of worship and offering.2Ki 4:23Isa 1:13Amo 8:5
The standard by which a people is measured: keeping or profaning the Sabbath becomes the sign of faithfulness or rebellion toward God.Ezk 20:12Neh 13:17Isa 58:13
It covers any kind of stopping at all, sacred or not: the happy noise of the tambourines and the harp goes quiet, God brings wars to a halt across the earth, and the manna simply runs out once Israel starts eating the produce of the land.Isa 24:8Psa 46:9Jos 5:12
It can describe one party putting a stop to something or someone else, which is why it is often rendered "put an end to" rather than "rest": Pharaoh accuses Moses of making the people quit their labor, Josiah abolishes the priests of the high places, and the salt of the covenant is never to be left out of an offering.Exo 5:52Ki 23:5Lev 2:13
Where it does concern the seventh day, it names the act of stopping that someone performs, not the day on which they perform it: God stops on the seventh day from all his work, the people stop on the seventh day, and you stop even when the plowing and the harvest are waiting.Gen 2:2Exo 16:30Exo 34:21
Because it names stopping as an event, it can be denied, and one of the great promises after the flood is that the rhythms of seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, day and night will never stop.Gen 8:22
Both
They belong to the same commanded rest and meet inside one verse: the day of atonement is labeled a time of complete rest, and in the same breath Israel is told to carry that rest out from evening to evening.Lev 23:32
It never names an act of stopping. It names a time that has been declared a rest, so it works as a label the command hangs on the day: the day announced before the manna, the seventh day of the week, the day of atonement.Exo 16:23Lev 23:3Lev 16:31
It states how total the rest is rather than reporting that work stopped, and it does so by being doubled with the ordinary word for sabbath in the phrase rendered "a sabbath of complete rest", set alongside holiness and, for anyone who works, the death penalty.Exo 31:15Exo 35:2
It marks festival days as rest days even when they fall on no particular day of the week, such as the day of trumpet blasts at the start of the seventh month and the opening and closing days of the autumn festival of shelters.Lev 23:24Lev 23:39
It can label a whole year and not merely a day, so it becomes the standing name for the year in which farmland is left unworked and whatever grows on its own is not gathered in.Lev 25:4Lev 25:5
shavat in the other biblical languages
καταπαύωGreek“to keep from”the Greek verb for ceasing and resting that the Greek Old Testament uses for the Sabbath rest this word names
παύωGreek“to cease”the common Greek verb for stopping or leaving off an activity, matching this word's basic sense of coming to a halt
Foregrounds ceasing: it brings an activity to a halt, so it can stop war, joy, song, or strife with no idea of rest or refreshment involved.Psa 46:9Isa 24:8Lam 5:15
Means downing tools on the seventh day and letting the land lie fallow: the specific act of stopping work that keeps the Sabbath.Exo 34:21Lev 25:2
Both
Both can describe rest from labor: the Hebrew word has God ceasing from His work of creation, and the Greek word promises that the faithful rest from their labors.Gen 2:2Rev 14:13
Foregrounds being refreshed and revived: the tired spirit or heart is restored and given new strength, not merely stopped.1Co 16:18Phm 1:7
Names rest as a gift offered to the weary, something one person gives to another who is worn out.Mat 11:28Rev 6:11
What scholars say about shavat
Standard lexica treat the root as a single verb meaning to stop or cease, with the intensive and causative forms carrying the transitive sense of putting an end to or removing. HALOT and BDB both connect it directly to the noun for the Sabbath, the day of stopping work. TDOT and TWOT trace how the same verb covers both the theologically weighty Sabbath rest and the frequent prophetic threat to put an end to people, sound, and worship, and note that the supposed split into two roots reflects the grammatical stems rather than two unrelated words.