to rescue: to get someone out alive from a danger they cannot escape on their own
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is the rescue word of the book of Daniel, and it is found nowhere else in the Bible. Every time it appears, a person is about to be killed: three men are standing at the mouth of a blazing furnace, or Daniel is shut in a pit with lions. It never means improving someone's situation or making them well. It means getting them out alive.
Because of that setting, the word almost always carries a contest over who has the power to save. The same question runs through both stories:
Nebuchadnezzar demands to know which god could rescue anyone from his hand
the three men answer that their God is able to, and will
Darius works until sunset to rescue Daniel and cannot manage it
at dawn the king asks whether Daniel's God has been able to do it
the king's final decree says that this God rescues, and points to Daniel out of the lions' pit as the proof
In that last decree the word stands beside the ordinary Aramaic verb for snatching a person clear of danger (נְצַל), the two together making one statement about what this God does. The rescue word itself was not originally Aramaic: it was borrowed from the language of Babylon, where it meant causing someone to get away. That is a fitting word for stories set in a Babylonian court, where one man's life turns on whether any power outranks the king's.
Nuances
1ato rescue someone from a death already closing in, said of what God can and does do
Dan 3:15Dan 3:17 (2×)Dan 3:28Dan 6:16(17)Dan 6:20(21)Dan 6:27(28) (2×)
1bto work to get someone out of a sentence of death, said of a person trying and failing
raises the question of who is strong enough to do it, since a king's power is the thing being testedDan 3:15Dan 6:20
Both
both mean pulling someone clear of a danger before it destroys themDan 6:27
Only rescue
English uses it for emergencies of any size, including small ones like a cat in a tree, so it does not by itself signal that a life is at stake
“save”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How shezav differs from similar Aramaic words
נְצַלthe other Aramaic verb for rescue, picturing a person being snatched out of a grip; the two are paired in Daniel 6:27, where שֵׁיזִב names the rescue and נְצַל the snatching clear
Names the specific thing a person is pulled out of, and normally comes with that threat attached: the blazing furnace, the king's own hand, the lions.Dan 3:15Dan 3:17Dan 6:20
Carries the running challenge of these stories, whether any god can actually save. The king uses it to taunt the three men, they use it to answer him back, and he shouts it as a question at the mouth of the lion pit.Dan 3:15Dan 3:17Dan 6:20
Reports the rescue as an event in the story rather than as a claim about power: the angel is sent and gets the men out, and the king promises Daniel the same before the stone goes over the pit.Dan 3:28Dan 6:16
Both
Both mean getting someone out of deadly trouble, and the closing decree stacks them in one breath, praising the God who "rescues and delivers".Dan 6:27
Either can describe a person trying to save someone, not only God. In one verse the king first sets his mind on getting Daniel off, then keeps struggling at it until the sun goes down.Dan 6:14
Speaks of rescuing power in the abstract, with no danger and no rescued person spelled out. The royal decree simply states that no other god is able to save in this way, and leaves it there.Dan 3:29
It always names an active rescue out of a death already closing in, and the danger it pulls a person out of is stated: a blazing furnace, a pit of lions.Dan 3:17Dan 3:28Dan 6:27
It raises the question of who is strong enough. Nebuchadnezzar demands to know which god could do it, and Darius asks at dawn whether Daniel's God has been able to. The word for living never asks about anyone's power to act.Dan 3:15Dan 6:20
It can describe an attempt that fails. Darius works until sunset trying to get Daniel out and gets nowhere, so the word names the effort rather than a guaranteed result.Dan 6:14
Both
Both describe a person still alive when death was the real possibility, from opposite ends: one says the life was never taken, the other that the men were brought out of the fire.Dan 5:19Dan 3:28
In both, a person's life sits in the hands of a power greater than their own: a king who decides who goes on living, and a God asked whether he can get a man out of the lions' pit.Dan 5:19Dan 6:20
Five of its six appearances are the fixed court courtesy "O king, live forever", the set way to open a speech to a Babylonian or Persian ruler. The rescue word is never used as a greeting or a good wish.Dan 2:4Dan 3:9Dan 6:6
It can name simply being alive, with no danger and nobody stepping in. The queen mother greets Belshazzar with it at a feast, where nothing is threatening anyone.Dan 5:10
It covers the opposite of killing: a king who lets a man live by choosing not to have him put to death. Nothing is removed from the man's path, a sentence is simply never passed.Dan 5:19
shezav in the other biblical languages
נָצַלHebrew“to rescue”the everyday Hebrew verb for snatching someone out of danger, spread across the whole Old Testament and used of goods as well as people; שֵׁיזִב is its Aramaic counterpart, confined to the life-or-death rescues of Daniel
Every use belongs to two rescue stories in a foreign royal court, so the danger is always one specific execution a king has ordered: a blazing furnace or a den of lions.Dan 3:17Dan 6:16Dan 6:20
Its whole range is that one act of getting a person out alive. It never stretches to carrying off property, to steering someone away from a bad path, or to a worshipper's plea in a song.Dan 3:28Dan 6:27
The one human rescue attempt it reports is a failure: the king works at it until sundown and still cannot get Daniel out, because his own law blocks him.Dan 6:14
It ends up as official praise on a pagan king's lips, written into a public decree that credits Israel's God with the rescue his own order had made necessary.Dan 3:28Dan 6:27
Both
Both picture rescue as snatching someone out of the grip of a stronger party, and both keep the same wording: pulled out of the hand of enemies, out of the hand of a king.Jdg 8:34Psa 18:17Dan 3:17
Both get used in the same taunt, when a conqueror asks whether any god has ever managed to get his people out of a king's hands.2Ki 18:33Isa 36:18Dan 3:15
Both are used of God keeping someone alive when death was already arranged and no human way out was left.Psa 33:19Dan 6:27
It can mean taking things away from someone, not only pulling a person out of danger. Israel carries off Egypt's silver and gold, the people strip off their own jewelry at Sinai, the army carries away plunder for three days, and God warns that he will take back the wool and flax he had given.Exo 3:22Exo 12:36Exo 33:62Ch 20:25Hos 2:9
Ordinary people carry out the rescue, and they succeed at it: a stranger at a well drives off shepherds, a brother talks his brothers out of murder, a shepherd pulls a lamb back from a lion's jaws.Exo 2:19Gen 37:211Sa 17:35Amo 3:12
The danger it pulls someone out of can be moral rather than physical: guilt for bloodshed, a person's own wrongdoing, a ruinous companion, a path that ends badly.Psa 39:8Psa 51:14Pro 2:16Ezk 3:19
It is the everyday word of prayer, the plain cry a worshipper repeats over and over in the Psalms when trouble closes in.Psa 25:20Psa 31:2Psa 70:1Psa 143:9
יָשַׁעHebrew“to save”the broad Hebrew word for saving, taking in victory, room to live, and lasting well-being; שֵׁיזִב is the narrow act of getting one person out of one deadly danger
Always an execution already under way: a furnace heated seven times over, a pit of lions with a stone across the mouth. It is getting one body out alive, never a victory, a verdict, or a nation's future.Dan 3:15Dan 6:16Dan 6:20
Sits mostly in the mouths of foreign kings speaking about the God of Israel, first as a taunt about whether any god can manage it and later as their own public testimony that he did.Dan 3:15Dan 3:28Dan 6:27
Both
Both name someone stepping in to get a person out of trouble they cannot get out of on their own, and in both the rescuer is usually God.Psa 34:6Psa 106:10Dan 3:17Dan 6:27
Both turn the rescue into a test of power, putting the pointed question of whether any other god is actually able to pull it off.Isa 45:20Dan 3:15
Both are used of a human ruler who is begged to rescue someone, or who works at it, and cannot do it.2Ki 6:27Dan 6:14
Covers war and national deliverance: winning the battle, freeing a whole people from those who oppress them, and the human deliverers God raises up to do it. The Aramaic word never touches an army or a nation's fate.Jdg 3:9Jdg 7:71Sa 17:472Sa 8:6
Covers taking up the cause of the wronged and the defenseless: the poor, the widow, the woman with no one to speak for her. This is help against injustice rather than help out of a death trap.Exo 2:17Deu 22:27Psa 72:4Job 5:15
Can name a settled and lasting safety rather than one escape: a people who live secure afterward, saved with a salvation that does not run out.Deu 33:29Isa 45:17Jer 23:6
ῥύομαιGreek“to rescue”the usual Greek verb for dragging someone out of danger, and the closest New Testament counterpart to this Aramaic rescue word
is confined to two scenes of execution in a foreign court, a blazing furnace and a pit of lions, so it always means getting a body out alive and never rescue from sin or from a coming judgmentDan 3:17Dan 6:20
can describe a rescue attempt that fails, a king working until sunset to get his friend out of a sentence he cannot undoDan 6:14
belongs to the language of royal decrees, where a pagan king publishes to his whole empire what this God has just been proven able to doDan 3:28Dan 6:27
Both
both name the same act, someone stronger reaching into a deadly situation and bringing a trapped person out of it alive, and the Greek verb is the closest New Testament counterpart to the Aramaic oneDan 3:172Co 1:10
both are used of a man brought out of the mouth of lions, the one word in the story itself and the other in a later look back at that kind of dangerDan 6:202Ti 4:17
both turn up in the mouths of mockers who dare God to prove he can get his servant out, and in both the taunt is answered on God's own termsDan 3:15Mat 27:43
in both the rescuer who finally counts is God, and the person being rescued is helpless in the hands of enemiesDan 6:27Luk 1:74
reaches past bodily danger to rescue from evil itself and from the grip of sin, which no use of the Aramaic word ever doesMat 6:13Rom 7:24Col 1:13
can name a rescue that is still ahead, out of a judgment that has not yet fallen rather than out of a danger already closing in1Th 1:102Pe 2:9
hardened into a name for the rescuer himself, so the word can stand alone as "the Deliverer"Rom 11:26
describes a settled pattern of repeated help stretching from past danger through present trouble into future safety, not a single crisis2Co 1:102Ti 3:112Ti 4:18
is used of pulling a person out of a corrupt way of life and the company that surrounds him, a moral removal rather than a physical one2Pe 2:7
What scholars say about shezav
The lexica record a single sense for שיזב, to save or rescue, attested in Biblical Aramaic only in Daniel (3:15; 3:17 bis; 3:28; 6:14; 6:16; 6:20; 6:27 bis, on English versification). Morphologically it is a shaphel causative built on the root ʿzb, and it is standardly identified as an Akkadian loan-formation from šūzubu, the Š-stem of ezēbu "to leave, let go", from which the causative value "cause to escape" and hence "rescue" derives; Kaufman lists it among the clearest Akkadian imports into Imperial Aramaic, where it is at home in legal and epistolary texts and in the Elephantine material. HALOT, the Aramaic section of BDB, and Vogt gloss it simply "to save, deliver", with no competing sense recorded and no textual difficulty at any occurrence. Commentators on Daniel observe that the verb is concentrated in the two deliverance narratives, that it is repeatedly paired with נצל in the royal doxologies, and that it carries the book's thematic contest over which power is able to save.
Sources
Koehler, Baumgartner, Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), Aramaic section, s.v. שיזבlexicon
Brown, Driver, Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Biblical Aramaic section, s.v. שיזבlexicon
E. Vogt, A Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic, trans. and rev. J. A. Fitzmyer, s.v. שיזבlexicon
S. A. Kaufman, The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic, Assyriological Studies 19monograph
F. Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaicgrammar