הֲרֵגָה
ha.re.gah
slaughter
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# Analytical Synthesis of הֲרֵגָה (Slaughter) The Hebrew word הֲרֵגָה (ha.re.gah) carries the straightforward meaning of "slaughter," referring to the killing of animals or, by extension, people in a violent manner. With only three occurrences in the biblical text, this is a relatively rare term, suggesting it was used selectively to convey situations involving violent death rather than serving as a common everyday word for killing. The limited frequency of this word's appearance (just three times) indicates that biblical writers drew upon it for specific rhetorical or contextual purposes. Rather than being a standard term for killing generally, הֲרֵגָה appears to emphasize the act of slaughter—a violent, decisive killing—which would have carried particular weight or significance in the contexts where it appeared. The word's specific semantic focus on slaughter distinguishes it from potentially more neutral or varied terms for death that might have been available to Hebrew speakers. Without access to the specific biblical passages where this word appears, we can note only that its narrow distribution in the text suggests deliberate word choice by the authors. The term's meaning remains consistent across its uses: a direct reference to violent killing or slaughter, making it a semantically precise choice for biblical writers who wished to emphasize the brutality or intensity of death.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
3 total occurrences across the text
But you, Yahweh, know me. You see me, and test my heart toward you. Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of slaughter.
Zechariah 11:4Yahweh my God says: “Feed the flock of slaughter.
Zechariah 11:7So I fed the flock of slaughter, especially the oppressed of the flock. I took for myself two staffs. The one I called “Favor”, and the other I called “Union”, and I fed the flock.