נָזִיד
na.zid
stew
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# נָזִיד (nazid): A Simple Food Substance The Hebrew word *nazid* (H5138) refers to stew—a basic cooked dish made by boiling ingredients together. The word appears six times in the biblical text, indicating it was a recognized culinary item in ancient Hebrew culture, though not a dominant concern of biblical writers. The limited frequency of this term suggests that stew, while present in daily life, was not central to biblical narrative or religious practice. Its six occurrences place it among relatively minor vocabulary items in the Hebrew scriptures. The straightforward definition—stew—indicates a practical, everyday food rather than something ceremonial, symbolic, or particularly noteworthy in religious contexts. The word simply names a common method of food preparation that would have been familiar to ancient audiences. Without additional lexical data on its specific contexts of use, the term appears to function as a straightforward descriptive word for a cooking technique and resulting dish, belonging to the ordinary vocabulary of domestic life rather than the specialized vocabulary of law, ritual, or theology.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
6 total occurrences across the text
‘If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and with his fold touches bread, stew, wine, oil, or any food, will it become holy?’ ” The priests answered, “No.”
Genesis 25:29Jacob boiled stew. Esau came in from the field, and he was famished.
Genesis 25:34Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew. He ate and drank, rose up, and went his way. So Esau despised his birthright.
2 Kings 4:38Elisha came again to Gilgal. There was a famine in the land; and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him; and he said to his servant, “Get the large pot, and boil stew for the sons of the prophets.”
2 Kings 4:39One went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered a lap full of wild gourds from it, and came and cut them up into the pot of stew; for they didn’t recognize them.
2 Kings 4:40So they poured out for the men to eat. As they were eating some of the stew, they cried out, and said, “Man of God, there is death in the pot!” And they could not eat it.