רֳאִי
ro.i
sight
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# Understanding רֳאִי (ro'i) — "Sight" The Hebrew word רֳאִי (ro'i) refers to the concrete experience of sight or vision. With only five occurrences in the biblical text, this is a relatively uncommon term that appears to denote the act or faculty of seeing itself, rather than what is seen. The word's limited frequency suggests it was used selectively by biblical authors to emphasize the perceptual experience rather than serving as a standard everyday term for vision. Given its scarcity in the biblical corpus, רֳאִי likely carried particular weight when employed. The rarity of the term indicates that Hebrew had other, more common words for "sight" and "seeing," making this word's use noteworthy for careful readers. Without the specific contexts of all five occurrences, we can conclude that this lemma represents a specialized or emphatic way of referring to the visual experience—possibly distinguished from other vision-related terminology by nuance or literary context that the lexical data alone does not fully reveal.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
5 total occurrences across the text
The eye of him who sees me will see me no more. Your eyes will be on me, but I will not be.
Job 33:21His flesh is so consumed away that it can’t be seen. His bones that were not seen stick out.
Nahum 3:6I will throw abominable filth on you, and make you vile, and will set you a spectacle.
Genesis 16:13She called the name of Yahweh who spoke to her, “You are a God who sees,” for she said, “Have I even stayed alive after seeing him?”
1 Samuel 16:12He sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, with a handsome face and good appearance. Yahweh said, “Arise! Anoint him, for this is he.”