שָׁרַץ
sha.rats
to swarm
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# שָׁרַץ (sha.rats): The Language of Swarming The Hebrew verb שָׁרַץ carries the concrete meaning "to swarm," describing the movement of creatures in large numbers acting together. With fourteen biblical occurrences, this word appears frequently enough to establish its primary semantic domain as the collective, teeming movement characteristic of insects, small animals, or aquatic life. The verb captures a specific visual phenomenon—not individual motion, but the coordinated restlessness of multitudes occupying a space. The word's usage suggests it was particularly important in biblical discourse about the natural world and ritual purity. The fourteen instances indicate consistent application to scenarios involving abundant, moving life forms, whether in narrative descriptions or legal classifications. This frequency pattern implies that ancient Hebrew speakers had a recognized need for vocabulary precisely suited to describing such phenomena—a linguistic marker that swarming motion warranted its own verb rather than relying on more general movement terminology. The existence and distribution of שָׁרַץ across biblical texts reflects how language encodes observation of the physical world. Rather than treating all animal movement identically, biblical Hebrew distinguished the particular phenomenon of creatures moving in dense numbers, suggesting this visual experience held enough cultural or practical significance to merit dedicated lexical expression. The word thus serves as a linguistic window into how ancient speakers categorized and described biological activity in their environment.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
14 total occurrences across the text
Their land swarmed with frogs, even in the rooms of their kings.
Ezekiel 47:9It will happen, that every living creature which swarms, in every place where the rivers come, will live. Then there will be a very great multitude of fish; for these waters have come there, and the waters of the sea will be healed, and everything will live wherever the river comes.
Genesis 1:20God said, “Let the waters abound with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the sky.”
Genesis 1:21God created the large sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. God saw that it was good.
Genesis 7:21All flesh died that moved on the earth, including birds, livestock, animals, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man.
Genesis 8:17Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth.”
Genesis 9:7Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it.”
Exodus 1:7The children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.
Exodus 8:3The river will swarm with frogs, which will go up and come into your house, and into your bedroom, and on your bed, and into the house of your servants, and on your people, and into your ovens, and into your kneading troughs.
Leviticus 11:29“ ‘These are they which are unclean to you among the creeping things that creep on the earth: the weasel, the rat, any kind of great lizard,
Leviticus 11:41“ ‘Every creeping thing that creeps on the earth is an abomination. It shall not be eaten.
Leviticus 11:42Whatever goes on its belly, and whatever goes on all fours, or whatever has many feet, even all creeping things that creep on the earth, them you shall not eat; for they are an abomination.
Leviticus 11:43You shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing that creeps. You shall not make yourselves unclean with them, that you should be defiled by them.
Leviticus 11:46“ ‘This is the law of the animal, and of the bird, and of every living creature that moves in the waters, and of every creature that creeps on the earth,