רַ֫עַשׁ
earthquake
‘earthquake’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 14 times (82%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 3 times (18%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 17 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H7494 appears — 16 distinct verses across 8 books. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
1 Kings 2 verses
- 1 Kings 19:11 רַ֔עַשׁ בָ/רַ֖עַשׁ n c ms prep det + n c ms He said, Go forth, and stand on the mountain before Yahweh. Behold, Yahweh passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before Yahweh; but Yahweh was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but Yahweh was not in the earthquake:
- 1 Kings 19:12 הָ/רַ֨עַשׁ֙ ptcl def.art + n c ms and after the earthquake a fire; but Yahweh was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
Job 2 verses
Isaiah 2 verses
- Isaiah 9:5 בְּ/רַ֔עַשׁ prep + n c ms For all the armor of the armed man in the tumult, and the garments rolled in blood, shall be for burning, for fuel of fire.
- Isaiah 29:6 וּ/בְ/רַ֖עַשׁ conj + prep + n c ms She shall be visited of Yahweh of Hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire.
Jeremiah 2 verses
- Jeremiah 10:22 וְ/רַ֥עַשׁ conj + n c ms The voice of news, behold, it comes, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a dwelling-place of jackals.
- Jeremiah 47:3 מֵ/רַ֣עַשׁ prep + n c ms cs At the noise of the stamping of the hoofs of his strong ones, at the rushing of his chariots, at the rumbling of his wheels, the fathers don't look back to their children for feebleness of hands;
Ezekiel 5 verses
- Ezekiel 3:12 רַ֣עַשׁ n c ms Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me the voice of a great rushing, [saying], Blessed be the glory of Yahweh from his place.
- Ezekiel 3:13 רַ֥עַשׁ n c ms [I heard] the noise of the wings of the living creatures as they touched one another, and the noise of the wheels beside them, even the noise of a great rushing.
- Ezekiel 12:18 בְּ/רַ֣עַשׁ prep + n c ms Son of man, eat your bread with quaking, and drink your water with trembling and with fearfulness;
- Ezekiel 37:7 רַ֔עַשׁ n c ms So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and, behold, an earthquake; and the bones came together, bone to its bone.
- Ezekiel 38:19 רַ֣עַשׁ n c ms For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel;
Amos 1 verse
Nahum 1 verse
Zechariah 1 verse
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
רעש (raʻash) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “earthquake.” Not a single-sense word: explore its full sense range. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 16 verses — uncommon. Ezekiel dominates its distribution — 5 of 16 verses. It first appears in 1 Kings 19:11. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7494 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 16
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 16 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,671
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,671 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 16 occurrences in the concordance →
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 16 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 14 verses · 88%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 13%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Earthquake 5×, Rushing 2×, Shaking 2×
- American Standard Version: Earthquake 5×, Rushing 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Earthquake 6×, Rumbling 3×, Trembling 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Earthquake 8×, Commotion 2×, Shaking 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7494 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7494 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7494 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7494 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in the full BDB
What do BDB’s symbols mean?
BDB uses these scholarly abbreviations:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 𝔊 | the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation, LXX) |
| 𝔙 | the Vulgate (the Latin translation) |
| 𝔖 | the Syriac version (the Peshitta) |
| 𝔗 | the Targum (the Aramaic translation) |
| ψ | the Psalms |
| √ | root (the underlying root or stem) |
| ‖ | parallel passage (a synonymous or contrasted parallel) |
| † | the dagger: every passage where the word occurs is cited |
The 3 senses and sub-senses the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency), with BDB’s own verbatim wording and sub-sense lettering. Shown in Hebrew script with BDB’s own scholarly abbreviations. The condensed entry is in the Lexicon Entry tab. See also the Forms in the corpus table below.
- 1. specif. earthquake
- 2. quaking, trembling
- 3. shaking, quivering
Senses from the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs; Oxford 1906 — public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). Full attribution on Sources.
Word origin
רַ֫עַשׁ n.m. quaking, shaking
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from רעש (râʻash) (H7493) — to shake.
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
רָעַשׁ
- (b. h.) to tremble, be in commotion, rage. Ex. R. s. 29 (ref. to Ps. LXVIII, 9) ומה אם … ארץ רָעֲשָׁה וכ׳ if the earth trembled when he gave life to the world, how much more (will it tremble), when he comes to &c. Ib. השמים … רוֹעֲשִׁים heaven and earth tremble. e.g. Psalms 68:9
- to shake, disturb. Gen. R. s. 71 (play on יערשיה I Chr. VIII, 27) בשעה … מַרְעִישׁ עולמו וכ׳ whenever God caused the world to quake, he remembered the merits of the fathers &c. Koh. R. to VII, 1 להַרְעִישׁ, v. גָּעַשׁ. Pesik. R. s. 10 הַרְעִישָׁה, v. אֲפַרְכֶסֶת. Tanḥ. P’kudé 3, v. רַעַשׁ; a. e.—[Yalk. Gen. 132 והרעיש עצמו, read: והרפיש, v. רָפַשׁ.] e.g. 1 Chronicles 8:27
רְעַשׁ
- Targ. II Esth. III, 3 רָעֵישׁ.
רַעַשׁ
- preced.) commotion; earthquake. Ex. R. s. 29 מהיכן הר׳ נעשה for what cause does the earthquake come? Y. Ber. IX, 13ᶜ bot. אין ר׳ אלא וכ׳ raʿash (commotion) means a cessation of government, v. הֶפְסַק; Midr. Till. to Ps. CIV, 29; Midr. Till. to Ps. XVIII, 8 (corr. acc. to ed. Bub.). Tanḥ. P’kude 3 (ref. to I Kings XIX, 11) ואחר הרוח ר׳ … שדומה לר׳ שמרעיש וכ׳ ‘and after the wind an earthquake’, after this world comes the day of death, which is like an earthquake, for it shakes the whole body of man; a. e. e.g. 1 Kings 19:11
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Forms in the corpus
The 13 distinct written forms H7494 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| רַ֣עַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 3:12 | 3 |
| בְּ/רַ֣עַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 12:18 | 2 |
| רַ֔עַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 37:7 | 2 |
| בָ/רַ֖עַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 19:11 | 1 |
| בְּ/רַ֔עַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 9:5 | 1 |
| הָ/רַ֔עַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Zechariah 14:5 | 1 |
| הָ/רַ֨עַשׁ֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 19:12 | 1 |
| הָ/רָֽעַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Amos 1:1 | 1 |
| וְ/רַ֥עַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 10:22 | 1 |
| וּ/בְ/רַ֖עַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 29:6 | 1 |
| לְ/רַ֣עַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Job 41:29 | 1 |
| מֵ/רַ֣עַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Jeremiah 47:3 | 1 |
| רַ֥עַשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 3:13 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 15 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 16 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
