רָתַח
to boil
‘to boil’ 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 Hiphil verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H7570 appears in the Book of Job — 2 distinct verses. 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.
Job
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.
The Hebrew verb רתח centers on the idea of “to boil.” It is rare — just 3 verses in the entire Hebrew Bible. Job dominates its distribution — 2 of 3 verses. Its earliest occurrence is Job 30:27. The verb spans 3 stems, from Piel to Pual. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7570 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
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 3 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 67%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 33%
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: Boil 1×, Boiled 1×, Under it and make it boil 1×
- American Standard Version: Boil 1×, Is troubled 1×, Under the caldron 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: I am churning 1×, Seethe 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Are boiled 1×, Boil 1×, Bring it to a 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7570 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7570 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7570 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7570 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each. This entry also uses Pual (the passive of Piel).
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.
Piel
- Imv. ms. רַתַּח causat. Ez 24:5 cause to boil, bring to boiling, c. acc. rei. e.g. Ezekiel 24:5
Pual
- Pf. 3 pl. רֻתְּחוּ Jb 30:27 my bowels have been made to boil without quiet (fig. of violent emotion). e.g. Job 30:27
Hiphil
- Impf. 3 ms. יַרְתִּיחַ כַּסִּיר מְצוּלָה Jb 41:23 he (the crocod.) maketh the depth boil like the pot. e.g. Job 41:23
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
vb. boil (NH id.; Ecclus 43:3 Hiph. make hot; Aramaic רְתַח, ܪܬܰܚ boil);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
רָתַח
- to bubble, boil, be hot.—Part. רוֹתֵחַ; f. רוֹתַחַת; pl. רוֹתְחִים, רוֹתְחִין; רוֹתְחוֹת. [Tradit. pronunc. רוּתָח adj.] Y. Sot. IX, 24ᵃ חלב ר׳ milk fresh from the goat. Y. Pes. VII, beg. 34ᵃ והרי הוא ר׳ ומרתיח but is not the iron spit hot and does is not impart heat (to the lamb on it)? Bab. Pes. 76ᵃ סולת ר׳ heated flour. Ib. 94ᵇ כל העולם כולו ר׳ וכ׳ (in the summer) the whole world is hot, and the springs are cold; כל … מעיינות ר׳ (in the winter) the whole world is cold, and the springs are hot; a. fr.—Esp. רוֹתְחִין hot water. Snh. 108ᵇ; R. Hash. 12ᵃ, v. קִלְקֵל. Y. Ber. II, 5ᵇ bot., v. כָּוָה. Deut. R. s. 3 כשתראה אותי נותן ר׳ וכ׳ when thou seest me put hot water (to the wine), put thou cold water in &c., i.e. when I am angry, appease thou me &c.; a. fr.
- 1. to cause bubbling, foaming. B. Mets. 61ᵇ ובמשורה שלא יַרְתִּיחַ ‘and in liquid measure’ (Lev. XIX, 35) one is warned that one must not make the liquid foam; B. Bath. 89ᵇ; Tosef. ib. V, 5 אין … לא להַרְתִּיחַ … ולא להקפיצה (Var. להרתיע) the storekeeper is not permitted to make the liquid bubble in the measure, or to make it bound. e.g. Leviticus 19:35
- 2. to heat. Tosef. Yoma I, 20 עששיות … היו מַרְתִּיחִין וכ׳ they heated &c.; (Yoma 34ᵇ מחמין); v. עֲשָׁשִׁית. Y. B. Bath. II, beg. 13ᵇ הסלעים מרתיחין the rocks give out heat; Y. Sabb. IV, 6ᵇ bot. Cant. R. to II, 17 עד שאַרְתִּיחַ היום until I shall make the day hot (for Israel’s enemies); a. fr.
- 3. to grow hot. Tosef. Pes. V, 8 אינו מַרְתִּיחַ does not get hot, v. שָׂרַף I. Gen. R. s. 67 התחילו … מרתיחים (not מרתיתים) the walls of the house began to be hot; Yalk. ib. 115. Esth. R. to I, 1 (playon אר̇ת̇ח̇ש̇ש̇ת̇א) שהיה מר̇ת̇יח̇ ות̇ש̇ he used to be hot (angry), and weaken (relent) again. Cant. R. to IV, 5 two families אחת מיקרת ואחת מַרְתַּחַת one of which was cold-blooded, and the other hot-blooded; a. e.
- to heat, boil. [Yalk. Gen. 27 רי׳ עליו, v. רָתָה]—Part. pass. מְרוּתָּח, pl. מְרוּתָּחִין. Lev. R. s. 14 מיעיה של אשה מר׳ וכ׳ the inner parts of woman are hot &c. Sabb. III, 5; Pes. 40ᵇ; a. e.
רְתַח
- , to boil, be hot.—Part. pass. רָתִיחַ; pl. רְתִיחִין. Targ. Y. I Gen. L, 1 חמרין רתי׳ (some ed. רָתְחִין). Targ. Job XXIV, 24 Ms.—Y. Pes. III, 30ᵃ top דלא יִרְתְּחָן ויחמען that they may not get hot and ferment. Ber. 62ᵇ עד דרַתְחָא וכ׳, v. קִדְרָא; a. e.—רָתְחִין hot water. Ex. R. s. 45 מזגין ר׳ (not רתחים), v. מְזַג; Midr. Till. to Ps. XXV, 4.—Trnsf. to be excited, wroth. Targ. Ps. XXXIX, 4. Targ. Y. Deut. XIX, 6. Targ. Koh. VII, 9; a. fr.—Ber. 7ᵃ רגע ר׳ for a moment the Lord is wroth. Ib. 29ᵇ לא תִרְתַּח ולא תחטי be not excited, and thou shalt not sin. Zeb. 30ᵇ hot. אם כן מִרְתַּח ר׳ if so, he might get angry; a. e.
- to boil; to heat, excite, arouse the anger of. Targ. Job XLI, 23 מַרְתַּח (some ed. מְרַתַּח Pa.). Targ. Koh. l. c. מסרב ומַרְתַּח (ed. Vien. ומִרְ׳, corr. acc.; some ed. ומְרַתַּח).—[Targ. Job IV, 10 מרתיחין, v. רְתַת.]—Pes. 76ᵃ רוטב מַרְתַּח ליה וכ׳ (or מְרַתַּח) the juice (dripping) heats the clay (of the oven) &c. Taan. 4ᵃ ההוא … דקא מַרְתְּחָא ליה (or מְרַתְּחָא) if a student gets angry, it is the (zeal for) the Law that excites him; a. e.—Part. pass. Pa. מְרַתַּח; f. מְרַתְּחָא. Targ. Y. I Lev. VI, 14 מְרֻתְּחָא (Hebraism; h. text מרבכת).—Gitt. 57ᵇ אשכחיה … מר׳ וסליק he found the blood of Zechariah bubbling and coming up; (Snh. 96ᵇ דהוה קא רתח).
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 3 distinct written forms H7570 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| יַרְתִּ֣יחַ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Job 41:31 | 1 |
| רַתַּ֣ח | Verb, Piel, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Ezekiel 24:5 | 1 |
| רֻתְּח֥וּ | Verb, Pual, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Job 30:27 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7570, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 2 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 3 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.
