To live , whether literally or figuratively; causatively, to revive
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חָיָה is a common Hebrew verb meaning to live, remain alive, revive, recover, or preserve life, with the active sense shaped by stem and context. It can describe ordinary survival, renewed strength, deliverance from death, or the causative act of keeping someone alive.
Reader summary
Full entry for חָיָה (H2421) · Open the biblical lexicon
חָיָה is a common Hebrew verb meaning to live, remain alive, revive, recover, or preserve life, with the active sense shaped by stem and context. It can describe ordinary survival, renewed strength, deliverance from death, or the causative act of keeping someone alive.
The BSB source-word alignment has 282 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include lived (21), was (17), live (16), will live (14), . . . (13).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 3:22. Its strongest book concentrations include Genesis (59), Ezekiel (48), Psalms (31), 2 Kings (22).
This entry includes 2 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
חָיָה is a common Hebrew verb meaning to live, remain alive, revive, recover, or preserve life, with the active sense shaped by stem and context. It can describe ordinary survival, renewed strength, deliverance from death, or the causative act of keeping someone alive. The local public lexicon artifact currently counts about 265 occurrences. That breadth requires teachers to distinguish biological life, historical preservation, covenant blessing, and prophetic restoration rather than importing the richest theological sense into every use.
Deuteronomy 8:3 uses the verb to teach that Israel’s life depends on every word from the Lord, not on bread alone. Psalm 119 repeatedly asks God for life so that the psalmist may continue in faithful obedience. Ezekiel 37 uses the verb for the restoration of the dry bones, presenting exiled Israel’s renewal as life granted by God. Habakkuk 2:4 contrasts the proud with the righteous person who will live by faithfulness amid coming judgment. These passages give the verb covenantal and theological weight, but many other occurrences simply concern remaining alive, reviving, or sparing life.
For pastoral use, חָיָה directs attention to God as giver and preserver of creaturely life and to the dependence of his people on his word. The Old Testament can portray restoration with bodily and national concreteness, especially in Ezekiel 37. New Testament resurrection teaching develops within that larger canonical witness, but the Hebrew verb does not mean resurrection or eternal life in every passage. Teachers should move from the immediate use to the canonical connection without collapsing those stages.
Ḥāyāh appears across the full Hebrew canon, from creation narratives through wisdom literature and prophetic vision. Its most theologically concentrated uses appear in Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Ezekiel, where life before God is portrayed as gift sustained by covenant relationship rather than mere biological fact.
But when they told him all the words Joseph had spoken to them, and when he saw the wagons Joseph had sent to carry him back, the spirit of their father Jacob revived.
Jacob’s spirit revives when the report and the wagons confirm that Joseph is alive. The occurrence shows חָיָה in the ordinary but pastorally resonant sense of renewed vitality after grief. It is a direct verbal use and should be distinguished from Genesis 2:7, where the related adjective חַי (H2416) describes the living being.
He humbled you, and in your hunger He gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had known, so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
The purpose clause is explicit: the wilderness hunger teaches Israel that ḥāyāh depends on God's word, not on bread. Jesus cites this directly in his temptation. The verse locates human life in obedient hearing rather than material provision alone.
Deal bountifully with Your servant, that I may live and keep Your word.
The psalmist links living (ḥāyāh) with keeping God's word. Psalm 119 uses this verb repeatedly as a petition: life is what God grants to those who walk in his statutes. Life here is not mere survival but the flourishing that comes from covenant faithfulness.
This is what the Lord God says to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you will come to life.
In the valley of dry bones, God commands the dead to live. The word recalls Genesis 2 deliberately. National restoration after exile is portrayed as resurrection from death. Life is again entirely God's initiative and gift, not Israel's achievement.
Look at the proud one; his soul is not upright—but the righteous will live by faith—
Paul quotes this verse in Romans and Galatians as the scriptural anchor for justification by faith. The prophet is describing the Chaldean aggressor versus the faithful remnant. The righteous one lives — survives judgment, persists through crisis — by faithful trust in God. The verb carries both temporal and eschatological weight in this context.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Hebrew word. Encompasses both physical survival and spiritual vitality; God's exclusive power to revive and restore life.
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 265 lexical occurrence verses.
חָיָה is built from this root:
Resurrection-oriented language of renewal. Hosea 6:1-3
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
חָיָה asks teachers to attend to who gives, preserves, or restores life in a passage. Sometimes the verb refers to ordinary survival or renewed strength. In Deuteronomy 8:3 it teaches dependence on the Lord’s word; in Psalm 119 it becomes a prayer for life ordered toward obedience; in Ezekiel 37 it depicts national restoration with the imagery of dead bones brought to life. The shared verb permits a canonical conversation, but the contexts must not be flattened into one sense.
Preaching from this word should retain the Old Testament’s creaturely concreteness. Life includes bodies sustained, people spared, communities restored, and worshipers enabled to obey. It should also retain the distinction between the verb and related nouns or adjectives: Genesis 2:7 uses H2416 for “living being,” not H2421 as a direct verbal occurrence. That creation text may illuminate the wider life word family, but it must be labeled as related vocabulary.
The New Testament’s resurrection hope coheres with the God who gives life and raises the dead, and Ezekiel’s restoration imagery forms part of that canonical background. Yet חָיָה by itself does not encode Jesus, resurrection, or eternal life. The sermon should establish the Hebrew passage’s claim first, then trace the New Testament connection through explicit canonical testimony.
Ezek.37.5
Ḥāyāh belongs to the root family ḥ-y-y/w, producing the noun ḥayyāh (living creature, Gen 1:20), ḥayyîm (life, plural in Hebrew to express the fullness of living, e. g. Gen. 2. 7), and the phrase ḥay-YHWH (as the Lord lives, a solemn oath form). The causative stem (Hiphil: heheyāh) means to keep alive, to let live, or to give life — used of God preserving Noah, of Rahab's household being spared, of Israel surviving the wilderness.
This causative dimension is theologically significant: God is not merely the source of life at creation but its ongoing sustainer and restorer.
The New Testament’s language of life and resurrection stands within the larger scriptural confession that God gives and preserves life. Jesus cites Deuteronomy 8:3 in the wilderness, affirming human dependence on God’s word. Paul draws on Habakkuk 2:4 while expounding justification by faith, even though Habakkuk’s immediate setting concerns faithful endurance under judgment.
Ezekiel 37’s national-restoration vision also contributes to the canon’s imagery of divine life overcoming death, but it is not itself a direct prediction of the resurrection of Jesus or believers. These connections are strongest when the Old Testament contexts remain intact and the New Testament passages supply their own claims.
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