What does יָשַׁע (môšîaʿ) mean in the Bible?
יָשַׁע (yasha) is a Hebrew verb for saving, delivering, helping, or giving victory. The local Hebrew artifact currently indexes about 206 H3467 occurrences.
Properly, to be open , wide or free , i.e. (by implication) to be safe ; causatively, to free or succor
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יָשַׁע (yasha) is a Hebrew verb for saving, delivering, helping, or giving victory. The local Hebrew artifact currently indexes about 206 H3467 occurrences.
Reader summary
Full entry for יָשַׁע (H3467) · Open the biblical lexicon
יָשַׁע (yasha) is a Hebrew verb for saving, delivering, helping, or giving victory. The local Hebrew artifact currently indexes about 206 H3467 occurrences.
The BSB source-word alignment has 205 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include save me (13), save (12), to save (10), I will save (8), save us (8).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Exodus 2:17. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (57), Isaiah (29), Judges (21), Jeremiah (19).
יָשַׁע (yasha) is a Hebrew verb for saving, delivering, helping, or giving victory. The local Hebrew artifact currently indexes about 206 H3467 occurrences. It is used with God and with human deliverers, across military danger, personal distress, national rescue, royal hope, and theological proclamation. No single English gloss or doctrinal scope governs every occurrence.
Exodus 14:30 says that the Lord saved Israel from the hand of the Egyptians at the sea. In that scene Israel's rescue depends on God's action, and the event becomes a major canonical pattern of deliverance. The passage should not be made the lexical definition of every later H3467 use or used to deny the responsive acts that follow divine rescue.
The Psalms use the verb in petitions and testimonies such as 'save me for the sake of your steadfast love' (Ps 6:4) and 'I am saved from my enemies' (Ps 18:3). These prayers join present need to confidence in God's character without promising that every rescue will arrive in the same temporal form.
Isaiah 43:3 names the Lord as Israel's Savior, and Isaiah 45:22 calls the ends of the earth to turn to God and be saved because there is no other God. The latter widens the audience while remaining grounded in Isaiah's proclamation of Israel's God rather than an Israel-independent religious principle.
Zechariah 9:9 describes Zion's coming king with a Niphal participle that can be rendered saved, victorious, or having salvation. The grammatical and translation question should remain visible; the verse must not be made to say more than its form and royal context support.
The H3467 root family is related to salvation nouns and to the Hebrew names Yeshua and Yehoshua. Matthew 1:21 connects Jesus' name with his mission to save his people from their sins. This supplies a strong canonical name-and-mission link without making every H3467 occurrence a prediction of Jesus or deriving a complete doctrine of salvation from the root alone.
For the preacher, יָשַׁע invites confidence in the God who saves and honest prayer from situations of danger or helplessness. Application should preserve divine agency, genuine human response, and each passage's particular kind of deliverance.
Exodus 14:30 says that the Lord saved Israel from the hand of the Egyptians. The sea rescue is a major theologically significant H3467 use: God acts decisively while Israel is unable to defeat the pursuing army. Later biblical writers repeatedly recall the exodus, but not every H3467 occurrence depends directly on this event.
Exodus 14:30 uses יָשַׁע for the Lord's rescue of Israel from the Egyptian army at the sea. The scene gives the verb a decisive divine subject and a concrete historical danger. Exodus 15 celebrates that rescue, but neither chapter turns the event into the definition of all 206 local H3467 uses.
The Psalms employ the verb in cries for help and testimonies of deliverance. Psalm 6 appeals to steadfast love, while Psalm 18 praises rescue from enemies. These prayers show how remembered acts of God sustain present petition, yet their outcomes and temporal settings should not be flattened into one promise for every sufferer.
Isaiah names the Lord as Israel's Savior and calls the ends of the earth to turn to him and be saved. The worldwide summons of Isaiah 45:22 rests on the claim that Israel's God is the only God. It expands the audience without detaching salvation from the book's covenant and exile-restoration setting.
Zechariah 9:9 applies a Niphal participle to the coming king, with translations ranging among saved, victorious, and having salvation. Matthew later cites the royal entry scene and separately explains Jesus' name through his mission to save his people from their sins. The relationship between the Hebrew root family and Jesus' name supports a canonical synthesis, but it is not a shortcut around grammar, immediate context, or the distinct work of each passage.
יָשַׁע belongs to a Hebrew saving-root family that includes deliverance nouns and personal names such as Yeshua and Yehoshua. The Septuagint often renders saving language with Greek sozo and related nouns, creating a substantial lexical bridge into the NT without making the semantic ranges identical. Matthew 1:21 explicitly connects Jesus' name with his mission to save his people from their sins.
Exodus 14, the Psalms, Isaiah 43 and 45, and Zechariah 9 contribute distinct canonical settings for rescue, prayer, divine identity, worldwide summons, and royal hope. The trajectory toward Jesus is therefore a whole-canon synthesis grounded especially in explicit NT reuse and naming, not a claim that H3467 secretly contains later doctrine or predicts Christ in every occurrence.
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.
Hebrew word. Deliverance from confinement or danger; causatively, to make spacious/free, hence to save and preserve.
Deliverance from confinement or danger; causatively, to make spacious/free, hence to save and preserve.
properly, to be open, wide or free, i.e. (by implication) to be safe; causatively, to free or succor BDB: deliver Usage: × at all, avenging, defend, deliver(-er), help, preserve, rescue, be safe, bring (having) salvation, save(-iour), get victory.
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 4 selected witnesses from 206 lexical occurrence verses.
יָשַׁע is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Affirms the Lord’s exclusive saving identity. Isaiah 43:8-13
Affirms the Lord’s exclusive role in eternal salvation. Isaiah 45:14-19
Affirms God as the active agent of salvation. Isaiah 46:1-4
Affirms God’s active role in redeeming his people. Isaiah 49:22-26
Greek words that correspond to or develop the meaning of this Hebrew word in the New Testament.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H3467 opens a passage-governed theology of rescue: deliverance from enemies, help in personal distress, victory, divine saving identity, worldwide summons, and royal hope. It lets a preacher connect prayer to remembered acts of God and later connect the saving-root name family to Jesus where the NT itself supplies that bridge.
The verb corrects salvation language that becomes detached from real danger and concrete deliverance. At the same time, its use for both divine and human agents corrects the claim that every occurrence describes an identical unilateral act or the full NT doctrine of justification. Context must identify the danger, agent, response, and outcome.
Begin with the actual crisis in the selected passage. In Exodus 14, Israel faces an army and the sea, and the Lord effects the rescue. In a psalm, the speaker may cry, wait, fight, flee, or praise while trusting God. In Isaiah, the verb can name the Lord as Savior or summon the nations to turn. Only after establishing that local shape should the sermon trace the wider root family and Matthew 1:21's explicit name-and-mission connection.
MorphGNT Strong's Dictionary XML — CC0 1.0 Public Domain
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (morphhb/OSHB) — CC BY 4.0
Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon — CC BY 4.0
Berean Standard Bible (BSB) source-word alignment - CC0 Public Domain