A flabby thing, i.e. a carcase or carrion (human or bestial, often collectively); figuratively, an idol
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The Hebrew noun nevelah can name an animal carcass, carrion, or a human dead body. Torah passages use it in food and ritual-purity instructions, while narratives and prophets use it for a body receiving burial or being exposed in disgrace.
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Full entry for נְבֵלָה (H5038) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun nevelah can name an animal carcass, carrion, or a human dead body. Torah passages use it in food and ritual-purity instructions, while narratives and prophets use it for a body receiving burial or being exposed in disgrace.
The BSB source-word alignment has 48 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include the body (6), their carcasses (5), and his body (3), anything found dead (3), the corpses (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Leviticus 5:2. Its strongest book concentrations include Leviticus (19), 1 Kings (10), Jeremiah (8), Deuteronomy (4).
The Hebrew noun nevelah can name an animal carcass, carrion, or a human dead body. Torah passages use it in food and ritual-purity instructions, while narratives and prophets use it for a body receiving burial or being exposed in disgrace. The word identifies bodily remains in a particular legal or literary setting; it does not mean that a living person is morally worthless.
Contact with animal remains in Leviticus concerns ritual uncleanness and prescribed cleansing, not permanent shame or proof of personal sin. Deuteronomy requires prompt burial even for an executed person, joining the land's holiness to a limit on public exposure. First Kings narrates a body recovered from the road, mourned, and placed in a tomb. Prophetic accounts of bodies left exposed portray judgment, violence, and desecration without inviting graphic curiosity.
Isaiah can use the plural for the dead who will live and rise, placing mortal remains within hope. Responsible teaching distinguishes human and animal remains, ritual status and moral worth, and ordinary death from violent dishonor while supporting lawful, sanitary, and compassionate care.
Nevelah denotes a carcass or dead body and can refer to animal remains, human remains, carrion, or figuratively detestable objects. Referent, legal setting, burial action, and genre distinguish food law, ritual contact, dignified care, desecration, judgment, and resurrection hope.
Or if a person touches anything unclean—whether the carcass of any unclean wild animal or livestock or crawling creature—even if he is unaware of it, he is unclean and guilty.
Leviticus addresses a person who unknowingly touches the carcass of an unclean animal and becomes ritually unclean.
You must not leave the body on the tree overnight, but you must be sure to bury him that day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.
The law forbids leaving an executed person's body on a tree overnight and requires burial that same day.
So the old prophet lifted up the body of the man of God, laid it on the donkey, and brought it back to his own city to mourn for him and bury him.
The old prophet retrieves the man of God's body from the road, brings it to the city, mourns, and buries him.
They brought Uriah out of Egypt and took him to King Jehoiakim, who had him put to the sword and his body thrown into the burial place of the common people.
King Jehoiakim has the prophet Uriah killed and his body thrown into the burial place of the common people.
They have given the corpses of Your servants as food to the birds of the air, the flesh of Your saints to the beasts of the earth.
The lament says the bodies of God's servants were given to birds and beasts after the invasion of Jerusalem.
Your dead will live; their bodies will rise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust! For your dew is like the dew of the morning, and the earth will bring forth her dead.
Isaiah announces that the dead will live, their bodies will rise, and those dwelling in the dust will awake and sing.
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. A corpse viewed as something flabby and worthless; figuratively applied to idols as spiritually lifeless objects.
A corpse viewed as something flabby and worthless; figuratively applied to idols as spiritually lifeless objects.
a flabby thing, i.e. a carcase or carrion (human or bestial, often collectively); figuratively, an idol BDB: carcass Usage: (dead) body, (dead) carcase, dead of itself, which died, (beast) that (which) dieth of itself.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 48 lexical occurrence verses.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Nevelah forces readers to attend to mortality without surrendering dignity. Leviticus 5 describes contact with an animal carcass within Israel's ritual-purity system and provides a path for addressing uncleanness. The category is not a verdict that the affected person is disgusting or permanently excluded. Deuteronomy 21 limits the exposure of an executed body by requiring burial the same day.
Even within a severe judicial setting, the text refuses indefinite public display and connects burial practice with the land's holiness. First Kings 13 reports the old prophet lifting the dead man from the road, mourning him, and placing him in a tomb. The complicated narrative does not require readers to celebrate the death or neglect the body. Jeremiah 26 exposes a king's killing of Uriah and disposal of his body, preserving the victim's name against political erasure.
Psalm 79 turns unburied bodies into communal lament before God rather than spectacle. Isaiah 26 speaks of dead bodies rising, directing mortality toward hope without denying present loss. Faithful application uses respectful language, follows legal and public-health procedures, returns remains to families when possible, supports mourners, documents violence truthfully, and refuses to exploit images of the dead.
Deut.21.23
Nevelah transliterates Hebrew נְבֵלָה. The feminine noun appears in absolute and construct forms; referent and syntax show whether it denotes an animal carcass, a human body, collective remains, or a figurative detestable object.
New Testament burial and resurrection accounts continue Scripture's concern for bodies, mourning, and hope through different Greek vocabulary. G3418 in this batch names a tomb, but neither term should be collapsed into the other or used to bypass the practical dignity of burial.