To run (for whatever reason, especially to rush )
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The Hebrew verb ruts describes running or moving swiftly, but the reason for speed changes from passage to passage. A person may run to welcome a guest, carry news, flee danger, rush toward battle, pursue violence, obey a summons, or continue with renewed endurance.
Reader summary
Full entry for רוּץ (H7323) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew verb ruts describes running or moving swiftly, but the reason for speed changes from passage to passage. A person may run to welcome a guest, carry news, flee danger, rush toward battle, pursue violence, obey a summons, or continue with renewed endurance.
The BSB source-word alignment has 103 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include ran (11), Run (6), the guards (5), and ran (4), the couriers (4).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 18:2. Its strongest book concentrations include 2 Kings (13), 1 Samuel (12), 2 Samuel (12), Genesis (10).
The Hebrew verb ruts describes running or moving swiftly, but the reason for speed changes from passage to passage. A person may run to welcome a guest, carry news, flee danger, rush toward battle, pursue violence, obey a summons, or continue with renewed endurance. The verb names motion, not the moral quality of the runner or destination. Scripture can praise prompt hospitality and persevering strength while condemning feet that hurry toward evil.
Isaiah's promise about running without weariness belongs to hope in the Lord, not a denial of bodily limits. Wise teaching therefore asks who runs, toward what, under whose command, and with what outcome. It values readiness without glorifying frantic pace, recklessness, overwork, or coercive demands that people prove faith by ignoring fatigue and safety.
Ruts follows people moving quickly toward hospitality, duty, conflict, escape, ambition, or renewed service. The same speed can express love, courage, panic, violence, or presumption depending on direction and purpose.
And Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.
Abraham runs from the tent entrance to meet the visitors, placing speed inside attentive hospitality and a generous welcome to strangers.
As the Philistine started forward to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him.
David runs quickly toward the battle line to meet Goliath, a narrative act of courage within the Lord's deliverance of Israel.
But those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.
Those who hope in the Lord are renewed to run without weariness, poetic assurance of sustaining grace for an exhausted covenant people.
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. to run (for whatever reason, especially to rush )
to run (for whatever reason, especially to rush) BDB: run Usage: break down, divide speedily, footman, guard, bring hastily, (make) run (away, through), post.
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.
רוּץ is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Ruts is vivid because movement reveals direction. Abraham runs to welcome guests, David runs toward the battle line, messengers run with news, and violent people run toward harm. Isaiah 40 does not bless motion for its own sake; it promises renewed strength to people who wait for the Lord after their own power has failed. That hope can sustain long obedience, but it must not be turned into a demand that exhausted bodies never slow down.
Churches often admire visible speed, immediate answers, full calendars, and leaders who never appear tired. This verb asks a better question: what destination and purpose govern the pace? Prompt hospitality, courageous obedience, and diligent service may be beautiful. Frantic ministry, reckless confrontation, hurried judgment, and systems that consume workers are not sanctified by speed.
Christian endurance receives strength from God, uses creaturely limits wisely, rests when needed, and refuses to run toward violence or applause.
Isa.40.31
Ruts is a common motion verb whose basic action is running. It does not lexically encode zeal, faith, fear, or violence; subjects, destinations, commands, adverbs, and narrative consequences supply those evaluations.
The New Testament frequently uses race and running imagery for disciplined perseverance, mission, and finishing faithfully. Those metaphors remain governed by Christ's call and the good of others; they do not cancel sleep, illness, disability, shared labor, prudent retreat, or patient waiting.