To hate (personally)
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שָׂנֵא (sane) is a Hebrew verb for hating, being hostile toward, rejecting, or standing against someone or something. It can describe violent enmity, family alienation, a person being less loved than another, opposition to evil or falsehood, and divine rejection in prophetic or covenant settings.
Reader summary
Full entry for שָׂנֵא (H8130) · Open the biblical lexicon
שָׂנֵא (sane) is a Hebrew verb for hating, being hostile toward, rejecting, or standing against someone or something. It can describe violent enmity, family alienation, a person being less loved than another, opposition to evil or falsehood, and divine rejection in prophetic or covenant settings.
The BSB source-word alignment has 146 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include I hate (11), hate (10), hates (8), Those who hate you (4), . . . (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 24:60. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (41), Proverbs (26), Deuteronomy (20), 2 Samuel (8).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
שָׂנֵא (sane) is a Hebrew verb for hating, being hostile toward, rejecting, or standing against someone or something. It can describe violent enmity, family alienation, a person being less loved than another, opposition to evil or falsehood, and divine rejection in prophetic or covenant settings. These are related but not interchangeable senses. A reader must ask who hates whom or what, why, and within what genre and relationship.
Scripture also places strong limits around hatred. Leviticus forbids hating a fellow Israelite in the heart, and Exodus requires help for an enemy's burdened animal. Wisdom and worship texts call people to hate evil, pride, and false ways, not to dehumanize people. Amos joins hatred of evil with love of good and justice in the gate. Imprecatory and enemy language therefore requires canonical restraint, truthful lament, and refusal of private vengeance.
Malachi requires special care. Malachi 1 speaks of Jacob and Esau within a prophetic covenant and national horizon, not as permission for personal contempt or conclusions about an individual's eternal fate. Malachi 2:16 has significant grammatical and translation difficulty: interpreters differ over whether the clause says that God hates divorce or describes a man who hates and divorces. Either reading condemns marital treachery and violence in context, but neither may be used to trap a person in abuse or obstruct lawful safety.
H8130 spans hostile relationships, rejection, unequal affection, enemy formulas, hatred of injustice or falsehood, prophetic descriptions of divine rejection, and wisdom instruction about moral aversion.
Leah is described as hated or unloved alongside Jacob's greater love for Rachel, so the family comparison and Leah's suffering must remain visible.
Israel must help when the donkey of a hated person is collapsing, placing concrete neighborly duty over hostility.
The command not to hate a brother in one's heart is followed by accountable correction and the prohibition of vengeance.
Amos calls the community to hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the gate, giving moral hatred a public justice direction.
The Lord rejects Israel's festivals while injustice persists; the target is worship joined to exploitation, not gathered worship as such.
The Jacob and Esau contrast belongs to Malachi's retrospective covenant and national argument involving Edom.
A grammatically difficult clause stands within a denunciation of marital faithlessness and violence; translations assign its subject differently.
Those who love the Lord are summoned to hate evil while trusting the Lord, rather than treating persons as legitimate objects of cruelty.
The psalmist's intense enemy language belongs to prayer and zeal amid conflict and requires the wider canon's restraints on vengeance and treatment of enemies.
Amnon's sudden hatred of Tamar after assault intensifies the narrative's portrayal of his violence, rejection, and abuse of power.
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. Personal animosity or active hostility; often marks relational rupture rather than mere dislike
Personal animosity or active hostility; often marks relational rupture rather than mere dislike
to hate (personally) BDB: hate Usage: enemy, foe, (be) hate(-ful, -r), odious, × utterly.
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 148 lexical occurrence verses.
שָׂנֵא is a primitive root - no further derivation.
The word indicates deliberate avoidance of risky financial commitments. Proverbs 11:15
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H8130 gives teachers a vocabulary that must be directed with unusual care. Scripture can condemn hatred lodged in the heart, narrate being hated within a family, command active help for an enemy, and call worshipers to hate evil. The moral object and the enacted response matter. Hatred of evil never authorizes hatred crimes, harassment, contempt, or violence against a person or group.
Psalm 139's severe prayer should be taught as lament placed before God, not as a permission slip for targeting opponents. Malachi 1 concerns Jacob, Esau, Israel, and Edom in a prophetic covenant history; it cannot identify present ethnic, religious, political, or sexual groups as divinely hated. Malachi 2:16 must be presented with its translation difficulty and its context of treachery and violence.
It must never compel continued exposure to abuse. Trauma, anger, intrusive thoughts, and intense aversion need patient pastoral care, practical safety, and qualified mental-health support when appropriate, not shame or simplistic commands about emotion.
Lev.19.17
H8130 may take persons, enemies, practices, moral evils, falsehood, worship, or other objects. In relational comparison, hated can mark rejection or being less loved without reducing every occurrence to 'love less.' Participial forms can function for one who hates or an enemy. Context, syntax, and discourse control the sense.
New Testament hatred and enemy-love texts use Greek vocabulary in their own contexts. Jesus' command to love enemies and Paul's call to overcome evil with good provide canonical restraints on interpersonal hostility, while Romans 9 receives Malachi's Jacob and Esau text in a sustained argument that must be interpreted directly.
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