To disesteem
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The Hebrew verb bazah describes despising, scorning, or treating a person, word, covenant, calling, or gift as insignificant. The biblical contexts reveal both the act of contempt and the experience of being despised.
Reader summary
Full entry for בָּזָה (H959) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew verb bazah describes despising, scorning, or treating a person, word, covenant, calling, or gift as insignificant. The biblical contexts reveal both the act of contempt and the experience of being despised.
The BSB source-word alignment has 44 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include despised (4), despise (3), despises (3), he despised (3), and despised (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 25:34. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (8), Ezekiel (5), Malachi (5), Isaiah (4).
The Hebrew verb bazah describes despising, scorning, or treating a person, word, covenant, calling, or gift as insignificant. The biblical contexts reveal both the act of contempt and the experience of being despised. David despises the Lord's command through the concrete abuse of taking Uriah's wife and arranging Uriah's death. The poor man's wisdom is disregarded because of his status.
The suffering servant is despised and rejected, yet God does not despise the afflicted person's torment, the destitute person's prayer, or a broken and contrite heart. Esther shows contempt expanding from Mordecai to a genocidal plan against the Jewish people. These uses prevent the word from becoming a vague feeling or a license to despise people deemed evil.
Responsible teaching names how contempt works through violence, status, ethnicity, silencing, and refusal to hear. It centers those devalued by power, distinguishes moral evaluation of conduct from denial of human dignity, and rejects antisemitism, class contempt, public humiliation, and spiritual claims that God ignores suffering people.
Bazah names contempt expressed toward God, commands, covenants, people, or their words, and it also describes people subjected to rejection. Narrative outcomes expose contempt through abuse, silencing, ethnic hostility, status prejudice, and dismissal of affliction.
Why then have you despised the command of the Lord by doing evil in His sight? You put Uriah the Hittite to the sword and took his wife as your own. You have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites.
Nathan defines David's contempt for the Lord's command through adultery, arranged killing, and appropriation of Uriah's wife.
And I said, “Wisdom is better than strength, but the wisdom of the poor man is despised, and his words are not heeded.”
A poor man's wisdom proves better than strength, yet social contempt leaves his words unheard.
And when he learned the identity of Mordecai’s people, he scorned the notion of laying hands on Mordecai alone. Instead, he sought to destroy all of Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the kingdom of Xerxes.
Haman's contempt for acting against Mordecai alone expands into a plan to destroy all Jewish people.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.
The servant is despised, rejected, acquainted with grief, and treated as one unworthy of regard.
For He has not despised or detested the torment of the afflicted. He has not hidden His face from him, but has attended to his cry for help.
The psalm declares that God has not despised the afflicted person's torment but has heard the cry.
He will turn toward the prayer of the destitute; He will not despise their prayer.
God turns toward the prayer of the destitute rather than treating their appeal as insignificant.
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. Active contempt and social rejection; to regard someone as worthless and unworthy of honor
Active contempt and social rejection; to regard someone as worthless and unworthy of honor
to disesteem BDB: despise Usage: despise, disdain, contemn(-ptible), think to scorn, vile person.
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 5 selected witnesses from 43 lexical occurrence verses.
בָּזָה 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.
Bazah makes contempt visible in conduct. Nathan does not treat David's contempt for God's command as private irreverence. It is expressed through taking Bathsheba, arranging Uriah's death, and using Ammonite violence to conceal royal wrongdoing. The passage requires victim-centered accountability and must not reduce the event to a leader's lapse followed by quick restoration.
Ecclesiastes 9 shows another form: a poor man's wisdom saves a city, but social status causes his words to be despised and forgotten. Communities can praise wisdom while ignoring the people through whom it comes. Esther 3 shows contempt becoming collective hatred. Haman disdains acting against Mordecai alone and seeks to destroy the Jewish people, a narrative that demands explicit resistance to antisemitism and scapegoating.
Isaiah 53 names the rejected servant, while Psalms 22 and 102 confess that God does not despise afflicted torment or destitute prayer. Faithful application hears people whom power dismisses, investigates abuse independently, protects targeted communities, refuses contemptuous speech, and trusts God's attention without romanticizing poverty, grief, or suffering.
Ps.22.24
Bazah is a Hebrew verb used actively for despising and in passive forms for being treated as despised or contemptible. The object may be a person, command, covenant, offering, or word, and context identifies the concrete act of devaluation.
The Gospels present Jesus as rejected and shamed while attending to people dismissed by status and purity boundaries. The churches are forbidden to show partiality toward the wealthy and are called to honor every member, continuing Scripture's exposure of contempt without erasing moral discernment.